008 | The 4 Best Marketing Tactics For Accountants With Ross Jeffries

Do you have a marketing plan for your accounting firm? Or, are you kind of winging it as you go, hoping dream clients fall into your lap?

I’ve worked with a lot of accountants, and I know that many of you shudder at the thought of having to go out and market yourself, so you avoid it at all costs. But, as I’m sure you’ve learned, that isn’t going to bring in any business!

In order to build a solid accounting firm with the clients you love, having the right marketing techniques to ensure that you have a steady flow of dream clients walking in your doors (or calling you on the phone) is a must.

In this episode of The Abundant Accountant Podcast, Ross Jeffries joins me to share THE four best marketing tips for accountants and how to put them into practice starting today.

If you’re ready to start showcasing your expertise in a way that shows your prospects what’s possible, then this episode of The Abundant Accountant Podcast is a MUST LISTEN!

Enjoy, and thank you for listening and tuning into The Abundant Accountant Podcast!

To share your thoughts:

To help the show out:

Special thanks go out to YOU for taking the time to listen to this episode of The Abundant Accountant Podcast.

Learn the 3 proven strategies my accounting clients use to easily build their accounting practice with premium clients who are eagerly willing to pay what they’re worth. Sign up for the FREE masterclass

NOW at abundantaccountant.com

Here are a few key secrets we talked about in this episode:

Michelle introduces Ross Jeffries and shares a little bit about who he is.
Michelle explains that there is NO way to show how good you are at being an accounting professional without properly marketing yourself.
Ross shares his definition of marketing.
Content marketing is one of the most strategic ways that accounting professionals can market themselves.
Want a quick tip on how to create more content? Ross shares a brilliant tip that he learned from his mentor Gary Halbert.
Be sure that when you’re pushing your content to different channels, you ensure it is formatted in whatever way is best for that platform.
It’s important to get feedback from current clients so that you know what you are doing really well so that you can market that to future prospects.
Tip number two is to ensure you capture your leads.
Unfortunately, many accounting professionals do not have a solid system for capturing leads and following-up with them.
Michelle stresses that we never ever want to discount our prices. NEVER!
“When you discount your services, you become a commodity like rice.” ~ Ross Jeffries
Tip number 3 is to start using social media, particularly LinkedIn, to market yourself.
Both Ross and Michelle offer some great tips for building your presence on LinkedIn and on Twitter.
Tip number 4 involves creating a passive income stream through affiliate income.
While building up your affiliate income, continue to build your relationships because you never know who could lead to additional commission or referral fees.
Ross introduces the acronym NEER – Naturally Existing Economic Relationships – and explains what it means.
Ross shares a great tip on how to build your credibility and expertise by using free publicity.

Learn More & Connect With Me Here!

P.S. Learn the 3 proven strategies my accounting professional clients use to easily build their accounting practice with premium clients who are eagerly willing to pay what they’re worth. Sign up for the FREE masterclass NOW at abundantaccountant.com.

—

Listen to the podcast here

The 4 Best Marketing Tactics For Accountants With Ross Jeffries

If you are an accountant, CPA or EA and looking to grow your firm, this is the place to be. I have a special guest, Ross Jeffries, also the author of Subtle Words That Sell and we are talking about the four best marketing tactics for accountants. That is what’s on deck because I have been asked by numerous accountants numerous times about the best ways to market their firms.

While you think it might be obvious, sometimes it’s not. Without proper marketing techniques, there is no way that your business can scale or reach the revenues that you are looking to achieve. In this episode, I will give you our four main action-oriented techniques that you can put into action to apply to your business to help grow your firm and market it properly. Welcome to the show, Ross.

It’s always a pleasure to address your genius audience. I have some techniques of my own that I have used to build a business and make a lot of money that cost me zero. Some people will be interested in that. I’m not joking around about that. I made quite a lot of money without spending anything.

That is amazing and I’m so happy that you’ve made a lot of money. What I like to say is without proper marketing, there is no way to show the world how much of a rockstar you are at your expertise. If you are doing bookkeeping, tax planning, tax resolution, monthly accounting work or compliance work, if you don’t have the proper marketing and messaging, it’s difficult to show all of your clients what’s possible.

