The Wize Way

Episode 172: Why Most Accountants Struggle With Marketing (And How to Fix It)

• Wize Mentoring for Accountants and Bookkeepers • Season 2 • Episode 172

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Marketing That Actually Works for Accountants

Most firm owners treat marketing like an expense, not an investment. The result? Stop-start campaigns, wasted dollars, and no real flow of quality leads.

In this episode of The Wize Way Podcast, Jamie Johns breaks down how to:

✅ Keep your marketing consistent so momentum builds
 ✅ Use niche positioning to attract clients who value expertise
 ✅ Define what a “quality lead” really is
 ✅ Measure ROI with simple metrics that guide smart decisions

If you’re ready to stop gambling on marketing and start turning it into a predictable growth engine, this one’s for you.

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3. Book a 1:1 Wize Discovery Session – Spend 30mins with our Wize CEO, Jamie Johns, a $7M firm owner who is ready to give you his entire business plan to build a firm that can run without you – Find out more here

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Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Wise Way, the show for accounting and bookkeeping firm owners who want more time, profit and freedom, and a business that can run without them. I'm Bren Ward, your host, and each week, we deep dive into the real stories, proven strategies and battle-tested tools from successful firm owners. Just like you, our wise mentors want to share their journey of how they've scaled and systemized their way to freedom. So you can, too. If you're stuck in the grind or you're ready to scale smarter, this is your blueprint. Let's get into the episode.

Speaker 2:

I'd love to hear you on this topic If someone's sitting on the fence about whether or not they should do it, because they might know a colleague who's wasted a lot of money and not got much return on it. You're really focused on ensuring that your marketing activity at Sky Accountants provides a steady and increasing source of quality leads into the practice. Can you go into some detail of some of the things that have been successful in achieving this, and what are you looking for to make sure that your investment, as Ed rightly calls it is, is yielding um the results that you need to make it worthwhile in the first place?

Speaker 3:

yeah, thanks, tim. Um, I'll probably wind back. So before I started working with ed, um, it's probably like a lot of other firms, we would, um, start marketing, you know, do it for a couple of months, and then we'd stop, we'd do it ad hoc and stop and start, and stop and start, and it was just never consistent. And then, you know, once I started working with Ed those years ago, ed explained it to me in this way and Ed said that it's like marketing's like a big, a massive concrete ball and it takes a fair bit of effort to get it going. And you know, so you've got to push the ball and push the ball. But once the ball is rolling it's easier just to tap it along and keep it going. And that's how Ed explained marketing to me in that analogy.

Speaker 3:

And ever since then, so we've, we've, you know, we've kept the marketing up, uh, consistently. Since then we didn't really drop the ball. So I think, I think one of the most important things for firms, taking it from my experience, is this be consistent. Um, you must be consistent with your marketing. The other part of that is, um have a niche. Very important to have a niche, because it doesn't matter what clients you speak to. They all think that no one else understands their industry and they like dealing with a specialist.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 3:

So that was something that we did as well in that niche. Now I get the question a lot of the times oh, what about other clients? Do we take clients or leads from other industries? Well, absolutely of course you do, because you'll get referrals and you'll just get people that will find your website and find an article on, you know, a different sort of industry. So, yes, of course you take those, but what you do with your marketing is you just, instead of a shotgun approach, you want to drive that niche, if you like, and some of the firms recently that we've worked with in the US they're very successful because they've either, you know, focused on the vets, for example, they're focused on pharmacies or whatever.

Speaker 3:

So, in terms of your sort of slide, they're talking about driving quality leads. You know that's that's a big part of the process, to drive quality leads, and then you know so. So from that then it's really determining well, what is a quality lead? Now you know we, you'll get a lot of tie kickers. Some of my client managers will claim well, um, you know they used to complain about, oh well, I rang that person, I didn't ring back, and so forth, so forth. So you've really got to have a system in place to say, well, what is an actual lead? Because what you'll find is, once you start measuring the teams and measuring the client managers, they'll get quite competitive in terms of their percentage of leads that they're converting to clients. And so it's important that you know they don't see every new lead as a tie kicker, if I can put it like that, and that it's a proper lead. So you know, after sort of talking to Ed about it Over the years, we see it as a proper lead, or a qualified lead, as someone who's willing to have an appointment, someone who's willing to book an appointment and have a discussion.

Speaker 3:

So you know that's different for every firm, but you want to drive quality leads and there's some of the sort of tips that we use and you know, these days we'd get 35 to 40 leads per month and just measure it. It's very important to, extremely important to measure it, to see, you know, return on investment on your marketing and then fine-tune it, fine-tune it, fine-tune it, measure it. And then you know, once you get the leads coming in, are you converting them? So again, measure it. You know, once you get the leads coming in, are you converting them? So again, measure it, you know, and no one ever has time to measure it, you know. But you've got to make time as the firm owner and as it grows because, um, you know you can spend. I think you know ed always says spend around four to five percent of your turnover on marketing and it definitely works. But that analogy of just being persistent with it is extremely important, because if you stop and start, stop and start, it doesn't work.

