Accounting Practice Marketing- Your Promotions Can Get Noticed - Website Promotion

Marketing your accounting company isn't easy. It's difficult to stand out from the crowd. We are exposed to an average of 4000 advertisements a day. You're quite likely telling yourself that number feels wrong. As a rule we have impressively advanced filters that tune the majority of these out. From a promoter's standpoint, your job is to find a way to bypass these filters so they stick in the mind of your target.

Fortunately there are a few industry secrets that can help your ad distinguish itself. Unfortunately these secrets are poorly kept among advertisers, so let me share them with you. Without this information your accounting firm will find itself at an enormous disadvantage when competing with them.

The first thing we need to look at is your marketing mindset. Nobody has to watch your ads. You can't just demand your audience's attention, you need to actually earn it. We've all seen the cheap tricks advertisers use to try to force us to pay attention. TV ads that turn up their color saturation or late night ads that turn the volume up to "11". Do these tricks work on you? Of course not. Even audiences packed into a dark movie theater can usually find something better to do than stare at an ad on the screen.

As an accounting firm you already have the first rule of marketing pretty much covered. You need to offer your audience a sincerely useful product.

From there you can go several routes:

Entertain

Commercials such as the recent string of Old Spice ads have gained popularity because they entertain their audience. The power of genuinely funny or dramatic content can go a long way.

You can use these tricks to help your accounting practice stand out from your competitors. Take some time and go to You Tube. Check out some viral videos. Now look at your advertisement. Now look at those videos. And now back at your ad. It may not have the earning power of those videos, but it can with a sprinkle of its spice.

What Inspires Also Sells

This ones trickier. In order to inspire you need to connect with your audience on an emotional level. Think back to the spots Kleenex ran a few years back called "Let It Out". They connected with the viewers on an emotional level.

To connect emotionally, consider using customer testimonials and messages directly from the CEO.

Educate

Your commercial can also take on the role of educator. Some very successful websites have been built entirely on this principle. Websites like eHow and KnowHow-Now generate tons of revenue just by offering useful "How To" articles.

For example, take the commercials for Progressive Auto insurance, which combine humor and fact.

Rage Against The Machine

I don't generally reccomend this strategy for an accounting firm, but no article on these techniques would be complete without it. It's a powerful secret, but it needs to be used very carefully or it could backfire on you.

Outrage should not be undervalued. Just understand that if the fire gets out of control, and it very likely will even if you know exactly what you're doing, you'll find that when you're running an accounting practice there actually is such a thing as "negative publicity".

There is a safer way to exploit conflict and anger, however, and while the message won't spread as fast it will also be far more constructive.

Sometimes your competitors will create an environment where anger can be your best friend. Look for the signs. When your competitors start making their customers angry it's pretty safe to go for the throat.

A perfect example of this are the famous "apple and PC ads". You remember, a good looking and clever young "apple" character schmoozes with a dorky older "PC"? Those drew on the failures of Windows Vista to build a base for Apple's new line of Macs.

More recently, Microsoft has hit back by declaring "I'm a PC" proudly in its own commercials, so be careful with this. You might want to think twice about how much you appreciate your view before you start casting stones.

Now, those are the fundamentals. You should be able to employ these principles to your ads and create good quality content that will be able to bypass your audience's advertising filters. Keep it interesting. Keep your campaign original and exciting.

iAutoblog the premier autoblogger software