We need to get to a good definition of marketing. In my mind, marketing is everything you do to position yourself and communicate in such a way that when it comes time to ask for the sale, the person is already there. You’ve already convinced them. You get them to convince themselves. You understand but they don’t have to do a whole hell of a lot once you’ve done the proper marketing.

Marketing Tactics: Marketing is everything you do to position yourself and communicate in such a way that when it comes time to ask for the sale, the person is already there.

Content Marketing

Let’s talk about our first tip, which I call content marketing. We’ll hear from Ross’s point of view on how he could define content marketing. For a lot of accountants out there, content marketing is one of the best strategic ways to share with potential clients, not only your expertise but also your niche and specialty.

I don’t disagree with that. Here’s the thing on how to create the content. Many people believe that they are not writers so they can’t create. I want to use something that I have used to make tons of money and lost a lot of it but this is from my copywriting guru Gary Halbert. May he rest in peace. Gary had a technique for writing copy or creating any content. He called can it and clone it.

What you do is sit across the kitchen table from a friend of yours and begin to tell whatever your marketing message is. You have a little tape recorder. Back then there were cassettes and you get it transcribed. This is the way you create the content through whatever channel you push it. The other thing I learned that’s a good lesson for anyone reading is to do your content in the format through the channels that people want to consume it.

Do your content in the format through the channels that people want to consume it. Click To Tweet

Let me make that very clear. People tend to learn in three styles, visual, auditory and kinesthetic. For visual people, you do videos. For the auditory people, you do the auditory portion of the videos and for the kinesthetic people, you give them a workbook, cheat sheet or template. You can repurpose your content for the various formats in which you produce it and then you want to put it or pump it through different channels. You don’t have to keep recreating the wheel and reinventing yourself each and every time. That’s my take on the tactic that you gave.

A little bit more on that, once you can it and clone it, then there are different ways to do that by getting it out to the visual, auditory and kinesthetic people. A few of the ways that I do this, which some of you have seen, is through my show. This show is for auditory people. For visual people, you can catch it on Facebook Live as well. For the kinesthetic people, what do I do?

They need something that they can download and work on to take notes and fill something in.

For those of you that need the downloads, you can also watch the webinar that will help you, which is our masterclass. You can do that over at TheAbundantAccountant.com. In addition to that, if you want to learn how to sell without sleaze, I have a five-step system that I also provide to you complimentary, which is my content marketing at SellWithoutSleaze.com and you’ll get my five-step system to remove the stress of selling for good so you can enjoy it.

What I always like to say, Ross. You tell me what you think but focus on your strongest skills. How have you helped your clients? For me, it’s all in the area of sales but maybe how have you helped your clients get their accounting books in order? How did you help them keep their QuickBooks files in pristine order and save them $50,000 in taxes in a year? Whatever it was for you, that’s a great thing to teach on.

One way to find that out is to ask your client, “Of all the great value that we have provided and I know that you are very happy with it and I appreciate our relationship, what do you think of the top three things that I have provided that have made you recognize for yourself?” This is a great relationship that I have formed with so and so. Get feedback from them because chances are it’s going to meet your ideal audience. One of the things that are genius is your program. You are a genius. You teach people how to work with the ideal clients whom they want to work with and screen out the clients very quickly who are going to use their time and knowledge and not pay them what they are worth. That’s a very good idea.

Capturing Your Leads

Thank you, Ross. I am so happy that a fellow genius also sees me eye to eye. Our second tip that I would like to discuss with each of you is about capturing your leads. I have seen many accountants not have a good system for how to capture their leads, which means in general speak, how to build an email list, ask for referrals and put them into some follow-up sequence or how to have meetings with your ideal clients and how to nurture your leads and be consistent in the quality versus the quantity. You don’t need a ton. Especially if you have an accounting firm, you are looking for an abundant accounting firm with the clients that you love. Abundance doesn’t always mean quantity. My abundance is all about quality and checking out and how to qualify people whom you want to work with.

She’s a genius. I heard from some of you could sell anything to anyone and that you were the best salesperson they have ever met. That’s what they told me that you could sell ice to Eskimo or the person who’s circulating here, whose first name starts with an M.

Using Social Media

Can you lead us to tip number three? A lot of accountants are not big fans of social media but this is one of the best ways to get your content out there to connect to the communities, find clients on LinkedIn and maybe join some Facebook groups. Twitter is one of the greatest ways to grow credibility and also find your ideal clients.

