Marketing’s Role in Growing Revenues and Attracting Talent

IGA Marketing • October 22, 2019

Have your revenues been flat or growing at single digit percentages? Are you having difficulty attracting good talent?

If you are experiencing one or both of these symptoms, you might find the cure in marketing.

Technology is affecting the way you do business and how your customers do business. People locate and shop for services from their mobile phones. Is your website mobile optimized? People make decisions about a business or a prospective employer from what they see online. They form impressions from a website and the ratings they read online. How does your business look online?

Job Candidates and Prospects Shop You Online

According to a Glassdoor U.S. Site Survey, 70 percent of job candidates read reviews before making career decisions. For business services, a report by market research firm Forrester states that 68% of prospective business clients conduct their own research online before engaging with a company or its sales representative. How does your firm look to a prospective employee or client?

Clients used to come in through referrals from business relationships you cultivated over the years from all the networking events you attended. To some extent, that still works, but it isn’t enough to build or sustain your future revenues. Your online presence is absolutely critical for your business’s growth. It is the key to attracting talent, prospecting for clients, networking with referral sources, and engaging with current clients and employees. Your website is only one part of your online presence.

Improve Your Online Presence

How do you improve your online presence? Where do you start? Is your website more important than your visibility on social media sites? Which sites are the best for your business? Are they different? What is the best online advertising strategy? If these are your questions, it is time to seek out a marketing specialist for the answers.

Marketers operate in a world of online communication, social media, creative storytelling, and customer experience. They excel at organizing and keeping a project with lots of team members and moving parts on track – like building a new website or new logo or managing and measuring marketing campaigns.

Stay Top of Mind

Do you leave marketing activities to your admin coordinator? They are often buried under so much of the behind-the-scenes mechanics of customer service, billing, and running the office, that marketing activities on their plate fall down and off the list of priorities. If you look at LinkedIn, you can see this reflected in sporadic postings. Social media is meant to be an ongoing “conversation.” After all, out of sight is out of mind. Marketing keeps your business top of mind.

Contemplate the future of your business, the talent you want to attract, and the revenues you need to generate. Marketing should factor prominently into your plans. Bring in a marketing specialist to evaluate and build and implement a strategy customized to your needs. Then, stay in your lane and do what you do best, and let your marketer work a little magic.

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CPA Lessons From the Gridiron: Staying in Alignment When the Game is on the Line

By Dan McMahon, CPA, CM&AA • December 16, 2024

With the college football playoffs set and the NFL season coming down the home stretch, there have been countless close games going down to the final seconds. The difference between winning and losing often has more to do with a team’s culture and preparation than it does with their pure talent. In the same way, most accounting firms have smart, conscientious, talented people at all levels of the organization. The difference between high performing firms and mediocre firms is that the high performers have the ability to stay in alignment and hold their composure when the pressure is on. While it’s easy to put your organization’s core values on the wall of your lobby or locker room, you don’t find out who has really bought into those values until the you-know-what hits the fan. Like elite sports teams and military units, high-performing firms stay together and stick to the game plan when faced with a big client loss, departure of a key employee, or busy season fire drills. Under the same circumstances, lesser firms throw in the towel, point fingers, and watch staff head for the exits. Sound familiar? Sun Tsu, the legendary general and philosopher of ancient times said, “Every battle is won before it’s ever fought.” In the heat of battle, I’ve found, you must think like a triage unit in combat. Casualties are all around you and coming in fast; you must treat the most serious life-threatening injuries before the ones that are merely painful – no matter how anguished the victim. In the heat of battle, you’re not going to get perfection. You must do the best you can with the people, resources and time you have to work with. As a leadership coach, I’ve noticed that firms with a strong culture and governance model are particularly well equipped to handle “battlefield” conditions. They tend to have four characteristics in common:

EVENT: How to build a sustainable and transferable firm for the next generation

By Daniel McMahon • November 29, 2024

December 4 2024 | 10 am PST / 1 pm EST

Merger Guidance for CPA Firms: Start Early, Plan Strategically for Long-Term Success

July 10, 2024

Dan McMahon contributed to the following article in Illinois CPA Society's Insight Magazine summer issue on the topic CPA firm M&A.

Listening With Leaders - A Conversation with Daniel McMahon on Decision-Making

June 24, 2024

Check out Dan McMahon who recently appeared as a guest on Doug Noll’s Listening with Leaders podcast. Dan and Doug discuss the importance of listening as a leader, the art of improvisational theater performing, and why management teams must follow a parliamentary procedure for decision making.