Starting your own business is an exciting time for anybody. During the COVID-19 pandemic, mass layoffs convinced millions to take the plunge and start their own businesses. According to the statistics, 4.4 million businesses were launched during the pandemic.
You may have been one of these entrepreneurs, but after achieving some success, you might wonder how to start scaling your accounting company. Here are a few tips to help you fuel growth within your organization.
1. Switch to Automation
Time is money in any line of work. Stop spending most of your day on repetitive manual tasks and automate them.
Investing in dedicated accounting practice management software boosts productivity, improves data security, mitigates the risk of human error, and ensures you have more time to focus on other tasks.
With so many solutions to choose from, doing your research is crucial. In addition, setting up your app stack will give you more resources to spend on marketing, customer service, and expanding your range of accountancy services.
2. Strengthen Your Branding
What makes you unique?
Accounting companies all offer similar services, so you need to let people know why you are the choice for them. The only way to stand out is through branding. Approximately 89% of marketers say that spreading brand awareness is their top goal, but increasing awareness means creating a memorable brand.
Pick one of your top qualities and use it to leverage your brand. For example, maybe you pride yourself on customer service or have a crazy introductory offer for new clients.
Whether it’s value, service, or authority, choose something to lead your brand. It’s about standing out and being something more than just another accountant.
3. Improve Your Positioning
Find your blue water zone and use it to scale your business. Pulling an otherwise satisfied accountancy client away from the competition is challenging, so save your time trying.
Instead, find out what you’re a leader in. Then, drill down into your niche and use that as your selling point.
Offering yourself as a general accountancy company says very little about what you excel in. Instead, you may specialize in tax accountancy for new entrepreneurs. You should stand head and shoulders above the rest in helping families with investment tax planning.
Get some breathing space because it also helps with your overall branding.
4. Encourage Your Clients to Spread the Word
You likely already have a strong base of existing clients that pay the bills. Use them to spread the word about your business.
Relying on word-of-mouth marketing out of the kindness of someone’s heart won’t get you very far. Instead, focus on special offers and referral rewards for clients who bring you, new clients.
It’s by far the most cost-effective way of marketing your accountancy business.
5. Get Local
Online marketing is critical to scaling your business. It’s the largest audience and often the most cost-effective marketing approach.
The globalization and digitization of today’s accountancy ecosystem have meant that too many accountancy firms have forgotten about their local communities. As a result, you have a cache of business right on your doorstep.
Spend some time on local marketing. Hand out some flyers or business cards, take out a local radio ad, and work on your localized SEO campaign.
6. Maintain Quality
Unfortunately, in the drive to scale, some companies allow their products and services to suffer in the name of progress. Unfortunately, throwing all your resources into finding new customers means allowing the quality of your services to suffer.
Maintaining quality and consistency across your company is crucial to success. If you cannot produce quality accounting services, there’s little purpose in scaling your business. Furthermore, unhappy customers will only diminish your brand, which is extraordinarily difficult to come back from.
7. Share the Responsibilities
Entrepreneurs find running a small business during its early growth stages comfortable. You might have got into the groove of handling all the responsibilities by yourself. However, growing businesses mean greater responsibilities.
Be willing to share the load with your team, as tricky as it is to give some of that power away. You need help from others who understand the nature of the business.
Not only will sharing the load empower you to move forward with a clearer head, but you’ll be teaching your employees the values of leadership and giving them a stake in your firm’s success.
Allocate responsibilities based on strengths and weaknesses. For example, if social media marketing is your weak point, find someone with experience in the field.
8. Hire Online Contractors
Business owners worry about pulling the trigger on hiring a full-time employee because of the immense costs involved.
Instead, hire a freelancer remotely to complete those one-time projects. For example, if you’re rebuilding your website, does it make sense to hire a full-time web designer? Why have an in-house marketing team when you can have an online content marketer on retainer?
The growth of freelancing means you can find highly skilled individuals worldwide willing to work at affordable rates without the obligation to offer a contract of employment.
9. Don’t Move Too Fast
Scaling an accountancy firm takes time. There are always growing pains, regardless of how successful you’ve been in the past. It’s not a reflection on your business ownership but a natural consequence of altering workflows and bringing in new faces to handle the increased load.
Slow and steady wins the race because these businesses are more likely to maintain their quality and improve their customer service.
Never try to cut corners or take shortcuts in your drive to expand. Instead, save what you already have and focus on making incremental progress.
Conclusion
Deciding that it’s time to scale your accountancy practice means changing the way you work. You might notice physical changes like moving into a larger office or financial changes when you review the numbers at the end of the quarter.
Making your scaling project a success requires planning, investing in technology, and reflecting on where you need to improve.
What are you doing to scale your accountancy firm?
