Listen to this episode here: Fix the Inside Before Marketing Outside

Welcome to our blog for TALKING NUMBERS with Paul Jansz. In this article, we share our conversation with Melissa David, Head of Growth & Engagement at Clyne Partners Chartered Accountants, a firm that provides an integrated mix of accounting and taxation services.

An Inspiring Post

A couple of weeks ago, Melissa was on the tram on the way home. As a woman with four leadership positions in four different organisations, she was exhausted as usual. She wrote a post on LinkedIn, sharing that she realised she was becoming the CEO that her mother wanted her to marry. The next day, several friends sent messages asking her to check on LinkedIn, saying, she had more than 200,000 views!

Later in the week, Melissa received 1.3million views on this post. So many women from all over the world told their story of leadership. Melissa has experience designing campaigns, and she thinks it’s fascinating that one personal post would attract such huge traffic.

Melissa shared, when her generation were children, there wasn’t an opportunity for women to be leaders in businesses, which was reflected in the responses she received on LinkedIn. This post inspired her to start a new podcast and have female leaders sharing their goals, expectations, and real stories.

Clyne Partners and Melissa’s Role

Melissa joined Clyne Partners last July. Melissa introduces Clyne Partners as fully client-focused that the clients can reach out 24/7. She also points out that one feature of Clyne Partners is real-time financial data, while traditional accounting firms are normally 3-6 months behind the client’s data.

As the Head of Growth and Engagement, Melissa oversees the marketing department, from designing campaigns to supporting clients with their marketing activities. Melissa also runs the business development side of the company. Melissa believes the culture of the workplace is essential. If it is not healthy and positive, then you can’t go and sell the company. If the marketing isn’t up to snuff, no one’s looking at this company.

Melissa is taking her boss to a TV show to talk about tradies and accounting soon. She thinks publicity opportunities like this are great for a company and help with growth and development.

How to Drive Growth

Melissa said that to begin, one should get his house in order before start inviting guests. So always start within the company, check how the staff is going, if there is enough staff, and if the culture is healthy. These elements will determine the development of the company.

After that, Melissa suggests asking “What does your brochure look like? Does that really say who your company is?” A company needs to have an immediate print out impression and attach it to every single email.

The third thing is the website. How is the SEO scored? How are you pinging? What are your hashtags? Melisa said these are very interesting things that people don’t often think about, but they are really important. Melissa and her team do a competitor’s report each Monday to study the keywords and hashtags.

After researching the hashtags and keywords, a company should start building its social media. Melissa said, every business now should have social media. Many people think Instagram is not the place, but Melissa points out that Instagram is the place where entrepreneurs are, and she signed about $20,000 worth of clients on Instagram alone.

Melissa thinks cold calls and emails don’t work anymore, so the main form of communication is social media. People are more comfortable with responding to an Instagram post. For Melissa, Instagram and LinkedIn are great platforms to connect to business leaders and companies, and TikTok is where the next generation of young entrepreneurs will be.

Newsroom

The ‘Newsroom’ section is Melissa’s favourite part of their website. She said, if you want to check out what an accounting firm would look like on Instagram, please check it out here. You can also find out what’s the difference between an Instagram campaign and a LinkedIn campaign. A branding voice is very important for accounting firms, because your audience is different in different locations.

Melissa continues to explain, their audience on Instagram is younger, which can be validated by analytics. She illustrates that there are many tools to help with analysis, such as Google Analytics and Hootsuite.

Melissa said social media is a necessary base for any business today. Because when young people look you up, they need to know that you have a website, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook, even if it doesn’t bring in any clients.

One last thing about social media Melissa wants to add is having fun. Many accounting firms tend to take themselves too seriously. But you are allowed to be professional, modern, and fun.

Melissa believes social media is powerful tools. Recently, they have signed some really big companies. One of the clients came up and said, “I was looking at your socials, and it made me laugh. And I thought I want to work with these people.”

Some Advice

Melissa said, what they’ve learned in this last year is when people like their jobs, like to work, they will work hard to try to get the numbers. When people in the sales world are constantly reaching out, connecting, and networking, they will get clients naturally. The old school quota saying ‘if you don’t hit certain numbers by the end of the month, we will have a conversation’ is not the best way to go around sales anymore.

Melissa also emphasises the importance to have a diversified staff. She said, if everyone in your company looks like you, you need to diversify your staff. A company needs people of different genders and colours to get different opinions and ideas.

Melissa also recommends providing internal development spaces. She asks leaders to give opportunities to people who work hard. A leader should give promotions and different responsibilities to them so they can have a career development plan within the organisation. It helps the staff and the company to grow.