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So, you're thinking of getting some marketing support for your accounting firm?

Now do you hire an internal marketing employee? Or, do you hire an agency?

When it comes to marketing support, accounting firms have a couple different options. They can hire an internal marketing employee, or they can contract a specialized marketing agency, or hire a contractor. In this blog, I'm going to outline the pros and cons of each approach.

Let's Start With Option One - Hiring an Internal Marketing Person

Hiring an internal marketing employee gives your accounting firm a little bit more control over the direction of your marketing efforts. The Firm itself can set out objectives and the overall marketing strategy, but when it comes to implementation, it is the employee's job to carry out those objectives.

However, there are a few things to consider with this approach. The first is that you'll need to find some someone who is experienced with various kinds of marketing campaigns and activities. This person will likely need a background in Marketing & Communications, or business, and should also have experience with marketing tools and programs for social media, graphic design, website, and possibly video production.

They also should be a great writer, not to mention they really need to understand how an accounting firm works and how the accounting industry works. All these traits can be really hard to find in one single employee, and if you do find a candidate that actually checks a few of those boxes, that employee is still going to need some significant support from you, the accounting firm, staff, and your partners.

They'll need buy-in from everybody, for that employee to be successful. This can be a challenge especially if the firm has multiple partners with different viewpoints and ideas of what kind of marketing should actually be done.

The third thing to consider is that an internal marketing employee will need time to learn about the accounting firm itself and its target market. They'll need to understand the firm's strengths and weaknesses, as well as what potential clients are actually looking for. The learning curve here can be huge and take a substantial amount of time. It is likely not ideal for an accounting firm, looking to get immediate results from their marketing efforts.

Hiring an internal marketing employee can be a great way to have control and oversight, but it certainly has its downsides. I can tell you, from personal experience, that trying to find what we call a unicorn, the one person that can do everything in marketing, is incredibly hard.

I myself am not an expert in every single facet of marketing. I've spent a lot of time learning all these different pieces and areas of marketing so that I have a broad understanding and I know what I'm talking about so I can put together an entire strategy. But when it comes to the intricate details of implementation, I hire people that are really good at those specific pieces of marketing. So, keep that in mind when you're hiring somebody internally.

They may have one or two specialties that they've spent a ton of time developing and have a really good understanding of how to implement properly. However, if you're expecting them to implement everything from pay-per-click advertising, to social media, to copywriting, to website design, to graphic design, to video editing, to podcast editing, to blogging, to SEO - you're not going to find that person.

Just keep that in mind if you have a specific area that you really want to improve and get your firm out there with. If you know that this one specific marketing channel will work for your firm, then it may make sense to bring somebody internally so that you can kind of steer that ship a little bit more. It will than make sense to hire that one specific person to focus on that one marketing channel.

Now, Let's Take a Look at Option Two - Hiring a Specialized Marketing Agency

A marketing agency that specializes in serving accounting firms certainly has its perks.

The agency will already have a good understanding of the industry and what your potential clients are looking for. They'll also have a team of experienced marketing professionals, who are experts in their unique domains and can hit the ground running with little to no ramp up time.

The agency should be up to date on all the latest marketing trends and will know how to properly use social media graphic design, website management, video production, SEO, and other programs to create high quality targeted marketing campaigns that actually resonate with your target clients.

The main downside to contracting a specialized marketing agency is, potentially, the cost. Agencies typically charge a monthly retainer, or monthly subscription fee, which can be a significant investment for some firms.

However, when you compare that price versus the cost of hiring a full-time employee, the cost may actually be pretty close, if not cheaper, to hire the agency. If you've taken into account all the other costs associated with hiring and retaining an employee, after benefits, bonuses, and all the other additional expenses that go along with salary, you may actually be saving more money in the long run and getting more value for your money in that investment. So, keep that in mind.

Another possible downside is the lack of customization that may be available to you if you hire an agency. I can tell you for us, an accounting firm specific marketing agency, atHeart CPA, we limit the amount of customization and the custom one-off work that we will do for our accounting firm clients.

The reason for this is that we have found a process that works. We've also created processes and systems that optimize the work that we do, so when we're rolling out and implementing our proven strategy for our clients, we're actually able to do that at a lower rate for our firms. We are able to get results, do it efficiently and in a cost-effective manner, and that's why we don't do a whole lot of custom one-off work for our clients.

That being said, if a client is really wanting a custom approach to their marketing strategy, we do have a higher-level subscription offer. To be perfectly honest, in some cases, if the customization is very far out of the scope of that higher level subscription we're probably just not a fit for that client.

Why do we not customize every single project for each accounting firm? It's truly because we get results and we have built our packages to help our accounting firm clients get best results. Our process, and our approach, also allows us to keep our prices lower due to the efficiency and the deliverables that we provide to our clients. If you were to implement a custom package for every single client, to be honest, we would be providing weaker results at a higher price.

If your accounting firm is looking for marketing support, a marketing agency could be a really great option. We've heard really great feedback from our clients on their experience with working with our agency because they barely have to think about marketing at all. We do all the strategy work, planning, implementation, then we connect on quarterly calls to review the performance and next steps. All our clients have to do is, typically, answer a few questions and provide us with their branding and logos - we take care of almost everything else!

We have about a one hour meeting every quarter with our clients and we have heard some great feedback recently from them. We are really excited to hear that they’re seeing results.

Wrap Up

There you have it, the pros and cons to hiring an internal marketing employee versus contracting a specialized marketing agency. As you can see, there are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches and the best option for your company will ultimately depend on your specific needs and budget.

If you have any questions or would like to learn more about our Marketing Packages for Accounting Firms, visit us at, atHeartCPA.com.

We specialize in Marketing for Accounting Firms, and we would love to chat and see what your specific needs may be. To book your free Discovery Call feel free to visit our website at, atHeartCPA.com.

If you'd like to see more content just like this, be sure to check in every Tuesday! We post a new blog each week with different information to help you with Marketing for your Accounting Firm!

Need some additional help? Book a FREE Discovery Meeting today, here, to chat about how I can help!

I'll see you next time.

About the Author

Bryton Udy is the Founder and CMO of atHeart Creative, and host of the Accountant Marketing Mentor YouTube Channel. Dedicated to helping accountants simplify their marketing and communications so they can grow their accounting, bookkeeping, and financial planning businesses, he is passionate about harnessing creative marketing to support the independent accountant.

Marketing Agency or Marketing Employee? How to decide what's best for you!