Building a successful virtual CFO marketing plan may seem overwhelming at first. You must get new clients and continue marketing to build brand awareness, retain customer loyalty, and grow your business.
Fortunately, with a few critical steps, you can build a robust virtual CFO services company that caters to potential clients who can’t afford an in-house CFO.
Why a Virtual CFO Marketing Plan Is Important
Every business needs a marketing plan, and a virtual CFO marketing plan ensures your marketing targets the right audience. It wouldn’t make sense to use a marketing plan for financial planning or even CPAs when you need a plan that targets the right audience and helps you get the traffic you need.
Methods for Virtual CFO Marketing Their Business
As a virtual CFO, you need marketing strategies that target the right audience. Since you operate 100% online, you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location to bring attention to, making online marketing strategies essential for your business.
Local SEO
Some virtual CFO services are local, meaning you can work with your clients in person and online. If you offer local services or want to target potential clients in your area so you have something in common, local SEO can help.
Local SEO means you include your location in your keywords in prominent places without keyword stuffing and making the search engines think you are simply trying to rank for the keywords.
Some common local information you would use include:
- City
- State
- Zip code
- Specific locality information
Content Marketing
Content marketing for virtual CFOs is the key to a successful marketing plan. Many assume marketing is all about getting a sale, but there’s much more to it when creating virtual CFO digital marketing plans.
Content marketing includes many things, including:
- Blog posts
- Newsletters
- White papers
- Videos
- Social media posts
Your content marketing plan for virtual CFOs should be the same across the board to build brand recognition. You want your target audience to recognize you no matter your platform, whether creating blog posts, posting on social media sites, or finding your videos on YouTube.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is a direct marketing method to help businesses grow. You can use email marketing to promote particular services and provide value-added services to current and potential clients.
Email marketing doesn’t mean you constantly ask your recipients for the sale. Instead, it allows you to position yourself as a leader in the virtual CFO industry. You can provide tips, news, discounts, and incentives for your current clients to refer you to others.
Email is a good form of marketing for virtual CFOs because it forces action from your audience. Sure, they can delete the email, but email open rates are high, so the chances of your email being opened by your target audience are much higher than them interacting with a mailer or other type of media.
Email marketing can help you build relationships with current and prospective clients, drive traffic to your blog, and increase your bottom line.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing is critical to marketing ideas for virtual CFOs. You might not think of social media as a place to advertise such a business, especially since you are in business-to-business sales, but there is a social media platform for everything!
LinkedIn is a great social media platform for growing businesses, but Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are popular options. Twitter lets you connect with prospective and current clients by having real conversations or sharing essential tidbits.
Facebook allows you to get to know your audience on a more personal level and interact in more than the limited characters Twitter allows, and YouTube allows you to post videos that showcase your skills and relevance in the virtual CFO industry.
Relationship Marketing
Being able to offer virtual CFO services relies on your relationships within the industry. B2B sales are much different than B2C sales.
You need to showcase yourself as a prominent virtual CFO service in the industry by providing proof of your accomplishments and how you can solve the pain points of small businesses. Unfortunately, many small business owners can’t be effective CFOs and need to outsource to get the expertise their business needs to manage their bottom line.
Relationship marketing allows you to build relationships and nurture your existing clients to retain your clientele. When you build relationships with current and prospective clients, you focus on brand awareness and long-term customer satisfaction.
PPC Marketing
Paid advertising still exists, and PPC marketing is one of the best methods. Pay-per-click means you pay for targeted clicks on your website or landing page. PPC marketing relies heavily on keywords and a targeted audience, so you see success with each click.
PPC marketing should bring visitors to a targeted landing page that is relevant and valuable and gives your audience a distinct action to take.
Creating a Virtual CFO Marketing Plan
Creating a marketing plan for virtual CFO services is more manageable than it seems. Try these quick steps to create your plan.
1. Create Your Marketing Goal
All business decisions revolve around a goal, and a marketing plan is no different. You can’t create marketing business plans until you know what you want to achieve with the plan.
For example, if your virtual CFO services are new, you want to expand your audience and increase sales. But, if you’re an established virtual CFO service, you may want to focus on customer retention, more brand awareness, or networking.
Create goals for your business to create the best marketing plan.
2. Identify the Target Audience (Niche)
Your target audience or niche includes the people or business owners who would benefit the most from your services.
Since you’re a B2B business, you want to target other business owners, primarily small businesses with overwhelmed owners tired of burning the candle at both ends. You can provide your expertise, allowing business owners to focus on business operations and less on the financial piece of owning a business.
3. Describe What Makes You Unique
You are one of many businesses running a full-time CFO service. There are likely hundreds of thousands just like you, and because your service is virtual, businesses from anywhere in the country (or world) can hire you.
