Content marketing is great, but what if you’ve not got anyone noticing your content? If you’re generating an amazing website, blog posts, video or other content, you could be stuck with no one seeing how brilliant your firm is.
Social media is extremely powerful when combined with your excellent content. Together they help you get the highest quality clients.
But starting social media – and determining whether it’s delivering results – can be overwhelming.
“Do I do Facebook ads?”
“Which social media platforms do I use?”
“Are people still using Google+? I have no idea!”
“Do hashtags really work?”
They’re all really good questions, and we’ve been working with lots of accountants to help them get their social media right, and the results have been amazing!
Let’s look at the tried and tested methods that can generate you consistent results, and have done so for these firms.
The importance of posting regularly every day
Ten Forward Finance originally came to us for support with a marketing plan, and as we reviewed it, they decided also to transfer their website from a not-so-great WordPress template to a new amazing one.
However, at the time, they didn’t have much of a presence on social media, as they weren’t posting regularly or sharing their amazing new content.
So, from April 2017, we started working with them to post on their behalf every day on their Twitter account, and you can see the difference with the graph below:
Over time, their Twitter following has grown at a rapid pace to which is now over 1,000 followers! This regular posting – of content that is relevant to their audience – has resulted in more followers over time. It fluctuates, as you can see, but the overall trend is up.
How to generate leads by continual testing
For another accountancy firm, they wanted to generate leads by targeting creative agencies on Facebook. As a result of creating multiple adverts, and doing ad testing, we’ve managed to increase the amount of leads generated each month without the firm having to spend more money.
Here is a graph on how many new leads they’ve generated since starting:
How to generate leads if you’re not sure what to offer people
For some of our clients, we have created lead generation campaigns on social media saying “we are thinking of creating… [free guide topic title]” or “we are working on a… Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...
This allows accountants to generate leads straight away even without having the content ready and to test what content will work best to generate leads very easily.
Here’s an example of an advert from one of our clients using this exact method to generate leads with creatives:
With the advert for Spark Accountants, all they need to do is click “Sign up” and they can generate leads with people who want a copy of the free guide “4 Steps to truly understanding your finances” even before the content has been finished.
This is particularly useful if you’re considering running an event. If you do run the event, you’ll have an entire list of people who are interested in it and are happy to hear from you once the registration page is ready. If you decide not to run the event, that’s fine as well.
The importance of having a targeted offer when generating leads
It’s important when running a lead generation campaign to have a targeted offer. A lot of the times lead generation doesn’t work on social media it’s because either the free content isn’t interesting enough or the targeting isn’t specific enough – so there isn’t a good match.
Here’s an example of an accountant advertising to veterinarians with a specific offer:
And here’s a screenshot of the amount of leads generated over a period of 6 months:
“That’s great, but where do I start?!”
Starting with social media can feel overwhelming. There’s so much to consider and you don’t want to get it wrong.
If you’re evaluating all your social media options, we’d suggest you start with our online, one-on-one social media workshop . We’ll talk about your target audience, and any opportunities to use social to market to potential niche areas, and you can use this time to ask us anything about social media, as well as get expert advice on how it applies to your firm in particular.
Once your workshop is complete, you can choose to apply the entirety of the workshop fee to a full 12-month social media plan. Or you can take what you’ve learned and start implementing it yourself.
Content marketing paired with social media is extremely powerful. For those of you who are ready to get the clients you’ve been longing for, take to a new platform and reap the rewards!