How are you currently advertising your business? Are you actively going to market to find new clients?
If that answer is no, let me give you a few reasons why you might want to give it a try to see how you can generate more clients.
In any business I believe there needs to be a level of advertising - even if you think you are too small, you are not. There are a large number of ways you can advertise today for a very small cost so I wanted to give some insight on different ways to advertise in very simple terms.
The way I look at advertising is “getting my business seen without me speaking”, well initially anyway, but people are often confused by spending money on advertising. See when you see $300 spent on advertising but there have been no new clients, it doesn't mean that you have wasted $300… it means to get a new client into your business today, it’s going to cost more than that.
Let me show you an example:
ABC accounting have started to use Ad Words. They are spending $500 per month and getting leads through but not converting as many as they would like. So far they have only converted 2 per month into paying customers. This to them seems like a bit of a failure….
However, when you break down the costs it can look different. Each of those clients generates upwards of $300 for a tax return.
So if we take the two clients per month being $600 vs the cost of advertising being $500, we have a net increase of $100 dollars. So this is plain and simple, we have returned more than what we have spent. But there is more. The cost to get that client was a flat $250 per client with no staff costs, office costs or sales person to deal with. It was paid and done and now they are a client. In addition to this, you now have a client that will most likely come back, so if your average client tenure is 10 years (likely for a good accountant) that client is actually worth $3000 and you only paid $250 for them.
So when thinking about advertising, it takes time and yes it does cost money but it may not cost as much as you think and the point here is to show you that when done right can give great return.
So just to recap:
Don’t be afraid to try out some advertising, it is cheap to get started and there are plenty of professionals out there who can do it in a much bigger way.
Work out the numbers, they make more sense when you write them down and look at them.
Think smart; if you are B2B focus on areas where business owners are on, like
LinkedIn.
If you are a consumer business then focus more on the impulse side such as Instagram.
Change it up, there are many different options for advertising: Online, radio, newspaper, letter drops etc.
Lastly, make sure you have put your business up on all the free things you can, if you haven’t setup Google my business, this is a good start.
Last but not least, don't sit there in obscurity wondering where your next clients are coming from. You need to get you name out there so that people know who you are and the great products or services you offer.
There is no silver bullet to generating leads, but if you don't test out different things than you will never know if it works, and you may miss out on some great clients.
NS