Image is everything in business and the accounting industry is no exception. When you’re trying to establish your business, there are going to be thousands of others out there that are much bigger than you are. When you’re reaching out to clients they will be aware of this and if they can tell that you’re only a small operation, they might not be willing to work with you.
That doesn’t mean you aren’t going to be able to win any business, it just means that you’ll have to be a bit clever about it. The potential accounting clients that you are meeting with aren’t going to see the inner workings of your business so if you give the impression that you’re a large company on the surface, they’ll never be any the wiser. These are some of the easiest ways to give yourself that professional look when meeting with potential clients.
Content Marketing
Your online presence should already be a priority but you might not realize that it is an opportunity to prove to your clients that you are a leader in the accounting field. If you fill your site with lots of great content on accounting you can establish yourself as an expert in your area.
When customers are looking at different accounting firms, they are going to go with the ones that have a proven record. If they find lots of useless articles that aren’t offering anything new, they will start to doubt your abilities.
Presentation
The way that you present things to customers is incredibly important. Although it doesn’t actually affect the quality of the service you are offering them, they will make a lot of their judgments based on it. If you use programs like Excel to write payslips and reports, it looks incredibly unprofessional as anybody could do that at home.
Instead, you should be using a sample paystub and proper accounting software to ensure that any documentation you are giving to customers looks as professional as anything they would get from a larger company.
PR
Hiring a PR company is a pretty big expense but if you are starting to see some growth, it might be worth investing the extra money there. In terms of publicity, there are certain things that you can do yourself like social media and fairly local engagement.
However, if you want to reach people on the same level as your bigger rivals, you need to turn to the kinds of PR companies that they’ll be using. They can help you engage with people using mediums that aren’t otherwise open to you like national news outlets and high profile TV appearances. Having this kind of publicity will take your company from being a small local outfit to a national force to be reckoned with.
Location
At this point, you aren’t going to be able to afford a huge office but if you start meeting clients in a tiny premises, they will be put off. It might be worth investing a bit of money in some space in a more high profile office. They don’t need to know that you’ve only got the one room for meetings and they’ll think that you’re much larger than you really are.