Welcome to the Escape the Accountants Trap podcast. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where accountants are not getting paid for their value and are forced to work long hours with high, demanding clients with little pay. Well, how do you escape the accountants trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that's by being intentional about your marketing.

To help me with the discussion, I've invited Jenna Carragher, the president of Capstone Marketing, a company that inspires CPA firms, to grow. And she's also the author of the 90 day marketing plan for CPA firms. Jean, welcome to the show. Thank you, Adam, so much for inviting me. I'm looking forward to this conversation. Yes. Marketing. Oh my goodness.

It's a topic that, depending on the accountant, either loves it or hates it. And you've written the book. That and a lot in between. Yes. You've written the book on this. So starting off, you know, we know instinctively that if we own an accounting firm that we need to be intentional about our marketing, but and you've written the book on a marketing plan.

But but what does that mean? What does being intentional about a marketing plan mean? And why do accountants need to to do this right? Well, let me preface that by saying, you know, over these past few decades, you know, there's plenty of firms and practitioners who are doing a great job with their marketing, but there are still plenty out there that do not have a plan in writing.

Their marketing plan might be an idea in their head, or they saw something one week and try to do with the next week, but it's not written in any organized way, and we find that with goal setting, simply the matter of writing it down makes it more likely that it will happen, because that is being intentional. I like that word marketing.

Also, can be viewed as something cyclical. We know that the accounting profession, they're driven by deadlines. It used to be even more. Right. But these days, it seems like accounts are busy all year through. But it's still a deadline driven profession. So there are certain parts of the year that accountants, you know, feel like they need to do less, and other parts of the year where they feel like they might have time to do more.

And the fact is, is that they need to be doing something all the time. And yes, they can do more certain parts of the year and less during some parts of the year. They just can't turn it on and off like a lot of practitioners do. I just had a firm partner. You know, we're working on their marketing plan.

I had one of the partners say to me, you know, Jean, I'm really having a hard time, you know, wrapping my hands around this marketing thing now because, you know, we are so busy. So, so his thought process is we're busy, so we shouldn't have to do anything. And I challenge that because to be successful and consistent, you've got to be doing something all year round.

Okay. So let's let's talk about let's let's talk about the idea of marketing. I mean on the surface it sounds like the idea of marketing is to get clients. But but you're saying that when it comes to coming up with a marketing plan for Capture Farms isn't the whole point to get clients year round and have a system, essentially a plan, you're planning to create a system to get clients year round?

Yes, yes, that's true. Ideally, a firm should have a pipeline of prospects that they're gathering through the year. So that requires them to have a description of their ideal client, because those are the kind of new clients you want to bring in. Every prospect is not the right prospect for your firm. You don't have to accept every prospect that comes along.

So it's important to have that ideal description. And then it's also important at the other end to know which clients you need to fire or transition to another firm. What happens is that bad firms take on bad clients. Then they don't enjoy working with them. They're not paying on time. They're not following their advice. You know, the staff doesn't want to work with them at every firm.

Every staff person has at least one client they want to fire. But then the the CPAs are reluctant to fire those clients, so they wind up with a practice with clients that some or maybe most they really enjoy working with. But then there's always this group that you see the caller ID on the phone, or there's an email in your inbox from these troublesome clients and you're thinking, oh, like, do I have to deal with them again?

So it is a cyclical process of working that pipeline with your best prospects and working with your best clients. But let me also add marketing isn't just about new business. It also plays a big role in retaining your clients, because you do want to make sure you are retaining retaining your best clients and it also goes a long way.

Because let's face it, branding is part of marketing and your brand, helps also in recruiting. And we know what a crisis there is out there these days, with firms not being able to find enough people to work with their clients. So it's not just about winning the new client. It is that I feel like marketing is the foundation of everything else that a CPA firm does.

Yeah. That's a great it's a great explanation. And the reason why I asked about the idea of what a marketing plan is, because it's one of those things that sounds obvious, like a business plan sounds obvious. But most people write a business plan and don't use it. It's just sort of this stagnant thing that sits on the the shelf.

