Guest blog by Marianne Smith, Doo Marketing
The number one rule before spending time or money on marketing is – understand your prospect Pains and Gains
If the headline sentence on your website includes how long you’ve been in business, where your office is based or how big your team is, you’ve lost me. If you are ‘friendly and reliable’ that’s a given. Not only have you lost me but also a few hundred others searching for a new accountant when they’re fed up with what they’ve got.
According to Contentsquare’s 2021 Digital Experience Benchmark report, 54 seconds is the average time spent on a website.
Now imagine the time it takes to read your opening statement, the one that dominates your home page. If it doesn’t grab potential new clients in that first second, they’ve moved on with their search.
They’re not just looking for an accountant, they are looking for the accountant. One they can instantly relate to. One that understands what their Pains are right now, how you fix them with your offer, and the Gains they get from working with you:
Understand your prospects’ Pains
Such as, what they struggle with (time); what their fears are (losing money); what makes them stressed (trying to do it themselves). Just a snapshot of what makes them miserable.
How your offer fixes their Pains
The service you provide to fix their Pain ….and what happens after it’s been fixed.
The Gains they get from working with you
Such as, how they feel (relieved); what they get (more money); what they achieve (time back to do the things they’d rather do).
Where accountants go wrong
As highlighted, don’t waste the precious time you’ve spent in understanding your prospects’ Pains by not highlighting the Gains they get from working with you. Not just on website copy but on every piece of marketing you present. Don’t blend in with other accountants saying the same thing – big office, big team, big list of services.
Where accountants get it right
When you get to grips with your client’s needs, wants and desires. When the most important Gain is in your strapline, when it’s featured throughout your copy, when it’s presented in presentations, in networking and in reception as your prospect walks in to meet you. What you give them for each individual offer or service you provide. Each one has its own Pain related symptoms and Gain achieving results.
Where to start with prospect pains and gains
Two ways. With your team and with your clients. Many businesses create marketing campaigns to impress prospects but where it should start is within.
Broadly, in simple steps such as:
- * Arrange a half day workshop to pull the team together
- * Let them know in advance what to bring to the table
- * List every service you provide
- * List the Pains relating to where they (your clients) are prior to working with you
- * List the Gains they get after
- * Prioritise the words to find the sentences you want to string into messages
- * Highlight the killer message to turn into a potential strapline
- * Do a marketing audit and a template review and list what needs changing in your copy
Now you can bring in a marketer to help finalise the strapline and main messages. Each message created by the team by listening and presenting the right offer to help your clients. This will open up many more opportunities for more clients just like them.
Finally, it’s not about what the company offers as a whole, it’s what each service provides that fixes Pains and gets people talking about the Gains to others.
Marianne’s webinar on 6 steps to winning and keeping more clients is available to watch on The Accountants KnowHow Club. Join for just £1 to access hundreds of training videos and resources, specifically for accountants who want to attract more of the right kind of clients, get paid the fees they deserve and enjoy their accountancy business more. Find out more.
Photo by Elisa Ventur on Unsplash