Growing your accounting practice

with content marketing

COMPANION WORKBOOK
Introduction
Welcome to the video course “Growing your accounting practice with content marketing,” specially designed for Quickbooks
Online ProAdvisors and featuring Jason Blumer, founder of Blumer CPAs and CEO of Thriveal CPA Network.
Designed to be used in conjunction with the video course, this companion workbook contains:
• Four chapters, mirroring the flow of the video course;
• Summary of key takeaways at the end of each chapter;
• Exercises designed to help you jumpstart your content marketing program

Ready to get started? Let’s go to the video course.

Growing your accounting practice content marketing

Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing
Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks
Chapter 3: Success stories
Chapter 4: Starting your content marketing program
Appendix: Content marketing journey

Introduction 1
Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing
View chapter 1 video

Takeaways Marketing is not the same as selling.

In fact, Peter Drucker’s definition
1 Let’s start at the top: what is marketing? of marketing makes this distinction
clear: "The aim of marketing is to make
Marketing is consistently communicating relevant, actionable information to your selling superfluous."
target market. Regardless of your particular methodology or program, effective
marketing will check these three boxes:
 Relevant to your target market
 Consistent
 Actionable

2 Content marketing is a technique that involves creating and distributing content

that has value to your potential customers.
Rather than pitch your practice, develop valuable content that positions you as an
expert. If you do this consistently, your target audience will come to trust you and
perhaps even hire you!

3 Anyone can succeed at content marketing.

You don’t have to be a natural at marketing.
You don’t even have to be a great writer.
You just have to develop valuable, relevant content consistently, so you stay top-
of-mind in the marketplace.

Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing 2

 4 Use the marketing funnel to help you plan your content marketing. Achieve a good grasp of the
The marketing funnel can help you visualize the customer's journey. marketing funnel.
This will help you better conceive,
plan, execute and measure your
Awareness content marketing program so that you can
reach your end goal of growing your
client base.

Interest

Action

Advocacy

Your content reaches your target audience and makes them aware of your
services, and this awareness fills the top of the funnel. As your audience continues
to engage with you because they keep reading, watching or listening to your
fabulous content, you drive them deeper into the funnel where some actually
become viable leads, and eventually, clients.

Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing 3

MARKETING FUNNEL

Your customer’s journey Your strategy Your execution*

Let your target market know that you exist. Create and share content that has value to
Awareness To build this awareness, you want to reach your target customers. Examples: blogs,
as many target customers as possible so webinars, white papers, and news stories
they can consider your services. with commentary. Encourage your audience
to follow you on social media and then ask
them to share their contact information by
subscribing to your content.

Interest Deepen your relationship with the potential

customers who have shown interest in your
For example, if they’ve shared their email
address with you, you can engage them
content or your services. further with a monthly newsletter to provide
more targeted content. Example: deep dives
into more technical topics.

Action Encourage potential customers to get

to know you better through one-on-one
Ask potential customers to take an online
assessment of their needs and offer free
meetings and other interactions. consultation to explore how you can
help them.

Advocacy Cultivate loyalty among your customers

so they can advocate for you. Loyal To reward your loyal customers, provide
customers not only purchase (and exclusive content.
re-purchase) from you but are more likely
to refer business to you and share positive
reviews on social media.

* These are examples and not meant to

be exhaustive.

Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing 4

Exercise
Define your target market.
For any marketing activity to be successful, you must speak to the needs of a specific target market.
• What exactly do you offer, and to whom?
• What’s your niche?
• Which market represents your sweet spot?

Need help identifying your target market? Use attributes like industry, company size, revenues and location to define your target
market. Here are a few examples:
• Solo practitioner law offices in Colorado
• Fast food franchisees generating $1M to $3M annually within 100 miles of Austin
• Businesses that are structured as partnerships in southern Florida

My target market is defined by these attributes:

Geography:

Industry:

Annual revenue:

No. of employees:

Other:

Chapter 1: Introduction to content marketing 5

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks
View chapter 2 video

Takeaways Keep the marketing funnel in mind.

