The Marketing Bullet
Got 10 minutes? That’s all it takes to sharpen your practice! In this episode of the Bissett Bullet podcast, Martin Bissett delivers two actionable insights to help you grow your firm without the overwhelm.
Confused by marketing? You're not alone.
What is it? Do you need it? Is it expensive? Where do you even start? In this episode of The Bissett Bullet, we strip away the noise and give you a straightforward, no-fluff approach to marketing for your firm.
Part 1: What Marketing Really Is
Marketing isn’t just brand awareness or quirky social media videos—it’s about putting quality appointments in your diary. If your firm wants better clients and more control over growth, you can’t just rely on referrals. But you also don’t need to spend a penny until you know what you’re doing. That’s where strategy comes in.
Part 2: The Seven Steps to a Simple Strategy
I walk you through a proven seven-step process for building a basic, effective marketing strategy. From clarifying your message and audience to identifying how clients find you—and how you find them—we cover the essentials. There is no jargon, no overthinking, just a practical plan you can actually implement.
Want to grow your firm without being overwhelmed? Get daily, bite-sized, actionable advice that is easy to implement and budget-friendly. This is The Bissett Bullet with Martin Bissett.
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Ready to grow your firm with practical, no-nonsense advice? The Bissett Bullet podcast gives you bite-sized insights you can implement today.
Visit www.bissettbullets.com for more resources.
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4impactdata is an AI-powered platform that helps firms move beyond historical reporting by delivering clear, actionable next steps for your advisory team so that you can provide more value to clients without the guesswork of dashboards. To book a conversation or demo, or to join the 10X Advisory Cohort with resources from Martin, along with 10% off your first year’s subscription, visit 4impactdata.com
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ProNation is a global community for accountants and bookkeepers that gives you peer-to-peer support, expert guidance, and proven strategies to run a more profitable, efficient, and impactful firm. Led by Will Farnell, Lucy Cohen, and Martin Bissett, it helps practices of all sizes grow with confidence and better serve their clients.
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In association with CPA Trendlines
Transcript
What is marketing?
Speaker A:Should I do it?
Speaker A:What type of marketing should I do?
Speaker A:Is it expensive?
Speaker A:What's a marketing strategy?
Speaker A:What's marketing tactics?
Speaker A:Are the two different.
Speaker A:Where do I start?
Speaker A:I wasn't trained in this.
Speaker A:I was trained in accountancy, but I was supposed to be marketing.
Speaker A:I'm confused.
Speaker A:Don't worry, you're not alone.
Speaker A:Let's fix all of that for you and clarify it all for you in this week's Bissett Bullet.
Speaker A:As you know, as we did in the intro, there are a lot of question marks that often scare firms into, you know, being shy of marketing.
Speaker A:We're not familiar with it, we don't know how it works.
Speaker A:We think that social media marketing is all there needs to be.
Speaker A:We just put ourselves on a video looking out, making our firm look crazy cool to work for.
Speaker A:Isn't it wonderful to be here?
Speaker A:Look how crazy and madcap we all are.
Speaker A:Yeah, and the world isn't fooled, especially your grade A clients who want serious, business focused people.
Speaker A:So what do we do about this?
Speaker A:Well, first of all, don't spend any money.
Speaker A:First, don't spend any money at all.
Speaker A:Hang fire.
Speaker A:That's the first thing we do.
Speaker A:Let's work out what we actually need.
Speaker A:Because the purpose of marketing is to put appointments in your schedule, your calendar, your diary, whatever you call it, with people prepared to consider paying for your services.
Speaker A:And when you hear anybody say it's for brand awareness and profile raising, that's people who can't put appointments in your diary.
Speaker A:So it does those jobs.
Speaker A:But that's not the purpose of it.
Speaker A:Marketing is done to create an end result which is to give you money.
Speaker A:Think about it.
Speaker A:If it wasn't to give you end money, what would be the point?