For example, I might need a new accountant or CPA and you are wanting to work with high-level entrepreneurs like myself, Ross Jeffries and maybe even authors like him. One way is to start following us on Twitter and interjecting your knowledge of the tax laws. In January of 2000 and 2018, there were a lot of shifts in the tax laws. To get your expertise into the eyes of entrepreneurs because Twitter is with our eyes, it’s a great way to create high engagement and interact with us.

LinkedIn groups are also a great area. They have over 500,000 people subscribed to the accounting topic. I don’t even remember what the stat is for how many taxpayers there are to every accountant that’s out there but the stats are, “Let me tell you in your favor.” It’s a matter of being consistent. Ross, what do you think about that? What about the accountants who are so busy? They don’t have any time. There’s always a deadline on the fifteenth, which is why new episodes for the show come out on the 1st and the 15th of every month. Guess why? It’s payroll days.

I’m going to give a different take on this because the truth of the matter is I don’t use a lot of social media but here’s what I do think. This is not entirely on the topic but you need to have a team of people who can pretty much do this for you. I have had the privilege of having some mentorship from Michelle as she teaches me to be a better entrepreneur. She has a fantastic team of people to do a lot of this work and support her.

If you are going to do this, you have to be able to do it on your own for a bit to understand it but get a team of people who can do this because you don’t want to have to do it on your own. That’s something that I would say but also, you can only have so much bandwidth when you start. Pick one channel and work that channel. I would tend to think that LinkedIn is your best bet. I don’t think you are going to find your ideal audience on Instagram. I could be wrong but I don’t think you are going to find your ideal audience on Instagram, nor will you find it on Facebook. That’s my take on it.

Marketing Tactics: You can only have so much bandwidth when you start out. Pick one channel and work that channel.

Thank you for your take. I also agree LinkedIn is where you can find a lot of people like me. Let’s say you want to focus on the dental industry. A lot of dentists are on LinkedIn. There are groups. There are also groups on Facebook. This is a way to do it without going to conventions or conferences. That’s also another way but we have discussed that way in the past. I want to talk about some new ways.

Creating Passive Income

The fourth tip, we are talking about the best marketing tactics for 2018 and 2019 may be in the beginning but as the rate of things changes here, they change fairly often. How do you create some passive income streams? I have talked to a few accountants about this and there are ways to create affiliate accounts. Specifically, one accountant that I was working with. His name is John and I love his model.

He had this model of having a hub and spoke model. Every single client went through the same payroll. If you keep using the same payroll provider, you can start earning some passive revenue from that provider as a referral fee, commission or something like that. Maybe all of your clients use Bill.com to process their payments and pay out their bills online.

Bill.com is a great service and they also pay out affiliate commissions. This is an opportunity for you to drive high-quality leads into your business by having, 1) Referral partners like them and, 2) Software that you love to use. If you love to use it, then it’s a win-win for everybody. Not only can you get new clients from them but you can also gain additional revenue by assigning up for some affiliate programs. I’m not sure if any of you have tried that but it could be worth it.

Another great way is to partner up with mortgage providers, lawyers and financial advisors. Also, as potential clients or referral partners or the local businesses around you. If you think about it, let’s say you are like John and he’s working mostly with small businesses in the dental arena. The online is great. I know John has even created a few specific niche websites like accounting for dentists. What do you think a dental practice owner would google? That’s what you want to think about and building relationships is always what comes first. Let’s hear what Ross has to say on this topic because I’m very curious to see what he has to say on tip number four.

Let me jump into this very strongly with a strong voice. I don’t mean from volume and the measurement here. What I want to say is this. When I was first learning to market, I had many mentors. One of my mentors was a man by the name of Dan Kennedy. Dan’s very famous. Some of you may know Dan. He’s still around.

Dan talked about NEER, Naturally Existing Economic Relationships. The idea of you creating a relationship, for example, with a mortgage broker or someone in that field or industry is an example of NEER. If you don’t do that, you are throwing money away. Of all those tips, I would say that one is far and away. As far as getting referrals or referring people back and forth, that has to be a reciprocal relationship. If you want referrals from these businesses, you have to turn around and do the same thing.