Think about which points you
1 Use these five building blocks to launch your content marketing promotion. want to influence in the marketing
funnel. If you want to drive action,
5 you’ll want to incentivize your audience to
Did your audience do what you want share their contact information with you. How
them to do? Review the performance of do you do that? Put your content behind a
your marketing promotion and optimize
Performance form that requests people’s email. You can
continuously for greater success. serve this form on your website or build
a lead-generation ad campaign with your
4 business’ social media account.
Where will you publish and share
your content so your audience
can see it? LinkedIn? Twitter?
Distribution
Publishing vs. distributing content
Facebook? Other channels?
If you only publish your
commentary on your website,
3 chances are this is not going to reach your
Link your CTA to your goal. What do you target audience. You need to go where your
want your audience to do? You could ask
to share their contact information with you
Call-to-action audience is (e.g. social media or their inbox)
and either broadcast your commentary
in exchange for access to your content. there or drive people from there to your
website. Either way, these are different
2 content distribution methods.
Develop content your potential customers
want to consume. As you start out, you can
Content simply share commentary on events that
may impact them. Campaigns vs. promotions
In this course, we use these
two terms interchangeably and
1 primarily consider promotions
Define your goal, which will
that you can do at no cost. As your content
influence your campaign’s
Goal call-to-action (CTA).
marketing program gains momentum,
consider running paid advertising campaigns
to get more eyes on your content.

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks 6

 2 Five tips for generating great content Find your ideas first.
Don’t confuse content with the
1. Know your audience and know what they want. medium through which you’re
expressing your content. Whether
2. Be authentic. Share content that you are familiar with. you express your thoughts in a blog, a social
media post, a podcast or webinar, the
3. Content is everywhere so keep your ears to the ground for ideas that you can underlying content must speak to the needs
translate into blogs, social media posts and webinars. of your target market.

4. Create a system to capture your content ideas and schedule your promotions.
Start easy and stay steady.
5. Choose an appropriate medium to communicate your content. You don’t have
Get your content marketing
to express all of your content through words. program underway by using low-
touch methods while prioritizing
consistency so you can build
momentum over time. As a starting point,
consider posting commentary, tips and blogs
directly in on your social media page. As
you build your audience, direct them to your
website to sign up for your newsletter, ebook
or webinar.

Many ideas, many formats.

Another way to fire up your content
program is to publish a newsletter
for your clients. As you collect more
subscribers, simply add them to your mailing
list. Remember content isn’t limited to written
copy. Over time, you can also branch out to
podcasting, video, and live webinars.

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks 7

Exercises
It’s time to get tactical and think about how to get your content marketing program off the ground.

Brainstorm: Put yourself in the shoes of your potential customers.

1) As defined in exercise from chapter 1, my target market is:

2) The issues my potential customers face and care about are:

3) As I create content based on what my customers care about, I need to make sure they reach my target audience. I can
reach my potential customers through the following social media channels:

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks 8

 Brainstorm: What topics can you write or make a video about? This includes resharing compelling content you see on social
media and making it your own by adding commentary that reflects your unique point of view. Jot down as many as you can –
you can refine later, but try to come up with at least five ideas:

1)

2)

3)

4)

5)

6)

7)

8)

9)

10)

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks 9

Plan your first three content marketing promotions.
From the previous exercise, use this template to plan your first content marketing promotions. We’ve provided two examples
for inspiration.

Topic Medium Goal Call-to-action Distribution

Example 1 Growing your business Share an article on this topic with Awareness Read social media post Facebook
commentary.

Example 2 Tax season planning Blog post published to my website Drive interest Share email in a form on LinkedIn
with a call-to-action (CTA) at end of my website
blog to subscribe to my newsletter.

Now that you have sown some seeds for starting your content marketing campaign, establish a cadence on your calendar.
If you’re unsure what is the right cadence, start slowly dedicating two-hour blocks every two weeks. The key is to maintain your
cadence over time, so don’t try to be too ambitious. In case you’re wondering, Jason's content marketing production activities occur
weekly while social media scheduling and promotions occur monthly.

Chapter 2: Content marketing building blocks 10

Chapter 3: Success stories
View chapter 3 video

Takeaways
1 How do you know your content resonated with your audience?
It’s all in your metrics.
• How many views did you get?
• Did people sign up for your newsletter?
• How many times was your content shared?

