Are Accounting Officers Failing in the Marketing Activities?

According to a research carried out by Wolters Kluwer the technology provider, it was established that 29.9 % of the accountancy firms have got devoted staff for the areas of business development and marketing. It is only 31.2 % who outsource the responsibility of promotion.

Even if the 2014 survey of Effective marketing for Accountants realized increased preference of online marketing that entails social media marketing, the face to face interactions and business client referrals remain to be the most reliable. In spite of this, 24.8% ( a quarter) of these respondents have got no list of potential clients.

The big percentage of the respondents additionally did not monitor their marketing effectiveness. Slightly below half (47.7%) made a conversion rate of leads for new businesses. When asked if they monitored the return on the market investment, this dropped to a further 37 %. Even when most organizations still limit their marketing ways to conducting email campaigns and such events like local business briefings, above 70 % of them identified websites as very useful in client attraction. Even then, 50 % make use of social networks like LinkedIn. Advanced online activities as ‘pay-per-click’ webinars and ads have been incorporated by a small number (15%) in their strategies.

Simon Crompton who is the UK accounting and tax executive director and Wolters Kluwer said that organizations need to take up more clients, sell many services or even charge higher for the prevailing services in order to grow the fee income. That practice which needs to ‘grow organically’ needs to be very proactive. This is because direct mails, events, mails, the social media and websites are in most cases more useful as opposed to the professional introductions and outside referrals. This therefore means that they are in most cases likely to gain from software in order to assist them in managing and measuring their unrelenting efforts.

The research conducted by Wolters Kluwer earlier in the year showed that 77 % of accountants are now using social media in their marketing activities with a greater percentage being women (85%) than men (72%).