4-Step Marketing Campaign for Accounting Firms to Win Municipality Clients

Oh, and, don’t forget lease agreement regulatory changes.

Be the Elixir

You know that county, town, village, or city levels of government and public service need strong financial management and sturdy financial controls. They must also meet stringent compliance regulations, find ways to minimize risk, and be fiscally accountable.

That’s where you come in with your skills, services, and team. But how?

Your Marketing Plan

Step 1

Begin by identifying the pain points your firm can help them overcome now, and those you can help with in the future. Then create a project plan that defines release dates for services you can offer throughout each lead’s life cycle. Too much too soon may be overwhelming and too costly a proposition. So, take it slow.

For example, if a lead reads your website content and downloads an ebook or attends a webinar about balancing the budget, you’ll reach out to them about that service. Once they become a client and you’ve had a chance to see “under the hood” of the organization, you may be able to propose additional add-on services.

Step 2

Create pain-point-solution content that can be posted on your website, shared in social media, emailed to prospects, announced on a postcard, designed as a website download, and/or made into a video or podcast.

Step 3

Conduct research to identify the people and or organizations to pitch your content, e.g., free, lunch-and-learn webinars, evening networking events, podcast series, or video channel subscriptions.

One of the easiest ways to conduct research is with social media.

On LinkedIn, you could:

• Send a private message announcing an event or new content to 100 of your first-degree connections per day;
• Use the advanced search filters to identify connections and send them a personalized request message; and
• Leverage InMail to message second-degree connections.

On Twitter, you could create a Twitter list that includes profile handles of the towns where you want to focus. Then you can send a Tweet to that list several times a month. To do that, you’d create a list on your company’s Twitter account with a name that doesn’t have any spaces, such as Municipality_Prospects. When you have content to share, simply start the Tweet with this format @FirmTwitterHandle/Municipality_Prospects [enter your tweet].

Remember to use a combination of appropriate hashtags to help draw in your leads, such as #CityClerk, #PublicService, #CityHall, #TownClerk, #CountyClerk, etc.

For example, @FirmTwitterHandle/Municipality_Prospects Want to ease the burden of document retention? Here are 3 tips you can use today! Get the list. #[TownName] #LocalGov #CityClerk

With Facebook and Instagram, you can have a little more fun and post photos of your business history, staff’s community activities, around-town selfies, and volunteer efforts. Hashtags are also helpful on these platforms. Use up to three on Facebook and a maximum of 10 on Instagram. More than 10 on Instagram could cause your profile to be shadow banned, which means your posts would be suppressed.

Step 4

Develop a print campaign supporting your online content efforts. Postcards with eye-catching graphics are easy to read, provide information immediately, and may be used as a lead generation tool.

Identify one call to action per print campaign, for example, download something, register for an event, view a video, listen to a podcast, or engage on social media.

Also, include a trackable URL for anything that points to your website. Google and Raventools both have easy-to-use URL builders for this purpose. If you create a bit.ly account, you can also shorten and make memorable links for each campaign.

Your goals with these URLs are to create:

• Easy-to-enter links,
• Memorable campaign names for use in links, and
• Trackability.

Now that you have this four-step plan, what will be the first topic you address?