Speaker A:Why would you do it?
Speaker A:So that's why we're doing it.
Speaker A:First of all.
Speaker A:Now we have to think about who do we want to attract?
Speaker A:Who is it that is right for us?
Speaker A:Do we want any old work?
Speaker A:Do we want specific sector work?
Speaker A:What is it we're trying to say?
Speaker A:How do we go about it?
Speaker A:How do we reach the audience?
Speaker A:How's the audience find us?
Speaker A:All of these questions come up and firms typically, when trying to tackle that, will do one of two things.
Speaker A:Go.
Speaker A:We don't understand it, it's too difficult, forget it.
Speaker A:And rely on referrals.
Speaker A:Which is fine because referrals will always be great.
Speaker A:They'll have a high conversion ratio.
Speaker A:You won't have to work very hard to convert them.
Speaker A:But you take what you're given and you can't Forecast it.
Speaker A:Okay, so that's one thing.
Speaker A:But they'll either do that, forget about it.
Speaker A:We don't understand marketing.
Speaker A:Leave it alone.
Speaker A:Somebody else will take care of it in the future, I'm sure.
Speaker A:Or they hire a marketing manager.
Speaker A:Now here's where the real pitfall exists.
Speaker A:When a firm hires a marketing manager, in many cases, not all cases, they don't understand marketing themselves.
Speaker A:The firm, that is.
Speaker A:So they're hiring someone to do a thing that the firm, the hiring party, doesn't understand.
Speaker A:So how do we know if the person's any good?
Speaker A:How are we measuring them?
Speaker A:How do we know if what they're telling us and what they're recommending to us is correct?
Speaker A:And so on.
Speaker A:You see the issue.
Speaker A:And I remember the lowest point in this when I saw on LinkedIn many years ago, I saw somebody put a post up and they said, hey, great news everybody.
Speaker A:I just got the job as marketing manager at Name of Firm.
Speaker A:Now what?
Speaker A:Any recommendations or tips?
Speaker A:And you go, my goodness, you're the marketing manager and you're asking for help in the job that you just got for the thing you're supposed to be able to do.
Speaker A:That's not a good start.
Speaker A:So on that basis, what there needs to be, as with all of these bullet solutions, is a simplified starting point.
Speaker A:Nice and easy.
Speaker A:And I'm going to give you seven steps.
Speaker A:Yeah, it's that old magic number of seven.
Speaker A:Once again, seven steps of what I need you to do to get your marketing strategy in place.
Speaker A:Marketing tactics we'll talk about in another episode.
Speaker A:So let's look at the seven steps you need.
Speaker A:Your firm needs, your team needs to get a marketing strategy or plan in place.
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Speaker A:Okay, are you ready for your seven steps?
Speaker A:We're going to go quite quickly on these, so get ready.
Speaker A:Here they are.
Speaker A:Step one.
Speaker A:The first and most difficult step is to be clear about what your message is.
Speaker A:If your message is, we're an accounting firm like everybody else, come to us, you're not going to get a lot of interest if it is we are specifically the right fit for you because or we're specifically expert in this area because then you'll have more luck.
Speaker A:Check out the Branding Bullet episode for a true story as to how a firm arrived at their unique message that they wanted to tell the audience.
Speaker A:Number two is the audience.
Speaker A:Who is the audience?
Speaker A:Are you talking to all businesses with money?
Speaker A:Are you talking to a specific size of business, A specific type of business, a specific geographical location of business?
Speaker A:You need to get your client avatar clear as to who it is you want so that your data, the people you market to, are going to be the right fit for you when they respond to your messaging.
Speaker A:Okay, Number three is that you need three ways in which you can reach that audience that you've selected.
Speaker A:And that could be any three ways.
Speaker A:It's up to you to choose which ones they are.
Speaker A:I'm not saying that these three are better than those three.
Speaker A:It's for you to decide.
Speaker A:And you test them and you give them, as you'll see in the later step, a way of measuring them.