A marketing plan, the way you've described it is this is this living, breathing, plan of action to help you do three things. The first, get new clients, the second retain existing clients and the third is to recruit employees. Yes. Yes, absolutely. In the old days, you know, before, I hate to say this, like before computers or in the early days of, you know, being able to use technology.

I had a colleague at another firm who created a marketing plan for his firm and actually had it found with hard cover. Do you know what happened to that marketing plan? And it was fantastic. It was a fantastic plan. All the right elements, goals, strategies, resources, all of it. Budget. It sat on a shelf. It was almost too beautiful that you didn't even want to mark it up.

So especially in today's world, right, where everything is nearly everything is online. It's in the cloud. Your marketing plan is something that you're working on all the time, that you have your champion that's going to lead that effort. Now, these days, many firms have full time marketing professionals within their practices. I'm really proud of the growth of that part of the industry, and they are often the key person to drive that marketing plan.

And then they need the 110% commitment from their firms managing partner. And depending on how large the firm is, that point person might be a partner that's been put in charge of the marketing function. So the marketing professionals have, someone to report to. So yes, you're absolutely right. They need to be meeting on a regular basis. They need to be following up on the status of their goals.

It's a plan. Or it plan makes it very clear about who is responsible for doing what by when. So there's no mistake when they sit around the conference table or in their zoom room or teams or however you know their meeting these days, it should be very clear. When you're going over the status of programs of what was supposed to be accomplished within what period of time.

So having that it also like having that timetable makes people more accountable to each other because they've agreed what they're willing to do. And then it's up to them to do it and to have the leadership in place to guide those people. I love that. I mean, and it solidifies what we were talking about when it comes to a marketing plan is not it is not this thing that you create one time and it sits on your in your computer, on the shelf in a nice hardbound document.

It's this, it's a, it's a, it's an active plan to do something specific. And the thing that, that, that is the plan is supposed to do, this specific thing is supposed to do is to help you get clients, retain clients and get and retain employees, quality employees. So let's talk about what the structure of a marketing plan is.

What are some what are some tips when somebody's listening is coming up with their marketing plan? What are some tips to come up with an intention or marketing plan that's an active, living, breathing plan, right? Okay. So you'll want to do your homework first. So my first step would be for them to analyze their client base by industry, by revenue, by geography, by fees.

There's lots of other criteria that we could use so that you have a clear picture of what your client base is made up of. And whenever a firm does that for the first time, there's always a surprise, you know, that comes that either they actually have enough clients to build upon a certain specific industry niche, or perhaps the profitability of some clients was more or less then partners thought it was.

So you're starting with that analysis of your client base. So you know, the types of new clients that you want to bring on, or you know which niches you want to build. I would also take a good look at a few competitors. What are they saying about themselves? What is their tagline? How do they use color?

What are their industry or service specialties? How is your firm different from those competing firms? Then I would create, goals and strategies. Now, I'm not saying 10 or 12 goals. I don't believe there is a magic number, but you should have the number of goals that you are willing to actually execute. So, frankly, if but again, depending upon the size you prefer, if there was one goal.

Great start there. Everybody's got to start someplace. If you if you establish and sit down and establish nine goals, guess what? You know I'm not saying there's not going to be any activity, but your team is going to lose motivation really fast because they're going to look at it and say, oh, it isn't possible for us to do that.

So you know, why? Why even bother? Yeah, we can then of course, in one month. Well, exactly. And then there's a whole mechanism of, okay, we're working this marketing plan. What do you do with the information that you're collecting? So the marketing campaigns that you might have created, the networking organizations you're attending, the prospect meetings, you had perhaps the blog posts that you wrote or, the video series you did on a certain topic for social media.

