Dave Cain: Welcome to unsuitable on Rea Radio, the award-winning financial services and business advisory podcast that challenges your old school business practices and the traditional business suit culture. Our guests are industry professionals and experts who will challenge you to think beyond the suit and tie while offering you meaningful, modern solutions to help you enhance your company’s growth. I’m your host, Dave Cain.
Dave: By now, you’ve heard about The Golden Rule, that we should always strive to treat others how we would like to be treated, but what if the people you encountered don’t want to be treated the same way as you do? How would you engage with a group of people if you had no idea how to approach them? According to today’s guest, this is just another day in the life of a marketing professional.
Dave: Becca Davis, Director of Practice Growth here at Rea & Associates, has spent more than a decade learning about people and how businesses can better engage potential customers. Today, she’s going to talk about some of the lessons she’s learned along the way while identifying trends that are rapidly reshaping the wonderful world of marketing.
Dave: Welcome back to unsuitable, Becca.
Becca Davis: Thanks, Dave.
Dave: Great. It’s good to have you back.
Becca: Yeah, I’m excited.
Dave: We’ve got a couple… we’re in a bit of a Y in the road here about topic for today. You have your choice, you have a couple of choices.
Becca: Oh, all right!
Dave: We can talk about sports, we can talk about adult situations, or we could talk about how to market your business better.
Becca: Can I have some more information about what adult situations you’re referring to?
Dave: Well, if you pick that, if you pick door number two, we’ll just dive right into that.
Becca: I’m very curious, but I think we should probably talk about marketing.
Dave: Great.
Becca: No sports, for sure.
Dave: No sports, for sure? The Platinum Rule, that’s one of the things that keeps coming up. Talk to me a little bit about The Platinum Rule. We mentioned in the introduction The Golden Rule. Where are we going with The Platinum Rule these days?
Becca: The Platinum Rule is treat people how they want to be treated, and in marketing that plays a role in not everyone is going to respond to the same message. Not everyone is going to respond to the same channel, so you have to really have a good sense of who you’re talking to and what resonates with them. Even if that means sending out 10 different messages 10 different ways, if that’s the way you reach your audience, that’s what you have to do. It’s really just keeping in mind what your audience wants and what’s going to speak to them.
Dave: How in the world do you figure that out?
Becca: Well, if you have access to any of the data, your data can really tell you a lot. Let’s say you send out an email newsletter. You can look at how many times an article is getting opened, how many times they’re clicking on certain links, and if that’s all you can see, you can at least see from a broad sense what your database, what your audience likes. If you’re able to drill down further and see what each specific person is clicking on reading, that’s even better.
Becca: At a bare minimum, just pay attention to what sites on the websites are getting the most traffic, what are articles, what links people are clicking in your emails, what social media posts are getting engagement. That will tell you a lot about what your audience likes.
Dave: Really, what you’re saying is, Hey, man, you got to study your data. You just got to study your analytics, your metrics. Hey, you work for an accounting firm. People ought to love that. You study that stuff all the time. How does it feel to be the Marketing Director for a bunch of CPAs with 12 offices and thousands of different ideas that are very different from yours?
Becca: I love it. I think this is definitely not the career path I thought I would take. I didn’t even know it was a career option, but I’m coming up on 14 years at the firm, so that’s got to say something. No day is the same. Every partner is different. Every business unit that we have is different, so I really enjoy the challenge of digging into what we need to do to help grow the firm.
Dave: We’re going to talk a little bit later on about some of the changes and disruption in the marketing industry. I’ll talk while you have your cocktail over there, that way you can get ready to respond. We mentioned the CPA business, professional services, the marketing in there appears to be way different than many other industries. Would you concur?
Becca: Yeah. I think at the core, it’s a lot of similarities, but professional services definitely is its own animal. It’s not like we’re selling shoes. Selling accounting and business services is a lot different than a consumer product.
Dave: This Golden Rule/Platinum Rule, I want to go back to something I kind of recall you saying or your group saying. It might have been one of your colleague, Bixler I think said this at one time, would be, Hey, we have an idea and some of the partners don’t like it. It’s probably a pretty good idea. Probably will work. Do you remember that?
Becca: Yeah, there is some truth to that. If it makes some people uncomfortable, I think that shows that you’re being a little daring and you’re willing to take a risk. There’s nothing wrong with failing forward. I think not trying something new is worse than trying something new and it not going okay.
Dave: Sure. I’ll take you back in time, and we got to talk about this with our listeners, you certainly were one of the architects of unsuitable on Rea Radio. Do you remember when that idea hit the table?
