If you happen to work in the service industry, you know the importance of having a strategy to advertise your services and skills. The same goes for freelance bookkeepers, as you seek to make money both online, as well as finding your clients through the internet.
It is therefore important to know the best marketing strategies to use in your freelance bookkeeping – so that it gives you multiple chances to grow your own practice and your client base as well.
Building relationships with your customers
Even if technological advancements are all the rage in the 21st Century, the basic structure for marketing activities is always building a relationship with your audience. You will find that this is particularly true if you operate a smaller enterprise, as well as if you are seeking jobs for online accountants.
The approach of building relationships when marketing your bookkeeping services includes:
- Going to workshops, seminars, forums to meet potential clients
- Referrals from clients, colleagues, and friends
- Joining a business networking group
There is a main element that guides all these strategies – and that is trust. While shopping for products is low risk, even if you use an impersonal method like online shopping, the same does not apply to a service like bookkeeping because the customer must reveal confidential and sensitive information to you. You will need to pay extra attention to building trust with your clients, in order to serve them in a better way.
The truth is that customers will not trust anyone easily with their business or personal financial information, and will tend to listen to recommendations from their friends and family when searching for a bookkeeper. Using a combination of knowing a variety of clients as well as providing high-quality services, you are better assured of getting steady work with time.
Digital inbound marketing (free)
In order to make the most of your prospecting chances, it is important to always educate yourself on newer methods of marketing a business, service, or product. The latest method to help in achieving that is inbound marketing.
This method has a major advantage – it is easy to scale, and use it to reach as many new clients as possible without putting in so much effort to do so. This ultimately makes it more efficient compared to the approach of relationship building.
Keep in mind that unlike relationship building, digital inbound marketing is an indirect method of getting potential clients, because you are not explicitly selling your service. Instead, you are drawing prospective clients in, compared to relationship building where you actually go after your prospective clients.
The main advantage of the method is that it allows you to focus on providing bookkeeping services within specific niches, such as offering your service to large corporations only, small businesses, and so on. You can do this by giving high-quality digital content for free, which includes training videos and content, e-books, reports, or articles.
Through providing this content, your prospective clients will see you as an authority in the field, even if they did not know you through a referral. They will eventually seek out your services as well.
Digital inbound marketing (paid)
This is mostly the same as the previous strategy, although the difference is you do it through paid advertisements. There are good reasons why a freelance bookkeeper might view this as the best option:
- The free marketing can take quite some time to gain traction, but paid marketing reaches its target audience instantly
- The individual and business can enjoy the benefits of accurate marketing because the promotion efforts reach specific groups.
This is particularly important in a sensitive industry like bookkeeping and accounting because it takes a long time to build trust with the client. Through this form of marketing, you have better access to potential clients and build a list.
High quality copywriting
Copywriting is a common practice of creating text to use in marketing and promotion materials, which are then useful in publicity generation, such as advertisements and press statements. In order to create a wider client base when you are a freelance bookkeeper, you need to pay attention to these factors:
- Identifying the specific problems in the niche or target market
- Showing your prospective clients the service you offer and its benefits. Take care to avoid industry terms.
- Knowing how the key features of your service can address the specific problems in the target market.
With these strategies in mind, you can apply for freelance bookkeeping jobs at Dormzi and with other potential clients and widen your working experience in the process.
