Social media is all about creating and building relationships, but it provides no benefit if your accounting firm is building relationships with the wrong people. To build relationships with the right people, you need to clearly define your target audience and adapt your messaging for each of its segments.
Your Social Media Audience
Most accounting firms fit into one of two categories: those that serve other businesses (B2B) and those that serve consumers (B2C). Knowing which category your firm falls under will help you break down your audience. If your firm is B2B, remember that there’s still a human behind that business who you need to engage with on social media. Regardless of if your firm is B2B or B2C, here’s a list of who your audience can be, how to define them and how social media marketing can be used to reach them:
- Current Clients
Targeting current clients is a great place to start because you already know a lot about them. You know their industry, financial information, geographical location, age, and hopefully you have a personal relationship with them as well. In short, you already know many of their characteristics. If you serve a specific niche, defining your current clients may be easier than if you serve a wide range of clients.
Take a look at what your current clients interact with on social media. If you find that they often engage with certain kinds of content, put your firm’s own spin on it and post more of that content. Your current clients can become a big referral source if they share your firm’s content on social media, so it’s important to post what they’ll engage with.
You can break your current client base down further by industry, location, services you provide for them, etc. If your firm has clients who it strictly does tax prep for, but you’re looking to grow your yearlong services or revenue, directing posts about yearlong services your firm offers to that audience would be beneficial. If your firm is sponsoring an event in Miami, talk directly to clients who live in the area. If you’re hosting a webinar on a specific industry, direct your posts at clients in that industry.
- Ideal Future Clients
Think about the best clients your firm has now: the ones who are easy to work with, send referrals and bring your firm a large amount of revenue. What are they like? Do you provide advisory services for them? Are they in a specific industry, at a specific age, holding a specific title at their company? Define the characteristics that make up your best current clients and target more people like them.
If you find that your best clients seek advisory services from your firm and are typically executives at their companies, show off your firm’s advisory services and how you can help high earners. This will help you reach your ideal future clients.
- Future Employees
Social media is one of the best places to promote your open positions and find great job candidates. Post about your company’s benefits, culture and anything else that will make it stand out in the eyes of a job seeker.
You know what qualities a candidate needs to have to be a good fit for the position and your firm, so speak to those qualities to attract qualified candidates.
- Advocates
Advocates play an important role in spreading your social media messages. They can be current employees, clients, influencers, friends or family members of an employee, etc. Anyone who actively shares your firm’s message to their personal social media is an advocate for your firm.
Creating content that advocates are likely to share is important to growing your social media reach and audience. Look at the content they share and post more of that.
These are a few ideas to get you started and ensure your posts reach the right audience. Over time, you’ll learn more about each audience and notice what does and does not resonate with them. It’s also important to note that the more you engage with others on social media, the more likely they’ll be to return the favor.