Becca: Yeah, I thought you guys were all crazy. You and another partner at the time approached me and said, Let’s talk about doing a podcast. I was like, Absolutely nobody wants to listen to that, but I’ll take the meeting. I still was a little bit unsure, but you guys brought some data about who’s listening to podcasts and what it can help do for your brand and how it can help foster relationships and help with the sales process before a sale even begins. Somehow or another, you convinced me it was a good idea.
Dave: Here we are.
Becca: I think it’s going okay.
Dave: Here we are, 184 episodes later and still cooking. I think, again, you and your team received numerous awards once the podcast got off the ground and you guys have done nothing but continue to try to change it. I can think of no better tribute to you and your team than a lot of our competitors have tried to copy the podcast in their space, so congratulations. Hope you keep it going.
Becca: That’s the plan, unless you know something I don’t know.
Dave: Well, I… no, I don’t know anything. I think you’re going to be the guest from now on. You could do that, but your team brings ideas to the podcast that are outside the traditional accounting and auditing and the technical stuff. I think your team has done a great job of listening to the market of what’s important.
Dave: Talk to me about artificial intelligence. I thought that was just a term that the CPA profession, for CPA stuff, was being tossed around. I never thought artificial intelligence was big in marketing, but apparently I’m really wrong. Wouldn’t be the first time.
Becca: There are definitely ways, and of course, they come with the price tag, but to automate some of your marketing and to implement some artificial intelligence. I guess maybe an example of that would be… We just actually started with marketing automation software, so this is pretty new to our firm and we’re not quite fully up and running yet, but one thing you can do is set up like a nurture campaign and send out an email. You can set it up so that, Okay, if this person clicks on this link, in two weeks, send them this piece of content. Two weeks after that, if they click that, send an alert to the sales manager so that they know to follow up.
Becca: You just set it up once and then it just kind of runs itself in the background. They only receive the content that they’re telling you that they’re interested in, so you’re not just yelling out into the void anymore. You’re able to set it up so that… I say content because we do a lot of content marketing as a professional services firm, but even if you are selling tennis shoes, you can still say, Okay, let’s look at this type of shoe. Someone is interested in that. Maybe they’d also be interested in these special insoles. I don’t know, but-
Dave: Chuck Taylor high tops.
Becca: Yeah, sure.
Dave: You probably don’t even know what those are.
Becca: I do.
Dave: Do you?
Becca: I do. It’s just basically letting the software do a lot of the actual execution for you, and then where your brain comes in is setting up the strategy inside the software so that you know you’re going to get the results that you’re looking for.
Dave: This is the cutting edge of marketing now using the artificial intelligence to dive deeper to understand what’s going on?
Becca: Yeah.
Dave: You’re kind of listening, kind of like you’re Alexa at home, just listening. Is it listening?
Becca: I just think that’s so creepy. I can’t get onboard with that.
Dave: You think Alexa is creepy?
Becca: Uh-huh.
Dave: You don’t just like, Hey, a joke for the day or play this song? Play some leftover Salmon or whatever you listen to?
Becca: Yeah, I mean-
Dave: You listen to some really interesting stuff. You do. Trust and transparency in this marketing scheme, where does that fit in?
Becca: Well, the best brands out there are very secure in who they are as a brand and they know that people need to trust them and to buy from them, especially for professional services. We need to be authentic about who we are, about how we do business, about what types of clients we want to work with, about what motivates us in terms of values, how we give back to the community.
Becca: Those are all things that people want to know, and especially the younger generation. They’re used to having information about everybody. They’ve grown up with Facebook, and I know Facebook I guess is like the old fogy thing, but they can think of anybody and look up a profile about them. The companies need to be the same and need to be very honest about who they are and what they stand for.
Dave: I want to look… keep on that conversation and go to Rea’s website. Now, I’m pretty partial. Obviously, I am, as a long-term employee, but I know you guys spent a lot of time reengineering that website, and I happen to think it’s really a cool website. I’ve been …
Becca: Thanks.
Dave: Going there to kind of look at stuff and I thought, Wow, where did they get that? There’s some really interesting stuff. Where did you… how did you put that all together? The website? This is part of the trust and transparency thing and the branding and all of that, and it seems like that vehicle just pulls it all together for the firm.
Becca: Well, thanks. The main navigation for our website is the menu that you see across the top, and the menu options are, People, Clients, Growth, and Firm, and we got those four areas from our firm strategic plan. Those are the four things that as a firm we are dedicated to. Everything on our website falls under one of those categories. We have a lot of… Every single employee in our firm has a bio. A lot of CPA firms, you’ll see just the partners. We have literally everyone, all 300-plus employees are on our website because everybody is important.
