Too many accounting firms are struggling with marketing these days and should readjust their marketing plan accordingly. The three main goals of a marketing plan should be to:

• Enhance current client experiences
• Nurture connections with centers of influence in the firms’ community
• Build awareness with prospects for the firms that are being actively pursued

There are specific measures to be looking for when evaluating your firm’s marketing plan. Whatever metrics you decide to look at, they should be directly related to the firm’s marketing strategy. These metrics include:

• New clients
• Retained clients
• Expanding service to existing clients
• Inbound referrals
• Gross revenue
• Net profit

After evaluating the specific metrics of interest for your marketing plan, you can then look at Return on Investment (ROI). In order to do this, you should track your firm’s costs and the revenue that has been generated from your marketing efforts to assess the ROI of your marketing plan. After reviewing your 2020 marketing plan and the ROI is in a range that you consider unacceptable, a marketing audit could help steer your firm in the right direction of growth. 

A marketing audit is a way to assess your firm compared to other firms within your niche market. Its main purpose is to identify potential gaps in a marketing strategy. A proper marketing audit will include a current industry review, geographic market opportunity analysis, a competitive environment overview, social media content review, firm performance benchmarks, and a long-term marketing plan recommendation.  It can be done internally or with external consultation in order to address questions such as:

• Are you allocating marketing funds appropriately?
• Is your firm missing out on important opportunities within its niche?
• Does the team of the firm know how to capitalize on marketing efforts?

A future marketing strategy can be effectively planned after assessing the results from the marketing audit. From this, you’ll be able to determine what’s working and what’s not with the marketing strategy and effectively planned.