Blog
May 2025
In an increasingly competitive market, a strong accountancy marketing strategy is not just a nice to have, it’s essential for growth and business development.
We recently conducted research into the marketing practices of accountancy firms operating in the South West, looking at how they compare in terms of reputation, visibility and engagement. We identified what these firms are doing well and where there are missed opportunities or room for improvement. We found, overwhelmingly, that the firms with the most effective marketing have a focused integrated programme, incorporating digital marketing, branding and content strategies. For a full copy of The Transform Report: Accountancy Practices Competitor Insights 2025 guide, download a copy here.
Good marketing leads to more business opportunities and greater retention of existing clients. The five key benefits of an effective marketing programme are:
Strategies such as content marketing, branding and digital marketing play a crucial role when it comes to enhancing your firm’s visibility and reputation.
Even the most established firms need a pipeline of new clients. Marketing helps to showcase your services, expertise and credibility to potential clients, including people who aren’t actively looking for an accounting firm yet.
Through content marketing, you can position yourself as a thought leader, boosting credibility and visibility while creating a lasting impact. Educational content is memorable – even if someone is not looking for an accountant right now, content marketing increases the chances that they’ll remember you at a later date when they do need one.
Marketing isn't just for attracting new clients, it’s also a great way to secure additional work from your existing client base. By highlighting different services that existing clients may not be aware of, you open up new opportunities for collaboration.
With an estimated 40,000 accountancy firms in the UK, standing out is more challenging than ever. Effective marketing helps a firm stand out from the competition by clearly communicating points of difference, such as specialisations, industry focus, technology use, or client approach.
Accountancy Age found that 72% of UK accountancy firms’ websites fail to differentiate themselves from the competition.
Reputation shapes how people perceive and value your business, directly influencing how much they evaluate your services to be worth. Reputation is estimated to make up 4-5% of a business’ yearly income, underscoring its strategic importance as a business growth driver. In fact, a recent report found that 61% of businesses report a direct link between their online reputation and revenue.
Strong marketing attracts strong talent when recruiting. A firm with a large brand presence and a strong reputation is more appealing to job seekers.
Marketing for accounting firms is most effective when campaigns are integrated, meaning multiple channels of communication are used to promote a consistent message and reach a varied audience. Not only are you likely to reach a wider audience with an integrated campaign, but the audience you do reach will see your message multiple times, across multiple platforms, reinforcing your presence in their mind. That’s why it’s essential to incorporate branding, digital marketing and content marketing into your programme.
Branding is much more than just a logo. It’s about your firm’s identity and how you want to be perceived. It’s the visual language you will use to attract the right audience. Consistent branding builds recognition, creates trust, and establishes your points of difference.
Branding starts with messaging and positioning (i.e. who you are, what you do and why you’re different) and involves strategically selecting your firm’s identity, typography, and tone of voice, to ensure consistency.
Digital marketing refers to a wide range of services including Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), pay-per-click campaigns (PPC), blogs, email marketing, social media marketing (both paid and organic) and web design.
When used effectively, digital marketing can maximise an accountancy firm’s online visibility, boost engagement and deliver excellent ROI. It’s a powerful tool for driving business growth and ensuring your content stands out to the people that need to see it.
The best way to effectively execute a digital marketing strategy that achieves results is to engage a consultant. Digital marketing consultants are experts at understanding how to reach your audience by researching their behaviours and preferences, selecting the right digital channels to reach them and cut through noise.
If you’re interested in learning more about digital marketing consultants, read our blog How to find a digital marketing consulting service that fits your business, or discover our digital marketing services.
All accountancy firms should have a social media strategy. Social media gives you a platform to engage with existing and potential clients and share valuable insights and updates.
Perhaps more importantly, by featuring your people and culture, a social media presence humanises your brand. People want to work with people, not just businesses. And they want to work with people they like. Prioritise engagement from your team. Research for The Transform Report: Accountancy Practices Competitor Insights 2025 revealed that the most successful social media profiles had strong partner and employee participation – team members were sharing updates, commenting on posts and appearing in the firm’s content.
