Tips from one Wave Pro to another

The accountants and bookkeepers of the Wave Pro Network continue to enlighten me with new ways to help our small business customers succeed. To my surprise, they’re even interested in helping their fellow competitors find success.

Why are they eager to share their business advice? I think it’s safe to say that Wave Pros are of a certain nature: They’ve taken the bold leap into the world of cloud-based tools and they’re excited about the results. They know it’s the way of the future and they want to create awareness and trust for the tools they support.

Accounting professionals have always been interested in boosting their visibility to build sustainable acquisition channels but it seems to me there’s a whole new ‘Wave’ of strategies and opportunities to help them get the quality leads they’re looking for.

I wanted to shine a spotlight on two of our Wave Pros who have differentiated themselves in the space and who have some marketing advice to share with other professionals looking to boost or build their brand.

When Jonathan Poston from Books Setup joined our Pro Network he didn’t waste any time before taking the necessary action steps to help him promote his new Wave accounting services. Getting listed on Wave’s directory was only one of many initiatives he took. The lessons he learned through his own marketing efforts, he now passes on to other professionals who are just starting out.

As Jonathan puts it, “Ten years ago, web promotion was a different game. Today, it can be competitive and complex”. We asked him what important marketing initiatives he took on his quest to becoming more visible to web-savvy customers who want to use cloud-based tools. He had a lot of advice to pass on!

“Creating a website is the best place to begin and the best place to promote your services because you can customize your brand and the way your services appear. You can also track conversion metrics and tweak when you don’t see the results you want. You can research which keywords will attract the right leads to your site. You can promote your website by writing guest posts for industry relevant blogs. We created a tab especially dedicated to Wave! We also asked our marketing group to post a link to our services on their website.

Social Media is another important space to understand. It’s fairly easy to connect with thousands of people on Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, Reddit, LinkedIn, etc.. The tricky part is really being targeted and mindful of who you want to target. It has become more difficult to grow massive crowds on social media, and with many audiences that are very distracted, also difficult to get their attention away from socializing and on converting in to clients. However, getting your website links and your business information set up on social media sites makes it easier for businesses to find you online, so it’s an important step to take.

For some years newsletter marketing was all but forgotten about, mainly because social media made such a compelling case as the marketing platform of the future. But, now with social media being saturated with very distracted users (who don’t often convert into clients), building out your online newsletters is a good idea. Make sure you get permission from everyone to whom you send emails, and make sure they are interesting (with a great subject line).”

Jonathan is not the only one who’s finding success by increasing marketing efforts. Wave Pro Danetha Doe has some awesome advice on how to establish the million-dollar practice you’ve always dreamed of. In an industry that can sometimes be serious or tedious, Danetha’s brand is professional, bright and fun – just like her! She encourages accounting professionals to market their own practices WHILE offering the same advice to clients in order to re-position your value in the market place.

Want to know how she landed a six-figure client? She offered “an appealing, all-in-one package to help launch their new product, handle their financial planning, budgeting, payroll, financial systems, in addition to creating the marketing campaign and collaborating with their team on how to expand their brand/social media presence”. Her blog tells the story of her success!

It’s ‘accrual’ world out there and it’s time to tackle the cloud together. Thanks for the tips Jonathan and Danetha!