7 Tips On How To Get Bookkeeping Clients

Whether you’re starting from the ground level or an established bookkeeping firm, finding new clients is one the most difficult parts of growing your practice. You can easily waste a lot of time and money on marketing without anything to show for it. Yet, if you want to build a successful and profitable bookkeeping firm, you have to grow your client base. Below are 4 proven ways to land your next 50 clients without spending a dime on marketing. Some programs, like the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program, also provide free tools to help you get new clients. FreshBooks Accounting Partners have the opportunity to be included in a directory where business owners can find or be matched with FreshBooks-certified accounting professionals.

Networking could mean physically going to conferences and joining relevant Meetups, or it could mean meeting people through social media. Regardless of the type of business structure you choose, you should open a separate account for your new business.

Write And Post Articles On Sites Where Your Clients Frequent

And, I think it’s something that every new bookkeeper wonders, even those who are thinking about going into bookkeeping. The answer varies based on a lot of different factors, even where you live and the kinds of clients that are around your area. If you love numbers, organization, and some financial grunt work, bookkeeping is the perfect business for you. Start small, care about your clients, do a fantastic job, and soon enough, you’ll be your own boss if that is your goal.

Make the most of your biggest fans – your existing customers. This can be a good option for earning money on the side or scaling to a full-time business. If you already have bookkeeping experience, you can translate your skills to the online world and find business owners who need your expertise. Business owners know other business owners and a personal referral goes a long way in this industry. In addition, you will have access to a private Facebook community just for students of the course.

How Businesses Benefit From Bookkeeping Services

As you connect with people you can build your network which increases the amount of people you can reach out to. If you’re already using QuickBooks® Online and collaborating with your clients, you’re halfway there, since your client already understands the value of online access to information. The next step is to establish bookkeeper logins for their bank and credit card accounts. This protects both you and your clients, and is a bookkeeping best practice. Your client can ask their bank to establish these for you. If you don’t have them already, you’ll need to have a solid grasp of bookkeeping principles.

When addressing the issue of how to get bookkeeping clients through referrals, don’t just look to fellow professionals. Ask current clients to write testimonials on your behalf. You can have a testimonials page on your website to share these comments.

The Bottom Line On How To Start A Bookkeeping Business

To focus your social media marketing efforts, pick and develop your professional presence on one or two platforms. Study the topics and include interactive questions, videos, and graphics to keep your viewers engaged. When you’re finished, you can share the webinar on your website or through social media posts.

Schedule a conversation with a member of our sales team to see how our virtual bookkeeping services can help your business. Reconciled is an award-winning organization and one of the fastest-growing accounting firms in the country. Our team of entrepreneurship gurus, e-commerce pros, and tech-loving cloud accounting specialists look at your business holistically. Look in your email list management software for a button, or simply add a sentence that encourages people to forward your newsletter. Twitter is another social media platform that enables you to gain brand exposure and stay top of mind with clients. Its 280-character post format is perfect for sharing time-sensitive news such as an accounting software sale price deadline. Your LinkedIn profile should be optimized to communicate what you offer and who you want to attract into your network.

• The biggest mistake that freelance bookkeepers make is collecting email addresses and then not doing anything with them.
• Perhaps they have been around the small local business world for a while and know more business owners who need your services.
• You can find people looking for a variety of work including marketing, design, accounting, bookkeeping, writing and everything in between.
• Starting small will help you gain confidence in your presentation skills.
• Those businesses then send a quote and hope to win their business.
• That’s simply not an option for many small businesses though.

According to a study by Nielsen, 92% of customers around the world say they trust recommendations from friends and family above all other forms of advertising. Word of mouth is a powerful tool for any business, and especially for a trust-based business like accounting. Hiring help will allow you to maintain more clients, generate more revenue, and keep your customers happy. It’s the perfect partnership that allows you to grow your business while helping others in the process. Start with your business page, ask friends and family to join, and then begin promoting the page.

