Award ceremonies, conferences and in our case, a PF Scottish contingent brunch in Edinburgh… this month events were firmly back in the calendar!
We were so proud to see our clients Jonathan and his team at Raedan win ‘Small Firm of the Year’ and Karen Kennedy’s firm, Kennedy Accountancy, be shortlisted for ‘New Firm of the Year’ at the Accounting Excellence awards this month. A massive well done to all the nominees and winners!
As much as we’re enjoying being able to see and connect with more people in person, it has reminded us of how important it is make time for #restpillar and leave space in between events and meetings and social gatherings and all the things to rest and recharge.
Planning and running your own event is a big undertaking and it can feel quite overwhelming at times. You can check out our monthly marketing hiring bolt on and client community training session in PF Lab for support in planning and running your own to build connection with your clients and prospects.
Webinar: How to use social media to grow your firm
Join Colin Comerford (owner of Comerford Foley), Kieran Phelan (owner of Cloud 360 Accounting), Jeremy Twomey (from Chartered Accountants Ireland) and our Karen and Steph at our FREE “Growing Your Practice Online” webinar on Friday 29th October at 10am.
Here’s the link to book your space.
In the session, our panel will be sharing their thoughts and ideas on:
- How social media helps you show your value to your clients and prospects
- Some things which may surprise you about social media
- What results actually look like
- How to get into a habit of using social media
You’ll hear from Colin and Kieran on how they’ve used social media to grow their accounting firms, and especially, how they used it as a platform to share helpful information throughout the pandemic.
The webinar is FREE to attend and there’s a guarantee of great banter!
Update: This webinar has now run and you can watch the recording of it here!
Event Promotion bolt-on for monthly clients
Have you been thinking about running an event? A free webinar or a paid workshop?
Events are a great opportunity for you to show your value and expertise and to connect with both clients and prospects, either online or in person.
Accountants have shared with us the planning and running of an event can feel quite overwhelming, and with so much to do, it’s difficult to commit to the time and effort involved, when you also have the responsibility of running your firm.
That’s why as part of our monthly marketing services at PF, we’re using our experience of supporting accountants with events and offering an ‘Event Promotion’ credits bolt-on to help you plan and run your event. The bolt-on offering includes:
- Strategy call to discus why you’re running the event, what you hope to achieve and what you want people to DO after it
- Planning what you’ll need for your website, emails, social media etc
- Writing content for your emails and blog posts
- Designing marketing materials you’ll need: invites, banners, email signatures, social media posts
- Follow up: often an area which is neglected after an event but is super important for building relationships with your attendees
You won’t necessarily need all of this, or maybe you’ll need something different, so we’ll tailor your credits quote to you so you can run the best possible event for the audience you’re wanting to attract.
If you’d like support with an upcoming event you’re thinking of running, or want a strategy call to chat through ideas you have for one, you can request a credits quote here and we’ll be in touch to set up a call!
PF Team Retreat
This month included another PF team retreat! We kept this 2-day retreat fully virtual to make sure we were really able to embrace the quiet space and rest time, both of which are so important for supporting us in getting the most out of the retreat.
Our first day involved a book review and this time, we had chosen ‘Deep Work’ by Cal Newport. Retreat books are always challenging (that’s why we chose them) and this one was no different! We’d all read the book ahead of the session and had shared our thoughts and ideas for how we can apply the principles to our work at PF. The book encouraged us to question:
- What work do we consider as Deep Work?
- How do we get into the practise of doing it? And how do we define boundaries for it?
- What troubles us about boredom?
We discussed how Deep Work always has a focus. It’s the starting point which moves you on to detailed work. And you need to start small, start safe so you can get into the routine and discipline of Deep Work time.
The rest of the retreat time was spent enjoying fresh air with no distractions from phones or computers, having 1:1s with each other, playing some team games (you must check out Gartic Phone if you haven’t already) and the team practicing #rest and #creativity pillar.
It’s not easy to take these days out and you need to prepare well for them, but they are worth it to give you the opportunity to take a step back and dig into how you’re running your firm and how you can keep serving your clients in the best way for them.
Here are some pictures our team shared from the retreat days!
Daly’s adorable pup, Ollie, enjoyed lots of fresh air while Karen enjoyed #restpillar on her yellow chair with her favourite coffee and Ash leant into #creativitypillar with her beautiful paint by numbers!
How your accounting firm can build a client community (and keep it going)
As an accountant, one of your greatest assets is your existing clients. They’re the ones who know you, love you, appreciate you, (hopefully) understand your value and often recommend you to others.
A lot of accountants have asked us how to go about connecting your clients and how to either build, or enhance, your own client community.
The next PF Lab training session runs on Friday 12th November at 11am GMT and in it, we’ll dig into:
- What does a client community look like?
- Where will it be hosted?
- How do you build engagement in it?
- How do you make it as helpful as possible for your clients?
- How much time does it take to set up and manage?
Building a community helps your clients to connect with each other and gives you the opportunity to connect with those people who want to spend time with you, and who you want to build relationship with so they feel safe to come to you for help, advice and encouragement.
You can join the PF Lab and become part of the PF community where you’ll be connected with accountants like yourself: keen and excited to learn about marketing and how you can specifically apply it to your firm. Or you can join this session as a one off!
Watch this video to hear about Karen’s experience of PF’s accountants’ community of agency owners:
Highlights of Deeper Weekend 2021
Karen and Kendall headed to Greenville for Thriveal’s Deeper Weekend last week and enjoyed meeting and connecting with new accountants!
Some of the themes from us this year were:
- Question everything: what are the goals you have? How do those (or they) connect to your marketing?
- Good marketing divides: Your website content, and messaging needs to bring in the right people and send away those who aren’t the best fit for your firm.
- Better not more: Good marketing isn’t about getting more leads (and you might not even need any more). It’s about the right kind of people who will be the clients you LOVE working with!
When asked what surprised them the most about the event, Karen shared she was struck by the impact lots of little in-person conversations can have, and how quickly a series of them can really build relationship with someone.
It reminded them both of the importance of #rest and #creativity pillar at in person events, so you have the opportunity to break up the learning and get some space in between sessions.
Being back at an event like Deeper Weekend has inspired us to start thinking about running some more of our ‘Accountants are creative too’ events so keep your eyes peeled for more information on that soon!
That’s it from us for this month! If you want to get these monthly updates straight to your inbox, you can sign up here!