Accounting and Bookkeeping Articles

The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.—Jay Abraham

No matter how good you are at accounting, you still have to focus some of your energy on marketing; if you don’t do any marketing, you’ll have no one to do any accounting for. So what to you do? You create a marketing plan to go along with your business plan.

Oh boy, you’re thinking, the Business Plan was enough to overwhelm me. But because you’re writing the marketing plan in conjunction with your business plan, you’ve already done some of the necessary work for this portion. In fact, determining your marketing strategy will probably require the most effort. But let’s review the information from your business plan that will help you with the marketing portion of your plan:

• Description of products/services
• Market analysis
• 3 to 5-year financial plan (which should have allowed for a marketing budget)

In your business plan, you’ve already connected your services to a target market, analyzed your competition and their marketing strategies, and defined a marketing budget. Here are the first two elements of an effective marketing plan:

Marketing Goals and Objectives
First you need to determine what you hope to accomplish through your marketing efforts. It’s important to be as specific as possible because once you state your goals you can use them later as a measure of success. And that’s a key concern in writing your goals and objectives: are they measurable, meaning, can you determine later whether or not you’ve achieved them? For example, saying you want to be more successful is not necessarily something you can measure later on. But saying you want 10 new clients by the end of the year is measurable. And be realistic. Setting unrealistic goals will only discourage you as you move forward. This may require you to do more research; what are some realistic expectations for growth in a successful tax preparation practice?

Pricing of Products/Services
This will also require a little research. What are your competitors charging for similar products and services? Again, be specific. If offering various services (accounting, payroll, tax preparation, etc.) create a pricing sheet that lists each product and service and how you plan to charge for it. With this in place you can better project future sales and possibly better estimate how many clients you need to become self-sufficient and more importantly, profitable.

UAC Can Help You Develop a Marketing Plan
Universal Accounting Center understands that marketing may not one of your strengths and has designed a DVD intended to help those of us who are marketing-challenged. For just $4.95 you can learn effective marketing strategies for your tax practice. You’re less than $5.00 away from learning which marketing strategies to include in your marketing plan. Order today!

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