Speaker 2:

No, that's really helpful. I've noticed that I mean, I'm guilty of this in my own firm from time to time, and I've noticed that even some decent-sized mid-tier firms their latest blog post will be from two years ago or three years ago. And yeah, when you say you measure the leads, Jamie, is it just the number of leads that you're measuring or are you measuring the quality as well? And if you are measuring the quality, do you have some kind of criteria? Because I could imagine I've got a couple of client managers. I can imagine one of them blaming I shouldn't say this because it's getting recorded but I could imagine one of my client managers blaming the quality of the lead if they're unable to convert it, you know, and say, oh, that was a rubbish lead, like I don't get good ones. So do you measure both those things? And if you do, how do you measure quality?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, so that's a crap lead, oh, that's a terrible lead. So, as I said, you've got to qualify what is a good lead. You know and you know for us, after speaking to Ed about it and the client managers, it was someone that was willing to just have a phone appointment or just a Zoom call for example. But in saying that, it's very important to respond quickly. So you know, while we say, we say well, they're happy to book an appointment. It can't be in two days time you mean you?

Speaker 3:

mean the client, you mean the client manager. That's right. Yeah, yeah. So whatever your system is, you know the lead must.

Speaker 3:

The quicker the lead is booked in for an appointment, um, the better. You know there's a lot of research around how you know how long people will wait. So if you get a lead and they say, yeah, look, I'm happy to speak to someone you know, and the further out you book them in, the less likely they are to turn up and they'll say, oh, you know, I found another bookkeeper or I found another accountant. So there's some really good advice in the Wise Vault, in the sales section, around this. Yeah, there's actually some statistics on, you know, consumers' expectations on how fast you know an inquiry should be replied to. Yeah, you know, I think it's up to like 80% within the first two hours. So it's really important that you know.

Speaker 3:

Coming back to Ed talks about context is making sure that your teams have capacity. So, you know, at the start of each financial year, we do a lot of work with the senior client managers making sure that they've got capacity in order to take new clients on. You know we've got one team at the moment. We're still looking for another accountant and you know they've just sort of put the pause button on the leads for the moment and letting the other three teams take the leads, because you know you want to have the ability to service those new leads. So you must, you must create capacity and that comes back to that capacity planner and then having the right people on each team.

Speaker 3:

So, yeah, everything is interrelated, as it always is yeah but but yeah, certainly I love the concept of you know you mentioned Tim about what do you measure? You know, so, we things that we measure, and you put me on the spot here because I've got to remember but you know we, we measure the number of leads, uh, per month, yeah, um the number, the website traffic, um, also our database growth. So another one. So we measure, you know we, we do have a newsletter, that's sort of on our website, and the more people we get to subscribe to that, the better. Um, it's quite interesting too. You see the hits to the website and some months you see like there's a real spike. And you know a particular topic it's interesting to see that attracts the attention of your database.

Speaker 2:

Yep.

Speaker 3:

What else is there? So yeah, google Analytics. You know our marketing person has a deep dive into the Google Analytics. So yeah, and then just you know, the person has a deep dive into the google, google analytics. So, um, yeah, and then just you know. The other really important thing, tim to measure is well, where are the leads coming from?

Speaker 3:

you know yeah yeah, you know, because you've got um ppc or you know pay per click, you've got seo, you've got referrals, um, you've got all sorts of so very important and measurable where are the leads coming from? Even at Wise Mentoring, brenton gives us a report every week on exactly where the leads are coming from LinkedIn, facebook. So you've just got sort of those half a dozen things that you track, and the more sophisticated you get at it, the better. But it takes time. You've got to be patient and just you know, once, as the firm owner, once you get more time, you can work on these things and then keep improving the business and keep growing it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and I love it. I'm getting that time with the metaphor of the concrete ball as well. But like we always say at Wise, be persistent and consistent. It's no different to the other design and recruit stages. As long as you have your map and you know where you're headed and you're consistent, you'll get the results in the long term. Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Thanks for tuning in to this episode of the Wise Way. If today's episode sparked an idea or helped you see things differently, please don't forget to leave us a review. And if you haven't subscribed to the podcast on your favorite platform yet, please go ahead and do that as well. Let's continue the conversation here through YouTube or any other social platforms that you can find us on. And just remember, if you're not a subscriber, our weekly Friday tip newsletter. You can get that to your inbox every week. Going forward, Whether you're starting out or scaling up, you don't have to do it alone. Let's build a business that works for you the wise way. We'll see you in the next episode.