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Increased Content Development Rate from 40% to 82% of Targeted Benchmark
Situation: My CPA firm was not publishing enough thought leadership due time constraints facing our accountants, advisors and marketing team. I saw we needed to innovate our approach to produce more insightful and high-quality content.
Action Taken: Investing in the use of the generative AI tool, ChatGPT, and in collaboration with our accountants to identify client pain points, I accelerated the marketing team’s ability to develop high-quality drafts of more content than ever before and cut time requests to our accountants to “review-only” tasks.
Outcome: Marketing increased its annual content production and publishing rate from 40% to 82% of the targeted benchmark and cut its CPAs’ commitment to content publishing by 70%.
Launched the Firm’s First Business Development Program Capturing 400+ Leads and $1+ Million in Revenue
Situation: My CPA firm had no system to track incoming service queries and new opportunities were getting lost as a result. I saw a need to create a managed pipeline to organize new opportunities and create internal collaborations and a tracking system to keep business development opportunities moving forward.
Action Taken: With no CRM capabilities or business development system in place at the firm, I launched an initiative to route all leads to Marketing to be tracked on an Excel sheet, account for each step in the sales process and define team member responsibilities for following up.
Outcome: The pipeline program eventually was adopted as the firm’s business development tool. As a result, the pipeline process tracked more than 400 leads accounting for $1+ million in marketing-qualified revenue and our sales process became driven by a defined system.
Enhanced Website User Experience to Grow Engagement from 1 to 350+ Leads
Situation: My CPA firm’s website was outdated. Over the period of a year, the site generated a single lead. I saw the need to launch a modern website to make a stronger brand statement and to ensure the new website encouraged visitors and made it easier for them to leave service inquiries.
Action Taken: Working with an outsourced web development firm I had a relationship with, I launched a new modernized website that offered easy access to the contact form from every page and reflected a firm for current times to encourage user confidence and engagement.
Outcome: The firm immediately began seeing positive engagement results including the first lead coming through the website within a week. More than 350 individuals eventually submitted service inquiries through the site and we ended up needing a sales pipeline to manage new opportunities.
Cut Newsletter Program Expenses by 32% While Harnessing Generative AI Content Creation
Situation: My CPA firm merged in a practice that offered new services, requiring visibility among clients and stakeholders. As the firm’s marketing director, I realized we needed to find a source of content reflecting the new service lines and develop a more comprehensive newsletter program.
Action Taken: Recognizing a paid article library could provide the content we needed and that a new tool, ChatGPT, could assist, I created a new newsletter series, retired our legacy tool and harnessed the power of generative AI to create targeted articles, cutting the need to purchase as many articles.
Outcome: The firm’s marketing team cut article content purchase expenses by 32% and drafted 15 articles for publication targeted to our audience more than those available from the third-party library.
Increased LinkedIn Engagement by 89%
Situation: My CPA firm’s LinkedIn engagement was acceptable (316 click-throughs in six months). But the marketing team wanted to increase engagement in two areas: the awareness of service offerings and awareness of recruitment-related activities.
Action Taken: The marketing team developed a LinkedIn calendar and scheduled a series of posts in Hootsuite to run during a 5-month period. The calendar included identifying and scheduling recent service-related posts and partnering with Recruitment to receive career fair content.
Outcome: Marketing drove awareness that resulted in the following during a five-month period including an 89% increase in LinkedIn click-throughs to the website and a 33.6% increase in LinkedIn impressions.
Increased Earned Media Placements by 65% in One Year
Situation: An engineering consulting firm wanted to increase the visibility of its thought leadership to potential clients. It retained me as a dedicated public relations practitioner to identify digital and print publications popular with buyers and establish relationships with trade and business media.
Action Taken: Working with engineering project managers inside the firm and an outsourced public relations firm, I proactively built relationships with editors of targeted publications and packaged project success stories into media releases and pitches for appropriate digital and print publications.
Outcome: As a result of the strategic public relations outreach, the firm benefited from a 65% increase in article placements in a single year, 19 interview/quote placements in trade media and 20 project success stories shared with internal audiences.