Marketing Lingo for Accountants

You need more clients, but you’re a numbers guy. You typically leave the marketing to someone else, but you don’t have the capital to accommodate a big-budget marketing agency.

It’s time to learn the basics! Even if you eventually hire an SEO expert, social media marketer, or paid ads consultant, understanding the basics will help you to decide when and where you need help while also making it easier to understand the campaigns they run and the results they achieve.

Here’s some common marketing lingo that all accountants must learn.

Types of Marketing

Whether you’re paying per click, relying on organic Google results, or focusing on social media platforms, there are various ways to market your business and several key terms to learn:

SEO

Stands for “search engine optimization” and refers to a series of strategies used to increase a website’s ranking in search engines. Most of the attention is on Google, as it gets over 91% of total online searches, but these tactics also apply to Bing, DuckDuckGo, Ecosia, and other search engines.

• Bounce Rate: A customer “bounces” when they click a link, visit a site, and then leave before visiting any other links on that site. It suggests low relevancy and engagement, which is bad news.
• Backlinks: Links placed on third-party sites that point back to the target site. They help to build authority, saying to the search engines, “You trust this site and it links to us, so you should trust us as well”.
• Content Marketing: An all-encompassing strategy that uses content (articles, videos, podcasts) to target customers and increase sales.
• Black Hat/White Hat: A white hat strategy is one that follows best practices and gives Google the content it wants to see. Black hat SEO uses strategies that trick the search engines, getting results at the expense of potential penalties.
• SERPs: A “Search Engine Results Page” is simply the page that appears following a search.

Paid Ads

SEO isn’t free, as you need to pay for writers, editors, developers, and designers—or hire an SEO team to do everything. But when people reference “paid ads”, they’re talking about marketing methods that charge you for impressions, clicks, engagements, and conversions.

• Paid Search: Placements that appear in search results based on specific keywords.
• Display Ads: These ads appear as banners and text links on third-party sites.
• Landing Page: The first page that a customer visits. Marketing teams often direct customers to specific landing pages as opposed to homepages or product pages, allowing them to easily check specific metrics and funnel customers to sales pages.
• Google Ads and Bing Ads: Advertising platforms based on the Google or Bing search engine. Google Ads also includes display ads that span the vast Google network, as well as YouTube ads.

Social Media Marketing

Most of your customers have social media, and social media marketing is how you target them.

Platforms like Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and X (Twitter) don’t charge their users to sign up, so most of their money comes from marketing.

It’s competitive, but this option will allow you to target users from hyper-specific regions and with specific interests. Social media platforms have a lot of information on their users, and advertisers can use this to their advantage.

• Engagement Rate: The total number of users who engage with the ad, such as clicking a link or sharing a post.
• A/B Testing: Advertisers create two ad variations, run them as concurrent campaigns, and then stick with the one that gets the best results before testing that against another campaign and repeating. These methods are also used in other forms of advertising.

Direct Mail

Direct mail or snail mail advertising uses physical letters and pamphlets to contact customers directly. Even in the internet age, it’s still a common way to market products and services, and it can also be effective.

Email Marketing

Whether you’re gathering the email addresses of existing customers or offering freebies to new ones in exchange for their details, email marketing uses newsletters to inform, educate, and sell.

• CTR (Click Through Rate): The percentage of total recipients that clicked the link in the email.
• Double Opt-in: A two-step confirmation process that users must follow to sign up to an email list.

Alternative Marketing

Alternative marketing uses non-traditional methods to grab a customer’s attention at a time when they are overwhelmed by ads and blind to traditional methods. It can include practices such as:

• Buzz marketing: Uses tactics that generate word-of-mouth exposure.
• Guerrilla marketing: Low-cost marketing designed to exploit unique approaches as a way of building brand exposure.
• Lifestyle marketing: Targeting consumers based on their values, morals, and aspirations.

Retargeting

Many marketing methods focus on acquiring new customers, but retargeting is all about targeting customers who already know about the brand and may have purchased before.

The goal is to increase lifetime value, and these methods are usually cheaper, as the consumer is already primed and knows about the brand.

Branding

Branding is a strategy that revolves around increasing brand exposure and building reputation. It’s not just for ecommerce brands, and is something that accountants should also consider, as they need to build a strong personal brand and a reputation as a trustworthy professional.

Marketing Metrics

A key performance indicator (KPI) is a metric (a quantifiable measurement) that is integral to the brand and its marketing campaigns. Common metrics include:

CPL (Cost Per Lead)

The cost for every lead, defined by actions such as signing up to a newsletter, booking a consultation, or paying for accounting services.

CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)

The price that the brand pays for each new customer. If the total spend was $1,000 and they acquired 10 new customers, it equates to a CPA of $100.

CLV (Customer Lifetime Value)

The average spend per customer during their lifetime interactions. This metric is vital to paid advertising, as it represents the true value of an ad and can show positive results even if the initial customer spend was less than the cost of acquisition.

ROI (Return on Investment)

The total income earned through marketing methods expressed as a percentage of the investment. Your ROI is 10% if you spend $1,000 and generate $1,100 in income.

ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend)

An ROI that focuses solely on advertising cost. If you spend $100 and generate $500 on a specific advertising campaign, the ROAS is 5, as the income was 5 times greater than the cost.

Conversion Rate Optimization

Strategies designed to improve the conversion rate, which is the rate at which visitors convert into customers.

Summary: Leave the Lingo to Someone Else

Marketing is complicated, and if you’re used to the numbers side of the business, it’s a lot to take in. There are experts who can do the work for you, though, including our dedicated SEO services targeted toward accountants like you.

We can perform the audits, create the plans, and produce the content needed to improve your rankings for both local and national results. Contact us today to get a quote and learn more about the services we provide.