The ability to work with anyone in any location makes competition more fierce. Therefore, you must find aspects that make you stand out as unique. Share things like your financial strategy, how you’ve helped other business owners increase their revenue, or services you offer that you know your competition doesn’t.
4. Determine Your Budget and Timeline
Any business decisions you make must be dependent on your budget and timeline. Not setting a budget could force you to overspend on marketing, reducing your revenue and profit margins.
Most companies spend 7% – 10% of their revenue on marketing, but determine what you’re comfortable spending. In addition, consider your timeline for your marketing efforts. What do you want to see from your marketing plans? In other words, what is the most important thing to you when marketing your business?
5. Wisely Choose Content Platforms
It might seem wise to throw content on all platforms to get the most business for your virtual CFO services, but you’ll waste time and money using this method.
Instead, choose the platforms where your audience will see you. If you service a specific type of business or niche, determine where they spend their time. Which platforms do they use the most, and what type of content works best for them?
6. Execution and Tracking
As with any plan, your CFO marketing plan is only good if executed. So take the time to create a care plan with the benefits you want out of it, but then put it into motion and see what happens.
Marketing can sometimes be a little trial and error, but when you track the results, you can make necessary changes that will provide the best results in the long run.
Additional Marketing Ideas for a Virtual CFO
Strategic planning for your marketing efforts is the key to a successful business. The above marketing methods are the most common, but here are some more virtual CFO marketing ideas:
- Network – Consider in-person networking to let more businesses in the area know about your services. Many companies may not realize they can hire a virtual CFO or the benefits of doing so.
- Reviews – Consider asking your current clientele for reviews. Online reviews are how some business owners choose their future services. The more testimonials you have, the higher your chances of growing your business.
- Referrals – Ask your current clients for referrals if they like your services. If they know other business owners, they can share your information and their experience with you to help you grow your customer base.
Reasons for Failed Virtual CFO Marketing Plans
Even the best-laid marketing plan can fail, but here are some reasons it happens.
Not Setting Goals
No plan can work without goals. You have nothing to measure your progress with or a way to tell when things should change. Set goals with your marketing plan, including short and long-term goals.
Not Comparing Yourself to Competitors
Offering virtual CFO services means your competition is much steeper than if you run a local business. You’re competing with virtual CFOs all over the country or world. To set yourself apart, you must compare yourself to your competitors and figure out what you can do to stand apart from them.
Only Focusing on One Platform
While you shouldn’t spread yourself too thin on too many content platforms, putting all your effort into one platform may not provide the desired results. Instead, you limit your exposure to different audiences and risk not growing your business as much as you’d hoped.
Keys to Successful Virtual CFO Marketing Plans
The keys to a successful virtual CFO marketing plan include the following framework:
- Market research – Know your market, what they need, and what others are doing to get the business. Knowing your competitors and target market as much as possible will help you stand out from the competition.
- Optimized website – Your website should be optimized for your keywords, including any local SEO you want. It should be user-friendly and have clear calls to action.
- Many platforms – Consider many digital marketing techniques, including email, social media, and PPC marketing, to enhance the chance of your plan’s success.
- Track your results – Track the results from all marketing efforts to see which offers the best results and make changes as needed.
FAQs
How Do I Track the Performance of My Virtual CFO Marketing Campaigns?
There are many ways to track the performance of your virtual CFO marketing campaigns. Of course, the easiest way is through Google Analytics, but there are other measurements, too, including those that come with your software platforms. Look for tools that measure your website visits, conversions, bounce rate, and exit rate, as a few examples.
How Much Should I Budget for My Virtual CFO Marketing Plan?
Every virtual CFO has a different marketing budget, but on average, budget 7% – 10% of your revenue for successful marketing.
How Long Do Virtual CFOs Need to Market Themselves Before Seeing Results?
The chosen platforms and marketing strategies determine how long before you’ll see results from your virtual CFO marketing services. Of course, no one sees results overnight; on average, seeing real changes could take a few months to a year.
How Often Should Virtual CFOs Send Emails?
You don’t want to bombard your target audience, but you don’t want them to forget about you. If you’re alternating sales and informative emails, you can send weekly emails to your audience.
Do Virtual CFOs Need to Be on All Social Media Platforms?
Virtual CFOs should pick two or three social media platforms where their businesses spend the most time to get the most exposure.
Get Professional Help with Your Virtual CFO Marketing Plan
A virtual CFO marketing plan is the key to growing your business as a virtual CFO. Focus on your skills, and let the professionals help with your marketing plan to grow your business as much as possible and help you reach the businesses that can benefit the most from your services.
