How much do your accounting services cost?
No. Wrong question.
How much are your accounting services worth to your prospective client?
That’s better.
What kind of costs could you be facing if you went with another accountant?
Even better still!
Pricing is a complex part of an accountancy firm – and it affects your marketing because of where and how you share it.
From time to time, I like to share a ‘Karen’s Tiny Tips’ – an advert or image which proves a good marketing principle. (Okay, in all honesty, this is a brand new idea, and today is the first one. But it’s still a great idea, and you will see more of them.)
So here’s today’s Tiny Tip.
I was flicking through a magazine at the breakfast table, and this ad jumped out at me. This is a brilliant example of framing your pricing to show the item’s true value.
There are a few amazing things done here:
- The sofa is proclaimed to be worth a million dollars. They’re boasting big things without shame.
- There is a currency exchange going on, which complicates the cost in your mind and adds a delay. They didn’t say ‘a million pounds’, and then subtract the cost of the sofa. They’ve added a layer so it takes you a few minutes to calculate things.
- The imagery is fresh, clean, appealing, but not ‘ritzy’. It looks like the kind of thing you might actually want in your home – so they’re connecting with typical home owners. They know their market.
- Registering the actual (cash) price of the sofa is the last thing your mind does.
How does this apply to your accountancy firm marketing and pricing?
Well, this is a tiny tip, so my tiny (yet powerful) piece of marketing advice is to think huge. Think about a million dollars – or a million pounds.
What are some of the massive numbers you can actually use in your marketing?
An example is the real-world scenario of the person whose accountant only sorted their taxes (including the tax bill) on the 21st of January.
The cost of the taxes might be something like £13,100.
However, if the person paying those had set aside this money to make a deposit on a new home, and now they can’t do that because their accountant didn’t give them the information early enough to plan, the cost is £13,100 plus the cost of the new home – say £150,000. Total cost = £163, 100 plus the loss of a dream (or a personal goal).
That’s a high cost.
You could use the MasterCard style advertising for this:
- Taxes completed on 21st January. Cost of tax bill = £13,100
- Loss of deposit for new home = £150,000
- Total cost = £163,100 and the loss of a dream
- Choosing us as your accountants = £695/month and the house you want, when you want it.
- Priceless.