Unsurprisingly, LinkedIn is the preferred social media platform of choice for accountancy firms with Instagram being a close second and a handful of firms have even embraced TikTok.
Before diving headfirst into a social media platform, be strategic. Assess where you’re most likely to find your target audience and what type of content suits that platform. For example, TikTok requires shorter, more casual videos, while LinkedIn suits short blogs and opinion pieces.
First impressions count – your website is often the first interaction people have with your brand. An optimised website ensures that you attract the right audience, and that audience stays on your website and engaged with your content.
The key to a well-optimised website is twofold: first, incorporate SEO key search terms. Second, ensure you’re getting quality backlinks from credible, high-authority sources. A backlink is created when another website posts a link to yours – the more credible the website posting the link, the better quality the backlink.
This combination of SEO and backlinks ensures that your website appears in search engine results. It’s not as easy, however, as stuffing in as many keywords as you can, or paying a sketchy business for 50,000 backlinks. Search engines, and increasingly generative engines (e.g. ChatGPT), review web content to ensure it’s trustworthy, accurate, authoritative and written by a credible source. Search results are ordered accordingly. This is why a robust content marketing strategy is essential.
Content marketing refers to the creation, and distribution, of content that offers value i.e. education, entertainment or engagement. Content marketing includes (but isn’t limited to) blogs and articles, insight papers, podcasts, short-form videos, the words on your website, newsletters and social media posts.
The key to good content creation for an accountancy firm is in the value you’re delivering. Whether it’s industry insights, opinions on trends, forecasts and predictions, demystification of complex topics, or regulatory/tax updates, the person consuming your content needs to get something from it.
Content marketing has a variety of benefits –
Our research indicates that advice is the most popular form of content for accountancy firms, including tax updates, compliance guides and advice to business owners. Trends was the second-most-popular form of content, for example insights into budget and tax changes. Company news was also a regularly used format – these types of good news stories get great engagement when shared to social media.
We found that two underutilised formats were client news and ‘how to’ guides. Highlighting client success stories showcases your work and builds credibility and trustworthiness, while guides are highly valuable, not just to potential human clients, but to search engines as well. Incorporating these types of content into your strategy not only sets you apart from other accountancy firms but also provides added value that clients can’t find elsewhere.
Another marketing tool that is complementary to content marketing, and equally as important, is media relations. An effective media relations strategy ensures your firm is present in the public domain, increasing brand awareness and enhancing reputation. For an accountancy firm, there are two main strategies -
Media relations is also important for building those quality backlinks we referred to earlier – the more high-authority media outlets that link to your website, the better your credibility, and therefore search engine ranking.
Our report highlights that while many accounting firms in the South West are doing well in areas such as website optimisation and social media strategy, there is still significant opportunity to refine and elevate strategies for better impact. The insights from this report reinforce the importance of tailored marketing programmes executed by specialists with the understanding and experience in implementing technically specific strategies.
Transform Comms is a full-service marketing consultancy with a team of experts specialising in marketing strategy, web design, branding, content marketing, videography, public relations and digital marketing (to name a few). We provide a unified and holistic approach to marketing, working closely with you to understand your vision, objectives and business strategy to design a marketing programme that effectively achieves the desired results.
We’ve worked with professional service organisations for over 15 years and understand how to design integrated marketing programmes for measurable success and maximum impact – what we’ve done for others, we can do for you.
If you’d like to elevate your firm’s marketing strategy, and align it to your growth objectives, get in touch.
We're always up for a coffee and conversation.
Fill in the form, drop us a line at info@transformcomms.co.uk, or call us on 01225 863846. Better yet, drop in to our converted barn and film studio near Bath and Bristol.
Let’s transform.
Together.