2 What are the attributes of great content?

If your audience answers yes to these questions, then you have a winner.
• Was the content valuable or useful in some way?
• Did it provide an insight, help someone overcome a challenge or add to a conversation?
• Other factors like presentation and delivery help people engage and connect with the content
» Was the speaker or writer clear?
» Was the content easy to follow?

3 Mix things up.

Content does not always have to be serious and actionable. You may want to create
content that make you more relatable. For instance, you can post fun content to reveal
the light side of your personality. In many cases, people gravitate to content that are
humanizing, so sharing a personal side of your team like Jason did might earn you
some shares.

Chapter 3: Success stories 11

Exercise
Did Jason’s successful content examples inspire more ideas for your content marketing program?
Capture your ideas in the table below.

Topic Medium Distribution

Chapter 3: Success stories 12

Chapter 4: Starting your content
marketing program
View chapter 4 video

Takeaways Give yourself room to ease into

content marketing.
Start with what you’re most familiar
1 Out of the gate, don’t test the limits of your capabilities and time budget. with. If you are using LinkedIn
Begin seeding your content in a low-touch way and aim for small victories. and you know that many of your potential
customers use LinkedIn, that’s a channel to
2 Pace yourself because marketing is a never-ending journey. start your content marketing engine!

Remember, repetition through strong messages and valuable content is what

breeds trust. Start with your calendar.
Block out time on your calendar
3 Always review your analytics. at a regular cadence to keep
executing on your content marketing program.
See what resonates with your audience as they respond to your content, then
apply this knowledge and experiment with different content ideas and format.

Chapter 4: Starting your content marketing program 13

Exercise
Starting your content marketing program.
Plot your immediate action items to get your content program off the ground. Try to bring along some help on your journey.

People or communities I’m going

to leverage to help me with
content marketing. They will keep
me accountable, inspire me or
provide help.

My three action items to get my

content marketing program off
the ground.

The three most valuable

takeaways from this course I plan
to return to when I encounter
challenges in my content journey.

Chapter 4: Starting your content marketing program 14

Can you check these boxes?
 I know my target audience.
 I have at least five content ideas that appeals to my target audience.
 I have applied a regular cadence on my calendar to plan and execute content marketing.

If you checked all three, congratulations! You’re ready start your content marketing engine.

You made it!

This is the end of the course.
What now? Remember, writing a blog isn’t going to get you clients. Marketing is all about repetition and relevance. You need to
keep up your momentum and make content marketing a steady habit.

“I’ve been doing this for over 20 years ... I

learned all of this by taking small steps and
doing it consistently and with discipline...
Anybody can market their business. I’m living
proof of that.”
– JASON BLUMER

Chapter 4: Starting your content marketing program 15

Appendix: Content marketing journey
Need more inspiration? Here’s one potential path for growing and evolving your content marketing program over time.

Month
0
GET TACTICAL DEVELOP CONTENT REVIEW ANALYTICS
• Calendar your content marketing • Reshare other people’s posts or news What are your social media metrics telling
activities at a frequency of once a month. stories with commentary in social media. you? Are certain topics performing better
• Get in the habit of looking for content • Write long-form blog using native than others? Are your own blog views
ideas: read industry news regularly and functions in social media. For instance, getting more views than reshares?
follow people who can provide fodder Facebook and LinkedIn provide
for your content. functions that enable you to author and
publish blogs directly in their app.

Month
3

REVIEW ANALYTICS DEVELOP CONTENT GET TACTICAL

Now that you’ve experimented with media • Blog on your website and get people to • Kick off a newsletter series for your
like video, what are the metrics telling you? subscribe to your content. customers and add new subscribers to
Use this to inform your future efforts. • Use native video capabilities in LinkedIn receive your newsletter.
or Facebook to deliver your commentary • Build your audience. Follow your
via video. customers and potential customers to
inspire them to follow you back.

Month
6

GET TACTICAL DEVELOP CONTENT REVIEW ANALYTICS

Perhaps you started with a goal of Host a webinar on a hot topic. Your growing body of content means you
generating awareness. If you’re ready to have more feedback from your audience
move down the funnel to generate interest, to experiment, make tweaks and optimize
build a form on your website to capture your content strategy.
your leads, i.e., contact information people
share with you.

Appendix: Content marketing journey 16

NOTES:

Growing your accounting practice with content marketing 17