Let me tell you a story. Just over a year ago our firm was contacted by a lovely, but frustrated, accountant. She worked for a large firm, managed several large accounts and was, by all accounts, highly successful. But she was unhappy. She wanted more freedom in her life, and her own business. She wanted her hard work to go directly into her bank account - not her bosses. She wanted to start her own accounting firm. But she only knew accounting - she had no idea where to start.
This, as you can imagine, represents a lot of our client base. Business owners who are frustrated trying to market their own business online, and just want to grow while they focus on service delivery. The only difference is she didn't have a business yet. We were starting from scratch.
Fast forward a (rather tumultuous) year and she is now the proud owner of a 6 figure accounting firm. Her own business, that she built from the ground up. With our help with the marketing, branding and structure. There were a few bumps along the way (hello pandemic) and a major pivot, but in the end we made it.
Lets talk about how we did it!
In the beginning there was branding. More specifically the "who?".
The most important question you can ask yourself when you start a business is "who am I, and who am I helping?". In our case we knew it was an accounting firm but an accounting firm for who exactly? Why would this group of people choose our business?
Understanding who you are trying to sell to, and what they need, is absolutely key to creating a business foundation.
After some soul searching (aka market research) we decided on a market segment and got to work. And then came along the pandemic - and with it unfortunately an almost complete shuttering of our target market.
So we pivoted.
You have to be prepared to pivot. Business is volatile - the market changes and you aren't always going to get what you want. Being prepared to change your marketing, or your core business, is key to your success. Especially when you are starting a business.
You may want to start selling A but find out its much more viable selling B.
In this case we were still selling the same thing but our target audience had to shift. It had to shift dramatically. Which meant our marketing, the website and the content we had built had to all be redesigned. Which we did (at no extra cost).
Now I wish I could say we had a big dramatic launch. Lots of fanfare. Streamers. That sort of thing. But it was nothing like that. At least on our end. Maybe she launched a streamer or two.
Instead once we website was up, it was up, the domain was connected and it was ready to go. And if we had left it right there (as most new business owners do) it probably would have failed.
Because having a beautiful website is not enough. You need to put it in front of people.
But we know this. So the moment the website launched, so to did our marketing campaigns. Because the main goal was always to create clients. And a website needs traffic to create clients.
We launched a bunch of content to the website, and started promoting it on social media. And we launched our Google Ads campaign - because Google ads is the most efficient way to promote your b2b services. We needed to get the business out in front of the target audience.
And our campaigns started to work! Leads came in, phones (or phone really) began to ring and the business started to grow.
It's been a year (and what a year it's been right?) and the company now manages over $7 million in revenue. The business' revenue is in the high 6 figures (and growing) and the marketing is still successfully plugging away.
The important things to understand here are that you need to have a clear idea of who the company is selling to (and how that has to affect your branding), you have to be ready to change that idea and you have to back it up with marketing.
You need a beautiful website that conveys the brand and looks professional. And then you need to market it to your target audience. Behind that you need the systems to provide the service/product professionally and (hopefully) scale. With those things in place anyone can grow a successful business online.
If you're curious, you can check out the client's website by clicking here. And if you would like to have a similar success story, well, you should contact us!