You need to create naturally existing economic relationships because if you don't, you're just throwing money away. Click To Tweet

When you give referrals, you can’t have the mindset of, “I gave you fifteen. You owe me fifteen.” You can’t keep track in that way. It’s got to be all the generosity coming from you and then you have to see how it goes. You can’t be stingy with this thing. At some point, I also want to talk about a strategy that’s not involved in your four tips that made me a lot of money. We’ll do a bonus.

We are going to move on to the bonus strategy because we have a special guest and our special guest always comes with bonuses. A bonus means that you stayed until the end and read the whole episode.

If you can do it, I built my first career off of pretty much free publicity. If you want to be someone who is positioned as the expert in your community or nationwide, it’s possible to do it. What you can do is write a book. That may seem like a distraction but with writing books, use the can it and clone it method. Give it a nice hook and title. When I first did this, there was a magazine called Radio TV Interview Report.

Marketing Tactics: If you want to be someone who is positioned as the expert in your community, write a book.

I spent $450 out of my final $500, put the ad on the inside cover and within a week when it was published, I was on the Donahue Show. Back then Donahue was the most popular chat show in the world. That lasted for three years. Hundreds of radio shows. I wound up making probably about $500,000 on that. Had I spent money? I would have had to spend $20 million on advertising. It cost me $450. With $450, let’s say I made $350,000. You are a genius, Michelle, what’s the return on that? You could tell me right off the top of your head.

It equals a lot. Michelle is good at numbers but I need an Excel spreadsheet, which is how I have the nickname spreadsheet. All of our accountants reading can do it well. My name is spreadsheet and for me to do the ROI percentage calculations, I would put it inside a spreadsheet.

The other thing that you can do also is to give local talks. Go to the places where your services would be greatly welcomed and give talks. Give a talk about the five biggest tax planning mistakes dentists make. See if you could go to a specific industry like dentists and say, “I have got five huge mistakes that dentists make.” Get in front of an audience. If you are good in front of an audience, use that skill. I happen to be a fantastic speaker, as Michelle knows. I’m going to use that talent. If you don’t have it, don’t use it but if you got it, work it.

Thank you, Ross, for that and I agree. That’s a great topic for whatever niche you are in. The five biggest tax planning mistakes in veterinarians. The five biggest mistakes that people make owning restaurants and opening up multiple locations. The five biggest mistakes that people make when they are about to sell their business and they pay an extra and tax fee. Whatever it is, if you can get out there and share it, that’s how you’ll attract more people into your firm and get the clients that you want to work with.

I have one goal for you and might have another one but my goal for you is how can you implement at least one of these tips that you heard within the next months? How can you implement each of these tips by the end of the next 3 to 4 months? If you can do them all in a month, wonderful. Putting this into action is one of the most important things. What I have found is that a lot of times, you can read the summary of what we talked about and then put this into action right away.

Any time I do any coaching to improve people’s excellence, whether it’s sales or motivation, I always say this. You want to use language that continues in the momentum of going to where you want to go. I teach that the mine works on repetition, familiarity and momentum. I would like you to use words like choose and claim. I choose consistency and accountability.

I claim my accountability. I claim my goal and my practice of putting into practice this one tip. Don’t make it, “I should do it. I want to do it. I must do it,” but make it, “I claim my action on taking care of this goal.” A goal without a date is a dream. I learned that from my mentor Benji Bruce, who’s a speaker coach. Make sure you set a date for it. Dreams are nice but they don’t make you cash.

A goal without a date is just a dream. Click To Tweet

I learned that you are blessed to have the opportunity to even own your business and be able to choose your clients with whomever you want to work with. Be in the blessed opportunity position that you are able to put one of these things into action.

—

Thank you all so much for joining me and Ross Jeffries, our special guest on the show. If you dread having to sell your potential clients on working with you, you can get my free immediate access to my masterclass and learn my three proven strategies to easily build your practice with premium clients who eagerly pay what you are worth while never having to sell ever again. You can register for free at TheAbundantAccountant.com. I want to thank each of you for reading. Please put one thing into action that you learned from this episode. Every episode does come out on the 1st and the 15th of every single month. Thank you again all for being here with me. Have a great day.

Cookie	Duration	Description
cookielawinfo-checkbox-analytics	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-functional	11 months	The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-necessary	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary".
cookielawinfo-checkbox-others	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other.
cookielawinfo-checkbox-performance	11 months	This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance".
viewed_cookie_policy	11 months	The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. It does not store any personal data.