What Accountants Need to Know about Branding

Branding isn’t just the reserve of ecommerce brands. As an accountant, you also need to consider your brand, and that’s true whether you work alone out of a home office or run an accounting firm.

Here’s what you need to know about branding as an accountant:

It Could Be a Difference Maker

You’re in the market for a new content agency to manage your SEO.

You find two suitable options. The first has a professional website and affordable services, but it’s all very clinical and clean. There is no depth or personality.

The second is a little more expensive, but it has its own style and unique approach. It also tells a brand story that grabs your attention and makes you care about the company, its founder, and its employees.

Which one do you choose?

Obviously, it would be the latter option, even if it ends up being more expensive.

Humans are drawn by stories. They seek originality, and they want to work with people they know, even if that knowledge is limited to a personal backstory.

It beats a generic site that looks like a souped-up version of the site builder template.

If your customers are faced with a similar option—torn between your clear branding and a competitor’s generic approach—they will always choose you.

It’s More Than a Logo and an Idea

Branding is not just about creating a logo, throwing together a brand story, and giving yourself a basic USP.

It goes much deeper than that.

Your branding should be evident in everything that you do:

• Voice: Humanize and connect. You’re a professional offering a very serious service, but that doesn’t mean you need to be robotic. Adopting a lighter approach could make you more amenable while lessening some of your clients’ anxieties during a very stressful time.
• Visuals: Your logo, banners, and even the color scheme that you use must be consistent and on brand. Choose colors associated with stability and professionalism (blue and grey) instead of ones we associate with passion, fire, and anger (red).
• Content: Your voice should be evident in your content, but the content itself also forms part of your branding. Are you the happy, friendly accountant there to ease everyone’s concerns about personal and business taxes or the serious professional who informs in an academic way?
• Your Values: The old “show, don’t tell” doesn’t just apply to creative writing. If you have values, such as putting the customers first, using the latest tech, and supporting sustainable methods, be active and not passive. Show that you care by offering refund policies and responding to bad reviews. Show you’re devoted to sustainable practices by adopting them and giving some money to eco-friendly causes.

You Need to Be Unique and Clear

Your messaging should include the things that make you unique, and they should be expressed clearly and concisely.

Okay, so the idea of being unique is a little overdone, and it’s not really possible anymore. Every logical approach has already been done thousands of times, and unless you dress your employees in clown costumes and promise free balloon animals with each filing, you can’t be truly unique.

That’s not really the goal. You just have to give off an impression of originality. In other words, steer away from the normal and the mundane and do something that feels fresh and different, even though neither of those things is really possible in a country of 1.4 million accountants and 1.4 million USPs.

Of course, some aspects need to be 100% unique, including the images you use and the content you create. Regurgitating content and using basic template logos won’t put you in good stead with customers and it won’t help your SEO, either.

It’s All About Consistency

Your branding should be consistent in everything that you do, which means your message should be spread throughout your organization.

It’s not uncommon to see a website that adopts a formal, professional, and academic approach, only to check the blog and find light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek posts.

It’s not because the owners suddenly forgot what they were doing, but that they forgot to give the blogger the same guidelines they gave the copywriter/developer.

It Needs Ongoing Work

Don’t like your branding? Change it. You don’t need to stick with something that you don’t like. Your customers and employees will get used to the new approach, and while it can be expensive and time-consuming to change, it’s worth the effort if it’s best for the business.

You should also run regular checks on your promotions, written content, images, video, and everything else you publish to ensure that it stays on message.

As for when and why you would change, that’s up to you. Most of the time, these changes are influenced by fluctuating consumer tastes. Other times, it’s because you find yourself doing more business in a specific demographic/industry that you didn’t foresee.

It Doesn’t Need to Be Expensive

First you had to pay a development team to create your website, then you needed designers for your ads and images, writers for your content, SEO consultants for your SEO campaigns, and marketing experts for PPC campaigns.

Now you need someone to manage your branding—where is that money going to come from?

While there are marketing experts that can help with your branding, it’s an expense that can be avoided, or at least minimized.

You can create your own branding, jotting down ideas of what colors you want to use and what your voice should sound like while including some examples of similar sites. You can then give these guidelines to anyone who works on your website, whether it’s the team tasked with creating content or the one writing your marketing copy.

Summary: Branding for Accountants

Branding can seem complicated, but it doesn’t need to be. It can be as simple as you want it to be—limited to no more than a particular visual style and brand voice.

The key is to ensure it is consistent, fresh, and—somewhat—original. Once you get these things right, it becomes easier to cement your brand in the minds of consumers and you should see an uptick in conversions, as well as loyalty and lifetime value.