Accounting and Marketing are becoming closer every day since both departments must work together to monitor sales, trends, and to manage the effectiveness of marketing campaigns.
A recent report has shown that marketing demands, regulations and client demands - are causing a shift in accountancy - towards technological adoption.
The following article summarizes Accounting Marketing’s six hot trends for 2020, to which CPA’s should take into account in order to be a part of the 2.0 era.
(1) Automated Accounting Processes
Companies nowadays are more and more inclined to invest in automated solutions. This is because automation eliminates confusion and minimizes errors.
The big question is: do in-house accountants have to worry about getting replaced by bots? According to an ACCA (Association of Chartered Certified Accountants) study, over 50% (!) of C-level executives in the accounting industry expect the development of automated accounting systems.
In the coming years, it will have the highest impact across several industries, allowing accountants to utilize data and optimize processes.
(2) Big Data and Internet of Things (IoT)
Just as big data plays nowadays a crucial role in almost every sector, it plays a crucial role in the accounting industry. Big Data gives business leaders a huge amount of information about client’s preferences and behavior.
Such feature permits CPA’s to focus on business plans and identify potential issues and, also, make insightful forecasts for clients.
(3) Connection Convergence
Accounting leaders are adapting every day to the trend of allowing their employees to work remotely. According to a Convergence Coaching’s report published in 2018, about 43% of CPA firms are offering their employees the chance to work from home due to its practical benefits.
This trend will help accelerate the internationalization of the accounting industry, as bookkeeping service companies will be able to service clients around the world without the need to travel.
(4) Focus on Data Analytics
Accountants are taking on new roles as advisors, with unique skills sets that revolve around analyzing data. Analyzing numbers helps businesses come up with valuable insights, which enables them to identify process improvements, as well as increase efficiency and manage risks better.
The key is to offer clients a standardized menu of products and services, while having the ability to customize the process for individual clients. This is done by taking advantage of workflow technology and incorporating software to build scale and create efficient service delivery.
(5) Utilizing Social Media
The use of social media in the accounting industry is becoming a powerful branding and sales tool that helps accounting firms to gain more exposure. Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter help accountants to keep in touch with their clients and increase brand engagement.
Furthermore, social media helps consumers reach out to businesses in case they are dissatisfied with a service or a product or need some assistance.
(6) SEO for marketing channels
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the practice of increasing the quantity and quality of traffic to your website through organic search engine results. SEO and Marketing have to work hand-in-hand, as SEO provides a smart algorithms that allow only a select few websites to rank on the first page of the search engines such as Google, Bing and Yahoo.
It is fundamental for business to leverage SEO, integrating all the marketing channels with SEO, so that customer engagement is high everywhere, and not just the website. These marketing channels include PR, social media, billboards or any other platform that can benefit a business’s organic performance as a whole.
In Conclusion
Automatic services have become commonplace in many sectors of the financial services industry. In order to own an advantage over the competition, accountants must adopt this marketing and technological strategies.
The main goal is to attract clients by providing modern, technological, fast solutions, combined with human advisor’s work.
