Are You Ready for the Next Generation of Marketing Your Firm?

An Overview of Inbound Marketing

A guest post from Alan Vitberg, Owner of VitbergLLC, a marketing agency specializing in accounting and consulting firm marketing.

Today, most accounting and consulting firms spend their marketing budget on outbound marketing to reach prospects. Outbound marketing, also known as traditional marketing, targets a broad audience using print ads, trade shows, telemarketing/cold calls, direct mail/e-mail, etc. Firms push their messages outward in the hopes that it will trigger a response in the form of a contact

But marketing and business development at CPA firms is on the edge a transformation taking the form of a movement away from spending on traditional marketing activities towards inbound marketing and using the internet as the centerpiece of the firm’s marketing program.

Inbound marketing is a new approach to business development. It’s based upon moving away from pushing messages to pulling suspects and prospects to your marketing messages, and involves implanting strategies and tactics for:

“Getting found first” by potential customers who are searching on-line for solutions to their accounting, tax, audit or business management needs or problems,
Converting those who have found the firm into a new engagement,
Transforming traditional outbound activities for more inbound traffic, and
Continually monitoring and measuring results to refine tactics in order to deliver more ROI.

At its core, rather than interrupting prospects and clients to get their attention with emails, cold calls, snail mail and the like, inbound marketing relies on the principle that prospects will find and come to your accounting firm’s website if you have the right mix of online presence, thought leadership, infrastructure, tools and discipline in place.

Inbound marketing isn’t just a passing marketing fad. It has the potential to deliver a huge upside ROI, and has proven to be much more effective in delivering leads at a lower cost than traditional marketing methods.

If you’re searching online, then so too are your prospects, clients and competitors. Those firms that can win the game of inbound marketing are going to be the firms that will earn more brand awareness, generate more leads and new business, and see a greater ROI on their investment in marketing.

For more information on inbound marketing, visit the VitbergLLC website, or call Alan Vitberg at (585) 425-2552