Last week, Allinial Global hosted over 50 business developers, marketers, and partners-in-charge of marketing on Zoom for the annual BD/Marketing Conference. While all of us missed the magical moments that inevitably happen while connecting in person, our members, presenters, and staff made the most out of two half days together and even set a record for the longest continuous Zoom session here at Allinial Global. On our first day, we went from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m. EDT!
If you weren’t able to join us last week, I’ve shared my top three takeaways below. Most of us are familiar with the 3 Cs of marketing—company, customer, and competition. But have you noticed what I’d like to call the 3 supplemental Cs of accounting marketing—courage, collaboration, and community? Please allow me to explain.
- Courage. As accounting marketers, most of us are in a team of one or a few, outnumbered by accountants who think quite differently from the way we do. This means that we face many opportunities to convince our executive team—with moderate to high risk-averse tendencies—to try something new for the firm, such as social media, Google Ads, or video. And here’s where our first supplemental C of marketing comes in. We need courage to question and change the status quo. Testing new approaches is a critical component of digital transformation. We can’t rely on Excel spreadsheets to keep track of prospects and clients forever. Sooner rather than later, we need to identify and implement affordable CRM solutions for our firms. We can’t rely on outdated websites and anemic social media presence if we expect to recruit the brightest young talent and win next-generation clients. We need to continuously update and enhance our digital presence with the help of different groups of stakeholders. Future-ready firms are transitioning to value-based pricing and leveraging three-tier pricing and subscription models for their services, especially for Client Accounting Services (CAS), and we need to find allies within the executive team to move the pricing needle. This point leads me to the introduction of our next supplemental C: collaboration.
- Collaboration. For accounting marketers, collaboration with your internal stakeholders is obviously important. No marketing initiative—whether it’s a virtual or in-person event, email campaign, or new niche/service line—can be executed without collaborating with your practitioners. Depending on the project, you may also collaborate with other departments as well—IT, HR, and so on. In fact, we had a panel dedicated precisely to this topic for this year’s conference! But in a post-pandemic world where the pace of change is accelerating and unpredictable, collaboration with your external team is also critical. How do you pivot to virtual events when you’ve never even hosted a webinar before? Do you proceed with strategic marketing projects during uncertain times? How do you get into video marketing with zero budget? If you’re a member of Allinial Global, you’re in luck! You can connect with a virtual team of marketers who will not hesitate to share their insights and experiences to help you make an informed decision.
- Community. Last but certainly not least, community is the third and perhaps the most important of the supplemental Cs. Whether you are a member of the Association for Accounting Marketing, Allinial Global, or some other alliance, having your own community of marketers is invaluable—regardless of your experience level in accounting marketing. At Allinial Global, we have a formal system to create and cultivate this sense of community by segmenting marketers beyond just firm size. Recognizing that the marketing tech stack is playing an increasingly important role for the accounting profession, I will be creating a HubSpot mastermind group, for example. I believe that we learn best by executing, not just attending a class or reading a book, and we improve the fastest by connecting to a community of peers who share similar goals. Cultivating and improving this type of community within Allinial Global is one of the things that I LOVE about my job, and I can’t wait to share my future plans with you all.
If you are interested in joining the extraordinarily talented and generous marketers and business developers of Allinial Global, please reach out to me anytime.