Build An Online Business Presence

Examples might include union negotiations, labor disputes, or potential minimum wage increases. Your prospective client might be surprised by what resources, services, and tools you have available to help them with a wide variety of business issues. In addition to their financial statements, you can help them keep track of their capital asset activity, vehicle log, and other important documents for reporting sales tax.

In this day and age, nearly anything you can do in-person, you can also do online. Professionalism is key if you want to walk away with new contacts to add to your mailing list. Direct mail, cold-calling, door-knocking, and other face-to-face marketing methods still work in many industries. Surveys show that only 11% of people will look through a physical phonebook at any point during the year, while 97% rely on online directories for the same purpose. For example, you can encourage your new real estate agent client to spread the word at their brokerage office.

What Can You Tell Us About Your Business?

I think this can be really interesting for you, and a contact would be mutually beneficial. We will send you the best of our blog just once a month. Local newspapers may not have the readership that they once did, but a lot of people still read them.

Just because social media advertising might not be right for your new bookkeeping or accounting firm, that does not mean you should avoid it entirely. Social media marketing can be a great place to connect with a prospective client. You can use your social media channel to share timely tips and resources. It should be a place to share your expertise with a potential client, however, not just spam your target audience.

Each person that comes to your site is a potential client. If that person can’t get where they want to go, they’ll just leave your website.

As a bookkeeper, you can get a lot of work from other freelancers and small business owners. As a business owner, word of mouth is an 83% percent more effective strategy for getting your product or services out there. The goal is to give your leads and clients something educational or entertaining that they’re willing to click on and skim through. But don’t let this prevent you from trying to expand your current bookkeeping business or from pursuing bookkeeping as a side hustle when work slows down. However, even if you already have bookkeeping skills, you can benefit from a course that can teach you how to start your own business and find clients. The course is designed for beginners with no previous experience.

• She has been in business for over 30 years and works on a virtual basis with all her clients.
• Surprisingly, I have sent out letters to all of the local businesses in my area and have received much better than expected response…with paying customers (about 10%).
• Specializing in one industry can actually be far more lucrative in the long run.
• What has worked for me in the past has been to consistently post each day, and sometimes multiple times per day.

You don’t need to meet face to face with someone to get your business cards seen. In most cases, retargeting is the easiest and most cost effective PPC method since you’re marketing to people who have already shown interest in your services.

This will help keep your business top-of-mind to potential clients within the same industry as you. While it might feel like you are writing the same blog post over and over, you can target different types of businesses. While it can be a little difficult to present a portfolio, like other creative freelancers, you can collect case studies from your clients. Using case studies is a great way to show potential clients the value of your services.

How Do I Sell Myself As A Bookkeeper?

Stick to a positive message, search far and wide for clients, and stay organized. Regardless of your How do bookkeepers get clients approach to expanding your client base, consider how you represent both your business and yourself.

Find bookkeepers that are similar in your skill set and experience to help gauge what you should be charging. Even as the nature of business changes, one job that is always in demand is bookkeeping. Bookkeepers are essential for other businesses to thrive, making sure that they’re keeping track of their financials correctly and on the right track to grow. We believe everyone should be able to make financial decisions with confidence. How are you going to communicate with your clients via email? But, I started to get crap from the people I networked with saying they didn’t think just a “@gmail.com” email is professional enough.

Just because you’re not a Bay area startup, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have an elevator pitch. You never know when you’ll have an opportunity to promote your business or run into someone who may need your services. They will be more than happy to tell you what is on their mind. If you listen to what they share with you there will be plenty of opportunities to help them. I did it when business slowed and picked up several new clients but you can do it any time. Buying a sponsored booth at a conference can be a great way to get new clients if you’re ready to drop the money and hustle hard.

I’m talking about doing good, personalized outreach to your ideal client. Agencies can be a strong partner for almost any professional service. If a business needs marketing services they most likely need other professional services as well. Marketing agencies can be a great way to get clients, even if you run another marketing agency. Perhaps you specialize in content marketing and there’s another agency in your area that does only web design. If you’ve got a following on social media, or a big email list, webinars can be a great way to convert that audience into clients.

Author: Mark Kennedy