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Mike Crook | Three tips to make your R&D service irresistible to potential clients

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Starting a new service is a great way to increase your revenue and enhance your accountancy firm’s proposition to the market.

When your practice launches a new specialist service, you’ve got to decide how to package it, how to promote it and, of course, how to attract the right type of client. Service packaging is essentially about presentation. How do you explain what a buyer will get for their money in a clear, compelling way?

I’m Mike Crook, the managing director of PracticeWeb, which is a marketing agency that works exclusively with accounting firms, to help them grow. At PracticeWeb we help firms take new services to market, advise on how to position them within the market, how to package them up and promote them to attract the right clients.

I’ve pulled together three tips based on the process we use when consulting with accounting firms on how to launch a new service. Follow this advice and you’ll be on the way to making your R&D service irresistible to potential clients.

Who’s the service for?

Before you begin to communicate with someone, you need to fully understand them. Being able to effectively engage with customers or potential customers requires a sound understanding of who they are and what challenges they face.

In the case of R&D, it’s about identifying eligible clients to start with. Are they in sectors which are likely to be undertaking R&D, such as engineering, IT or the creative industries? Would you consider them to be innovative in their approach?

Next, it’s about gaining an in-depth understanding beyond just the standard demographic data (age, gender etc) and their eligibility. What keeps them up at night? What are their frustrations, their goals and their aspirations?

This insight is what you’ll use to craft effective messaging and compelling content. It’s also what you’ll want to build your R&D packages around.

Build the perfect packages

Why package your service? It’s the age-old saying: make it easy for a prospect to buy. By packaging up your services, you reduce the information a prospect has to process and simplify the decision they need to make. You’re removing barriers (reasons to say “No”) and prompting them to buy your services, faster.

Put yourself in the shoes of a potential client comparing what you offer with your competition. You want yours to stand out, resonate with their needs and be easy to digest so they choose you over your competitors.

There are four basic rules to follow when it comes to packaging your services:

  1. Make it easy to digest – the terms of the services need to be easy to understand.
  2. Be specific – be clear about what they get and when.
  3. Use clear language – make it relatable and jargon free.
  4. Avoid making assumptions about what the potential client does and doesn’t know.

Demonstrate your expertise

In an increasingly competitive environment, with more demanding clients, and a complicated buyer journey, your services need to stand out from the crowd.

If you’re launching a new service, you won’t have a track record to build upon. Your clients won’t know you offer this service and the market you work in won’t know either. And you’ll be up against well-established competitors who already have the proof to demonstrate they can deliver.

You have to start small, but think big. This is where your marketing strategy and plan comes into play.

Putting together a solid marketing strategy means you can target your products with messaging, content and information that demonstrate your expertise within this new service, builds your reputation and ensures your visibility in the market. Once you have a few clients taking up your service, ask them for case studies and testimonials. These will help to back up what you claim you can do for prospects and the results you have achieved.


How can you get started?

If you want to get started with taking your R&D service to market, we’ve created a step-by-step guide on how to package, price and promote your accounting firms services which you can download for free on the PracticeWeb website.

Should you need help with taking your R&D service to market you can get in touch with us at PracticeWeb by phone on 0117 915 0420 or by email.

How to write an R&D tax relief technical narrative

With HMRC’s new mandatory requirement for project descriptions on all submissions, we wanted to share our experiences to help others to write their best possible technical narratives.

Available to download here.

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