You may not realize this, but unlike a lot of financial advisors like yourself, most CPA’s we talk with absolutely HATE marketing. They see it as time-consuming, confusing, expensive and often, difficult to quantify—and that’s exactly why it never ranks a spot on their top ten list of “favorite things to do.”
The problem is, marketing is an essential component of every business success story. It’s next to impossible to build a thriving business without some form of it. After all, if you don’t control the way your business shows up in the marketplace, someone else will. And considering the competitive landscape, that’s an invitation into the disaster zone.
One way to really enhance your relationship with CPA’s is to help them with the things they hate—in this case marketing. Now, we know you’re not marketing specialists; however, chances are you have some powerful insights you can share with them about your own wins and failures in the marketplace. In addition, you can point them to reliable resources that might just be exactly what they need to get “unstuck.”
Today we want to introduce you to some tools you can check out for your own marketing needs and then share with your CPA network to butter up those relationships. While there really is no one “magic tool” that will make people fall in love with marketing, these definitely help non-marketers get their arms around tools that can change everything.
Here are a few of our favorites:
Hands down, Hubspot’s marketing and sales blog as well as their marketing library are two must-have resources that you need to keep in your back pocket and share with your network. This company built it’s success story around writing and publishing authoritative content and giving away insights that most of us would expect to pay big bucks for. Take one quick look at the marketing and sales blog and you’ll find a seemingly endless collection of marketing brilliance—on topics including everything from lead generation to pay-per-click advertising, networking to public relations and so much more. Then jump over to their marketing library and you’ll find countless e-books, user guides, templates, video courses and more on just about any marketing topic you can think up. We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention their Website Grader to you as well. This free tool shows you just how strong your website is (or isn’t) and what to do to fix it. And get this—it’s all free. (fist bump!)
When it’s time to demystify the social media world, look no further than SocialMediaExaminer.com. Known by marketers as “the navigators of the constantly shifting social media jungle,” they publish comprehensive articles that more than half a million people read every single day. Topics include everything from how to measure the impact of your social media marketing efforts (left brains, rejoice!) to how to create video sales funnels and everything in between. In addition, they host the Social Media Marketing podcast—a top 10 marketing podcast on iTunes—where you can learn about everything from Facebook ad strategy to generating online reviews. If you really want to get your hands dirty, consider attending Social Media Marketing World, the world’s largest social media marketing conference that features more than 120 of the world’s top social media pros (yes, there are that many, and counting) as well as more than 4,000 attendees that are all about soaking up social.
If learning how to rank at the top of Google is on the to-do list, be sure you check out Moz. One of the early leaders in the digital space, this company shares step-by-step how-to guides including the Beginner’s Guide to SEO, Local Marketing Fundamentals and The Beginner’s Guide To Content Marketing.
If you want to take a deep dive into:
- Blogging – Check out ProBlogger
- Copywriting – Get up close and personal with Copyblogger
- Public Relations – Look at Cision
We could go on an on, but we have a feeling you have more than enough to keep you busy for now! Remember, these are great resources for you to utilize, but don’t keep these great resources a secret! When your CPA network sees that you’re helping them grow their business, they’ll be stuck to you like glue!