It's so important to share, first of all, the marketing plan with your entire firm because they want to know what is the future of our firm, where is our firm going? And they also want to know what role can I play in it. Now some people will be more excited about that and other people, but you might be surprised about the team members that you have that are really interested in being part of that marketing and business development program.

And then the results. Again, many firms do this, but, you know, I would dare say just as many don't inform your team about the financials of your firm. They they need to know, you know, what's that revenue. How does how much does it cost to run a firm. How much new business did you bring in? How much business did you lose?

These are all learning opportunities for your team, and you are doing them a service by giving them this education as early as possible within their careers. Because then you are mentoring potentially the future leaders of your firm. So I don't believe there's any reason why, leadership needs to keep those numbers a secret. I think it's a great learning opportunity.

And then it kind of connects the dots, right? Between the marketing efforts and what we're asking people to do, and adding the reasons why it's important for them to be doing it. Hey there. Adam here from the Escaping the Accountants Trap podcast. I'd like to personally invite you to a free masterclass that we're conducting this Thursday called How to Start a CFO service.

To register, just go to the CFO project. Com and click Free Training at the top. See you there. I love how you frame this plan and I don't want to. I don't want the listeners to gloss over. The first thing that you mentioned is that the plan should start with essentially your ideal client, because it's hard to have a plan if you're going on a road trip.

It would be nice to know if you're planning a road trip. Where you going? Hey, what clients do you want to road? That's what. Right? Let's just start driving. What is the ideal client? Right. Talk to us about the idea of. Oh, go ahead now. Go ahead. Yeah. So you can say I'm excited about this. This is probably one of the easiest things that a partner group can do, because every partner has got their favorite clients that they love working with.

What characteristic do those clients have in common? So earlier I mentioned all these negative qualities, you know, positive qualities, right. Are they helping you build or support a niche? Are they paying you a good rate? Do they pay on time? Do you enjoy working with them? Do they treat your people with respect? And we could go on, make a list and then print out your client list, whether that's in total or by partner.

And keep those characteristics in mind and measure each client and on how they and how they rate. And it's going to become clear, in that ideal client description, because of those positive qualities they have in common. And, you know, again, it could be the industry they work in, where they're located, the types of services that you provide to them.

Are they more than compliance, you know, is there an opportunity to be more advisory with those clients? Do they refer business to you? Are they a good referral source? Would they be willing to provide a testimonial? They could. You you could use on your website or in new business proposals. All of these are really positive characteristics that any CPA would want to work with more clients like that.

Yeah, absolutely. So getting a making a list of the the characteristics of your ideal client not only will help, it sounds like not only it will help the employees and the firm owners have a better time running the firm, but it will be easier to attract people because now you're saying I am an accounting firm for these people, for this group of people, which means that the people that you're serving will self-identify, right?

And say, this is the firm that I need to hire because they specialize in and what I do. Right? Yes, that's exactly right. It requires more thought. So you'll have your ideal client description, and then you'll need to have the courage to actually use that ideal client description when you're evaluating new business opportunities and be willing to say no to those that don't match that description.

Otherwise, you've gone through that exercise, but then you're not using it. So in essence, you've just wasted some of your time. And I don't know a lot of CPAs that have a lot of extra time on their hands these days. And that I may be repeating myself, but at the other end, they also need to be brave enough to fire the ones that are no longer a match.

And there are very professional, ethical ways to do that. So that you are, you're not harming that relationship, in essence, but you're helping them transition to another firm where they will be treated well by talented people. Because if you look and there are firms every year, they are transitioning 10% of their client base out.

It is an annual strategy and they always end up more profitable. They have happier people, happier partners. You know, they they are creating the type of practice that people are happy to work with because the leadership is creating this wonderful atmosphere of work. Yeah, I love that. I mean, that's certainly a it makes sense that if you incorporate this type of marketing plan, you're going to have a growth oriented firm that's built for longevity.

And the second, the second thing I really liked about the structure that you gave about your marketing plan is the the idea of goals, because when when a lot of people, I think, think of the, this idea of a marketing plan they put down, you know, here's, you know, we're going to advertise here and we're going to, you know, go after these people.