Becca: We have stories about some of our clients on the website, and then I think one of our biggest areas is the Insights Page, which has tons and tons and tons of articles, white papers, videos, different types of content for people to learn and for our employees to help be famous and share their thought leadership and opinions.
Dave: Where does Rea & Associates stand in the profession among your marketing peers? How do we stack up?
Becca: The accounting profession as a whole in terms of marketing is not quite as advanced as some other industries. There are some firms out there that are doing really cool stuff that I like just dream about at night. There are other firms where the marketing department really struggles for the partners to let go of some control and because they don’t understand marketing so much, they kind of fear it. Those departments just don’t get the amount of freedom that we do. I think overall, we do pretty good.
Dave: You do. You do, and of course, over those 14 years, we’ve had many discussions and I know there are certain people inside Rea & Associates, and even in other companies, think that their marketing department is their sales department and that’s totally not true. That’s such a disconnect and I think that’s still out there in a lot of industries.
Becca: I would be horrible if I had to go out and sell a service. I might not even get out of the car, but where our job comes in is giving all of you the tools and education and resources that you need to go out and do that.
Dave: Let’s go old school for a minute. Yeah, we got all the technology, the blogs, and that stuff is pretty cool, but there’s something you said to me. Hey, the more personalized the better, and maybe using some snail mail stuff and tools like that. Let’s talk about that. What’s on the horizon? I know you’re cooking something up. What’s going on here?
Becca: Those are two different kind of thoughts. Personalizing, and this kind of goes back to the marketing automation, instead of just having your email say, Hello, I can say I want my email to say, Hello, Dave, or if it’s Bixler, it will say, Hello, Bixler. Just that little bit of personalization, it makes it feel like it’s directly meant for you, and if the content inside is something that you’re interested in, that’s even better. Everyone is kind of figuring this out, that email marketing is really effective and that it’s inexpensive to do and that you can see the detail. You can see the results of who’s clicking your email.
Becca: We all just get absolutely bombarded with emails. I think snail mail is making a comeback. We do a couple of print newsletters. We just started a third one last year, and we actually see really good results from those because people aren’t getting as much marketing in the mail, so when you do get something in the mail, you’re more likely to pay attention to it, even if it’s just walking back to your office from the mail room and looking through it as you walk. It’s just harder to delete that than it is to delete an email.
Dave: It’s interesting. Man, I don’t even know how much a stamp costs these days.
Becca: I don’t either.
Dave: Bixler, get on that, would you? Get back to us on …
Becca: 50? I think it’s above 50 cents now.
Dave: It’s above 50 cents?
Becca: 50? I don’t know.
Dave: Bixler will get on that.
Becca: Sort of back-check it …
Dave: He’ll get on that for us. That’s a good point. I’ll go back after this riveting podcast interview to my email and see that I’ve got all these emails. They’re like, Hey, Dave, do you got a few minutes? Like to talk to you. Hey, how about my email? They make it very personal, and all I do is click delete, delete.
Becca: They’re tricky, too. They’ll say like… start with the RE in the subject line to make it look like we’ve been emailing about this, but they get pretty sneaky.
Dave: I’m not buying that.
Becca: Delete, delete … delete.
Dave: Delete, delete, delete. You think about that, look what you do on your phone when you get your messages. You could be sitting there having a drink and watching TV, clicking, getting rid of all that stuff. Snail mail is coming back?
Becca: Yeah, you heard it here first.
Dave: Going old school. What else is coming back? What other old school stuff is coming back? See, our generation wasn’t all that bad.
Becca: Oh, of course not. Are you talking marketing? Or like fashion? I’ve seen people …
Dave: All of the above.
Becca: Wearing scrunchies lately. I guess …
Dave: Scrunchies.
Becca: Scrunchies are-
Dave: What’s a scrunchie? Is that the thing …
Becca: It’s like the …
Dave: In your hair?
Becca: Yeah.
Dave: Oh, I never had a scrunchie in my hair.
Becca: Well-
Dave: That’s coming back? What else … is coming back?
Becca: You could just wear it on your wrist.
Dave: Wear it on my ….
Becca: That’s just like …
Dave: There’s probably no chance in that. My kids would never …
Becca: Record players, the kids like records …
Dave: Oh yeah
Becca: These days …
Dave: Now we’re talking. I keep this hearing this, You’re the Director of Practice Growth. That kind of confuses me, and I think it confuses the market a little bit. That’s my opinion and… hey, you guys are marketing professionals. Do you like that term, practice growth?
