I have never ‘swiped’ someone’s profile picture as online dating didn’t exist when I met my wife. The whole concept of swiping left or right is quite alien to me. I was curious though so asked a friend to show me how this ‘swipe left’ and ‘swipe right’ business works. It quickly became
One of the accountants I spoke with recently has been struggling for over three years to build their own practice. Although they had won a fair few clients in year one, some have since moved on. The accountant feels their service is good enough and that their fees were not excessive. They
When I ask accountants what they would like to be different in their practice, one theme is more common than any others. They frequently express the desire to have better quality clients, to increase their average fees and to be doing more interesting work. One sole practitioner accountant expressed this quite succinctly.
It seems I've not updated my generic advice on this blog about accountants' websites for ten years. This is because I routinely say pretty much the same things to almost every accountant I talk with. And few of my views have changed. If anything I was ahead of my time and others
A recent conversation with an accountant I've not worked with before started as follows: Accountant: Do I need to promote my firm better? Mark: Probably, but it depends on what you want to achieve. Accountant: What do you mean? Mark: Marketing and promotional activities work best for accountants when you have first identified clear objectives. Otherwise you're likely
One of my sole practitioner mentoring clients asked me this recently. I thought it would be helpful to share my advice here as the last time I did so was in 2007! Back then it was quite rare for accountants to include specific reference to their fee rates on their websites. Now it is much
I have lost track of the number of accountants who tell me that they don't get good quality leads from their website. They generally either say that their website is a waste of space or that the people who come via their website are just looking for a low price. This then leads the same
Few of us have such a clever brand that we can rely on this or even a logo to secure business. A brand takes time to establish. A logo may attract interest. But ultimately it is you who will need to engage prospects and win the business for your accountancy practice. Your photo, personality and
I heard Graham Jones speak at a business event recently. Graham is an internet psychologist and frequently shares unexpected but valid insights about how how people use the web. On this occasion he was talking about websites and he explained, with good examples, why it can be a mistake if your website stands out too
Whether you spent a lot or a little on your website I'm sure you hope that it will generate business for you and provide a return on your investment. How might that work in real life I wonder? Actually we know how it's supposed to work, don't we? Someone searches online for an accountant locally
If you are a regular reader you will know I rarely include guest posts on my blog. In this tenth anniversary year though I have decided to stop being so precious. As long as the content is both directly relevant and useful to my audience and I agree with the advice and tips, why not?
One of the thousands of accountants with whom I am connected on Linkedin recently posted a link asking what did people think about his firm's new website. I replied privately but thought I would share my feedback as it may be helpful to others. I have no desire to embarrass the accountant in question so
At the ICAEW's 'Growing your practice' conference yesterday, speaker after speaker shared similar ideas - allbeit from very different perspectives, with different emphasis and in different contexts. I was first up and talked about the 7 step framework you need to follow to STAND OUT from the competition. There are a host of detailed factors
What follows is controversial as it challenges the conventional wisdom shared by many website designers and content marketers. I have long felt that a great deal of the generic advice you hear and see all over the web is misleading. I have explained before that: Only one website metric really matters to accountants. And that is, for
I was shocked to read about "Accountants Caught Lying To Clients In Desperate Quest For Authority" on the website of marketing expert Ian Brodie. He suggests that more than a dozen accountants seem to be falsely claiming to be co-authors of a book titled: “Why Businesses Stop Growing And What You Can Do About It”. You
I was recently asked by an accountant whether it matters that his firm has a boring website and boring branding? The individual in question does not come across as boring themselves. In typical accountancy fashion, I responded: 'It depends...'. I believe that firms that are keen to attract business from people who search online
Having had a good look at my website stats for 2012 I rather wish I had been recording similar data for each of the last 6 years. Better late than never though. Blog posts each year This is the 70th post I have added to the blog in 2012. That is more than I posted
There are plenty of online tools that will help you measure various website metrics and analytics - such as visitor numbers, how long they stay, which pages they look at and so on. None of them, however, measure the most important metric so it is easy to forget that there's only one that really matters.
I saw an online promo recently suggesting that all accountants should be blogging. How objective is this idea and does it really make sense? Given that I'm still an enthusiastic blogger you might expect me to also advocate blogging by accountants. But I don't and it's not just because of my experience with the
In a separate post I have listed the existing and about-to-be-launched online directory sites for accountants in the UK. They are all intended to appeal to people using the internet to search for a new accountant. The value of paying to be included in any such directory site seems to depend on at least six
I've been asked why I have a number of different blogs and websites. It's not something I would encourage many people to do so perhaps it's worth explaining my thinking. I accept it could be flawed, but bear with me. Firstly let me stress that in all of my writings for professional advisers (eg: on
I love a blog post written by Paul Simister on his 'Differentiate your business' blog. He explains that Yellow Pages Bingo is a game for checking that your marketing hasn’t fallen into the trap of being too similar to your competitors. And he then reveals the results of playing the game with accountants in central
Years ago, it was quite common for people to use a hard copy Yellow Pages directory to find an accountant. This concept has all but died out now. It's also less common to hear that anyone has approached an accountant because they remembered they saw an ad in the local paper (or anywhere else). Far
Last month the Independent Association of Accountants Information Technology Consultants (IAAITC) announced the results of its survey on the effective use of the Internet by UK accountancy firms. The two specific issues considered by the survey were the effective promotion of firms' websites and their use of email for communicating with clients. The key word
I regularly find myself sharing my views on this topic so I thought it would be helpful to include in one place all of my previous posts on related issues: Websites for professional firms (part one) - what messages does your site need to communicate? Websites for professional firms (part two) - who are the