But having a plan that's centered around goals makes the plan come alive, because now you can just judge the plan against did you accomplish the goals, and if not, what part of the plan either needs to change? Or do we need to do something different? Exactly right. So tell us a little bit more. Yeah, that's a perfect setup.

So your your goals need to be Smart goals. I know everyone is familiar with that acronym Smart. You know specific. Measurable. Attainable. Realistic. Timely. So you're very specific with numbers. You have a deadline. As I said before, it makes it clear who is responsible for doing what by when. Which leads to accountability. And it gives you, you know, you're, stating before like, taking that trip, you know, but you don't know where you're going.

You know, your goals tell you, okay, this is what we're trying to accomplish and the goals that you establish, do they correlate with the overall growth strategy of your firm? So there are firms out there that are very niche oriented. So their marketing plans are centered around their industry niches. It could be specific service lines. So for example, if you set a goal, let's just all work.

We'll create a niche one just for sake of an example. So it could be, create and execute a three part webinar series for the construction industry by June 30th, 2024. So that's a Smart goal because you know what it is. You know you're going to create and execute three webinars. You've got a deadline, you've got the target market in there.

So it's pretty clear, you know what you want to achieve. And then beneath that are all the strategies and action steps that need to happen in order to achieve that overall goal. So you know, and there's you know, there's a lot that goes into that. Right. You've got to create well, what what's the topic going to be and who or there's who are the speakers going to be and what's the format like and how long will that webinar be and how do we market it.

And, you know, we could go on and on and on. So we've got the overall goal. But then you have all those action steps underneath with the people responsible and the deadline of when they're expected to complete it by so that the activities keep moving along. I would also, encourage firms as part of your marketing plan, and this could be an Excel, layout for the year.

For each month, the marketing activities that are taking place during that month. And this gives you a snapshot in one place of what you've agreed to execute throughout the year. And you could look at that calendar. Then and find out why we are targeting June for a lot of, a lot of activity. Is that realistic? So what could we remove from the plan, or what could we move from June as an example to another month?

Because, again, if your team is looking at that calendar and then thinking whole, the June is really going to be a monster of a marketing month. They may lose a bit of motivation. So you always want to make sure that what you're setting out to do is realistic, and that you're setting your team up for success.

Yeah, I love that. And everything that you're doing in the plan is all centered around accomplishing the goals of getting attracting your ideal clients and retaining your quality employees and retaining client. Exactly. And you know I love it. Let's not forget I'm sorry, Ireland, but let's not forget that while executing this marketing plan, this is also an educational opportunity for your team, particularly when it comes to niches.

So the, the, by industry, it's you where you may be networking. It's maybe the trade shows where you exhibit at. It's the magazines or blogs. Or videos that you're watching centered around that industry, so that they really know the nuts and bolts of the industry, which leads them to be able to have very in-depth conversations with their clients about what's happening in that particular industry and how their client is being impacted by what's happening.

And that could also be for a service. It could be, cybersecurity, it could be cash flow. It you know, there's a lot of, focus now on client accounting and advisory services. So it is marketing. It is about getting good new clients and retaining good clients and people. But it's also a wonderful opportunity to enhance the knowledge and skills of your people.

Oh, wow. That's it. That that sounds, makes sense. Sounds very bad to do so, Jean, if if somebody listening or watching wants to learn more from you about coming up with an intentional action plan or a marketing plan, where do they go? The easiest place to send them is to my website. That's capstone marketing.com cap stone marketing.com.

Lots of resources on there, including free resources that they can download. Lots to read. That's the best spot for them to go. Excellent. Well, Jean, we'll put that in the show notes. Thank you so much for being on the show today. You're welcome. Adam, thanks so much for the invite. I really enjoyed it. I absolutely, and to everyone listening or watching, thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with us as we discussed how to escape the accountant's trap.

Bye for now.