Speaker A:And then you decide whether those three should stay those three or whether something else should be tried.
Speaker A:So three ways in which you can reach the audience.
Speaker A:Then in step four, you need three ways in which the audience can reach you.
Speaker A:So what happens when you're asleep?
Speaker A:What happens when you're out of the office?
Speaker A:What happens when the firm isn't doing any marketing?
Speaker A:How do potential clients and potential grade A and B clients at that, how do they find you when you're not looking for them?
Speaker A:There needs to be three ways in which you can be found.
Speaker A:And again, in a further episode, we'll look into exactly what those might be.
Speaker A:In step five, once you've decided your message, your audience, the three ways to find people, and the three ways to be found you need to know the tools that you're going to need to make that happen.
Speaker A:Is that people, is that human resource that you need?
Speaker A:Is that software that you need?
Speaker A:Is that data that you need?
Speaker A:What is it you need?
Speaker A:You need to put a shopping list together in step five of what it is you need to make those three things happen in terms of reaching people and three things and we have been found possible.
Speaker A:Okay, so the message to the audience via those two different types of ways is what the shopping list is for.
Speaker A:How do we get those bits in place?
Speaker A:What do we need to get those bits in place?
Speaker A:Okay, that's step five.
Speaker A:In step six, you need your metrics.
Speaker A:So how do we know this marketing's working if we're spending X on on marketing, even if that ex is just to hire somebody and not actually to buy anything or to pay a marketer, you know, we need to know what equals a good result.
Speaker A:So one new client inquiry, that's a grade A or grade B style, that might be good enough for you.
Speaker A:You might need 20, I don't know.
Speaker A:That's up to you.
Speaker A:That's personal to you and your firm.
Speaker A:But you need to know what is success in marketing for you and that's what you measure it against.
Speaker A:And that's how you know if you're three ways to find the audience are working and your three ways to found are working because you measure them against what you decided success is.
Speaker A:And the seventh step, almost as difficult as the first step, which we just call jdi, Just do it.
Speaker A:We could call it jfdi, Just flipping do it.
Speaker A:But you get the general idea.
Speaker A:Where marketing falls down in professional practice is always in the implementation, you know, because there's always another client deadline, client urgent calls, something else to push the marketing down the priority list.
Speaker A:And hey, the referrals are still coming in, so it's not critical, is it?
Speaker A:Okay, but look at the UK top hundred.
Speaker A:Look at the US top 200.
Speaker A:Look at the firms that are bigger than yours in your area.
Speaker A:Did they get there by chance or did they get there by design?
Speaker A:And if they got there by design, was marketing a large part of it?
Speaker A:And so if you are growth, if you're ambitious, if you're that way out, if that's what you're trying to do, then you might want to take lessons from the people who've already done it and are bigger than you.
Speaker A:Okay, don't get blase about marketing.
Speaker A:It's very easy to do when the referral work comes in and all of a sudden when the referral work stops coming in, you go, let's turn the tap on.
Speaker A:Marketing, marketing, marketing.
Speaker A:Yeah, bad idea.
Speaker A:Consistent approach is what we're looking for.
Speaker A:Okay, so there's your seven steps.
Speaker A:Here we go.
Speaker A:One more time.
Speaker A:What you're trying to tell the audience who the audience actually is, the three ways to find that audience, the three ways for that audience to find you, the shopping list of tools or people that you need to make it happen in reality, the metrics to decide whether or not it's a success for you and then making it happen, scheduling time, making a priority, just being self disciplined enough to actually execute.
Speaker A:Those are your seven steps to a simplistic and very proven marketing strategy.
Speaker A:Pretty much all my clients use that approach because I told them to.
Speaker A:So with thanks to you for watching this episode.
Speaker A:With thanks to both free agents and four impact data for making it possible, I will see you on the next episode of the Basic Bullet.
Speaker A:Bye For.
