I’ve been running my book-keeping business for over a year now, and I’ve had varying degrees of success with different marketing methods. I find most of my new clients come from direct mailings, then from the internet and then from other activities such as networking and referrals etc. I try to spend at least one hour a day marketing my business, either sending out mailings, phoning contacts or following up on new emails etc. How do other book-keepers market there business, and what marketing methods do you find are the most effective? Cheers, Man66
Most of my clients have been obtained by word of mouth and networking. I have obtained a few clients with mail shots though.
The best advice I was given was to join a local business network. It may have taken a while to build up contacts, but it was worth it in the end. At present I'm averaging approx 1-2 new clients a week which I'm happy with.
At the moment I'm thinking about setting up a website for my business. Has anyone had any success attracting clients via the internet?
Although I've only been running my book-keeping practice for a few months now, I got my friend who's a web designer to set me up with a basic website. So far most of my clients have been obtained via the internet, so I think it's becoming more and more important to have one, I'm glad I have!
Hope you don't mind me replying to this one since I'm not really a bookkeeper, but I am starting up a freelance writing business and have a little experience with marketing.
One thing that I do is ask every client who has been satisfied with my services (that's been all of them so far, thank goodness!) if they can think of anyone else who might need a writer. I also ask if they can give me a brief statement for my marketing materials.
I also have different brochures that I send to different clients, for instance my web content brochure is different than my marketing letters brochure and so forth.
I also think setting aside an hour for marketing a day is a great idea.
I do think anything yuo can do to make the marketing personal is the way to go. I know people that spend a lot of time on the internet sending out promotional materials but I have always felt when you send stuff out like that it just goes off into cyberspace.
startingout wrote: I do think anything yuo can do to make the marketing personal is the way to go. I know people that spend a lot of time on the internet sending out promotional materials but I have always felt when you send stuff out like that it just goes off into cyberspace. That's exactly how I feel. It's not too hard to pick up writing jobs on the internet, but with brick and mortar businesses, I have much better luck if I can say, "John Smith at ABC Corporation suggested I call you" as opposed to calling cold.
I've also found that businesses that are part of a chain usually employee their own writers at company headquarters. I do much better if I can solicit smaller businesses.
