Content marketing is the superhero of all things digital, and allows for businesses to survive fierce competition. Generating buzz around your accounting services should forever be your goal, no matter how long you have been in the business. If you haven’t benefited by following modern content marketing trends, it is time to move in that direction.
Check out these five notable trends that caught our attention. (Number 2 is our favorite!)
1) Mobile Website Optimization
48% of consumers start their online search on mobile devices. If your website isn’t optimized for this type of device, it is losing out on a big chunk of potential clients. According to Search Engine Land, Google now crawls the web from a mobile browser viewpoint.
Therefore, make sure your CPA firm’s website is mobile responsive. The content needs to be edited and made more concise. The design has to be cleaner. If your primary content and markup are the same on desktop and mobile, you have little changes to make to make your website eligible for the mobile-first index.
2) Video-based Content
While GIFs are entertaining and very engaging, the love for videos doesn’t go unnoticed. Marketers get 66% more qualified leads through videos. According to 2017 State Of Video Marketing, 94% of businesses see videos as a useful tool.
However, creating quality videos is not that easy. You need to work on all the areas such as sound, graphics, text, etc. Here you can take help from some online tools to create a video that grabs your audience. For instance, you can use a text to speech generator tool to create audios in multiple languages. Creating videos in multiple languages helps you in connecting with a larger audience.
Start by uploading a small introductory video about yourself and your CPA firm. Gradually, add small clips on the value offerings. Today, there are websites like Envato and Fiverr that offer short video templates at affordable rates. You don’t need a professional video editer to get started!
Live videos are also used. Users on Facebook spend 3 times more time watching live videos than a video that’s no longer live. If you are attending a conference or hosting an event, give a sneak peek through live videos. We recently participated in Elite Tax Planning Academy and their team live-streamed the event extensively!
If you are attending a conference yourself, you can also take a live video and share it on your CPA firm’s Facebook or Instagram channel. The new tax year is all about capturing customer attention with videos – so, get to it!
3) Transparency
We live in an age where consumers are smarter and want businesses to be more transparency and authenticity about their offerings. Don’t get desperate when you market your services. Don’t fudge any stats. Consumers will instantly sideline your CPA firm and maybe join hands with a competitor. Be honest.
The next phase of content marketing is to ensure that everything you create and promote online is transparent to gain the trust of prospects. It is better to be transparent about negative issues then have them get leaked to the public.
4) Influencer marketing
92% of people trust recommendations from people, even if they don’t know them. When influencers expose consumers to content coming from them on Twitter, the platform observed a 5.2X increase in intent to purchase. Network aggressively within your industry community. Make sure the whole process of getting to know them is organic.
Influencer marketing isn’t all about spending money to get people to talk nice about your business. People will do it for you for free or at reduced pricing if they like you, believe in your value offerings, and appreciate the hard work you put in to grow your business.
5) Syndication
Syndication is everything. If you are only producing content, chances are it will get lost in digital chaos. From blogs to videos to podcasts – there is too much content out there. The situation is not all bad, but the abundance of information only makes it difficult for businesses to get noticed.
Get active on social media. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are excellent and widely used platforms to get the word out. Quora and Reddit are equally useful in boosting website traffic, although you have to be tactful about how you position your content. You can’t pull off a direct sales move on these channels!
Bottom line is you should use as many channels as possible.
Endnotes
While the trends we have listed here are relevant for CPA firms in general, there would be other marketing hacks that could strike a chord with you. Do your research. Keep an eye on what your competitors are up to in the marketing arena and play smart.
Which of these content marketing trends will you be following?
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