Becca: I do. I kind of sometimes say practice growth, sometimes say marketing. To me, they’re one and the same, but I think the term practice growth just has a little bit more oomph behind it to show that we are here to grow the practice. It’s not just marketing and getting our name out there and sponsoring golf outings, it’s our purpose is to be strategic about what we can do to help grow the firm.
Dave: Sure. You run a very significant department for the firm, and again, our listeners, they have maybe a marketing department of their own or they’re subcontracting that, but what are some of the return on investment statistics and metrics that you look at personally for your department?
Becca: Well, sometimes ROI is difficult to track. We don’t always hear, Oh, I got this new client and they said it’s because of this article that they read, or I think it’s very unlikely that someone would see an ad and want to be a client, but maybe it’s happened and we just don’t hear about it. I do think going back and looking at your data can really help, and if you have a more advanced software like the marketing automation, you can actually see when and why a person entered your database and you can track the life cycle that they took to become a client. What triggered them to be interested enough to sign up for your newsletter or whatever it is? What was the final thing that pushed them to make that phone call or fill out a form on your website and want to talk more about services?
Becca: Looking at your social media posts and what type of posts are getting the most engagement, our posts I know that are about our employees do really well. Welcoming new employees to the team or celebrating their successes, people love to see that on social media. It’s really just paying attention to what resonates and doing more of that and less of the stuff that no one really seems to care about.
Dave: Good. Good. As we head deeper into 2019, you got any suggestions for our marketing folks that are listening to the podcast?
Becca: Yeah. I would say try something new. Look at some of the things that other industries outside of your own are doing and see if it’s something you can implement at your own company. I was talking with someone who works for like a safety company that works with manufacturing construction organizations, and she said they’re working on building an Alexa Skill, which is one of those Alexa things where you say, Alexa, give me the OSHA tip for today. That’s just so interesting to me that a safety company can find use in that voice search. If a safety company can, maybe an accounting firm can, too. I seriously don’t know enough about Alexa to even know if I used that term correctly …
Dave: Yeah … around. You got to get out a little bit.
Becca: I’ll put it on my expense report to get myself one and …
Dave: There you go, but I think you speak from experience. Hey, try something new. I think you talked about earlier this podcast, was there was no way we were going to get people to buy into it, and we tried something new and it’s just part of your whole strategic marketing plan to reach our clients and friends and colleagues.
Becca: I would also say just try to find, even if it’s just one piece of your audience, what really resonates with them. One of print newsletters goes out to a fairly small mailing list, but every time we send that out, that newsletter more than pays for itself because we have found the exact right audience and this print newsletter is the exact right information that they want to receive in the way they want to receive it, and they love reading. All those three things together just makes that a huge success.
Dave: I do also want to shout out at you guys. I think this is what you’re referring to, the newsletter that goes out to the Amish community. What’s the name of that newsletter?
Becca: It’s called Plain and Simple.
Dave: Plain and Simple, and it’s widely read. There’s some good stuff in there.
Becca: A lot of the content in that newsletter is repurposed from our blog. Since this is an Amish community, they’re not reading our blog, so it’s not a whole lot of work, but again, they crave that business insight and knowledge, and it really works for that group.
Dave: Our guest today has been Becca Davis, Director of Practice Growth, whoops, I mean Director of Marketing for Rea & Associates. It’s located in our Dublin, Ohio, office, but not really. She’s universal and spends a lot of time in all of our offices throughout the firm. Again, thanks again for joining us. I’m sure people will start thinking about their interactions differently after listening to what you had to say today about marketing and how to achieve a few things.
Dave: Listeners, the way businesses and organizations are engaging with customers is changing. What are you doing to show them that you care about the qualities that make them unique? Speaking of which, we would love to know how we can help you. Your feedback is always welcome. You can either email us at podcast@reacpa.com, or you can watch us and listen to this episode on YouTube, and please consider giving this episode a big thumbs up, because Becca did an outstanding job.
Dave: Until next time, I’m Dave Cain. After 180 episodes of unsuitable, you know the drill. Loosen up the tie and think outside the box.
Disclaimer: The views expressed on unsuitable on Rea Radio are our own and do not necessarily reflect the views of Rea & Associates. The podcast is for informational and educational purposes only and is not intended to replace the professional advice you would receive elsewhere. Consult with a trusted advisor about your unique situation so they can expertly guide you to the best solution for your specific circumstance.