Are you ever tempted to follow the apparent example of other accountants you see online or meet at events?
There is nothing inherently wrong with learning from another practice. The problem begins when observation turns into imitation without first considering whether the same approach makes sense for you.
No two accountants are the same. We each bring a different combination of background, experience, preferences, clients, training, ability, ambition and available time. Your practice is shaped by those factors, just as the practices you admire are shaped by theirs.
It’s also worth remembering that you may be comparing the reality of your practice with someone else’s carefully curated version of theirs. People naturally share the successes that help build their reputation. That doesn’t always reflect what’s happening behind the scenes.
The dozens of interviews I’ve conducted for my podcast have reinforced this point. Many guests have spoken candidly about struggles and setbacks that would never have been apparent from their LinkedIn profiles or social media posts.
All of which confirms that a tactic which works well for one accountant may produce very different results for another.
Look beyond the visible activity
Before copying what another accountant has done, apply the same professional judgement you use every day with clients.
What factors made that activity successful for them? Do you share those advantages? Are they serving the same type of clients? Do you have the same skills, resources and appetite for the work involved?
It’s easy to see the visible part of somebody else’s strategy. It’s much harder to see the conditions that sit behind it.
Take accountants who post daily on LinkedIn or other social media platforms. From the outside, that consistency may appear to be evidence of a successful marketing strategy. It may be, but that conclusion shouldn’t be automatic.
They may genuinely enjoy writing and find it much easier than you do. They may have more time available. They may employ someone to help them.
They may already have a sizeable network that gives their content greater reach. Or they may simply have different objectives, such as maintaining visibility rather than generating immediate client enquiries.
Equally, they may be achieving far less than their activity suggests.
Few accountants publish an honest account of the hours invested, the opportunities missed or the disappointing results. Visible activity can create an impression of success that is impossible to verify.
And when a particular tactic fails to deliver the clients they hoped for, many simply move quietly on to the next idea.
Activity is not the same as progress
I saw a version of this more than ten years ago with Twitter.
Large numbers of accountants signed up and were initially very active. There was a widespread belief that this was where new business relationships would be formed and new clients would be found.
For some, that proved true. For many others, the enthusiasm didn’t last.
After a relatively short period, they discovered that Twitter wasn’t helping them reach the people they wanted to reach. It wasn’t generating the referrals or recommendations they had expected and certainly wasn’t producing the clients they needed.
The problem wasn’t necessarily Twitter. It was the lack of thought before committing significant time to it.
Some accountants joined simply because other accountants were there. They confused popularity with suitability.
A little critical analysis at the outset might have saved a considerable amount of time. More importantly, it might have helped them focus much sooner on activities with a greater chance of producing the results they wanted.
The same question applies today to TikTok, Instagram, Facebook and even Linkedin.
My podcast interviews suggest that many accountants are active on these platforms because they feel they ought to be. Some even pay others to maintain that presence. Yet relatively few point to a steady flow of new clients that can be directly attributed to their social media activities.
I’m certainly not against social media. But I do advocate thinking first about what you want to achieve and where your target audience is most likely to engage with you. Very few accountants need to be active across every platform.
Ask what must be true
When I’m working with an accountant who’s considering a new marketing activity, I’m usually reluctant to answer the question, “Does this work?”
Almost any sensible marketing activity can work under the right conditions.
The more useful question is, “What would need to be true for this to work for you?”
You may need access to a particular audience. You may need the ability to produce useful content consistently. You may need patience, because the results will take time. You may need a clear proposition so that people understand why they should contact you rather than another accountant.
If those conditions aren’t present, copying the tactic is unlikely to create them.
This is the step many busy accountants skip. They move straight from seeing an idea to implementing it without considering the assumptions on which its success depends.
Learn from others without becoming them
By all means continue to pay attention to what other accountants are doing. Good ideas can come from anywhere, and there is little merit in refusing to learn from the experience of others.
But learning and copying are not the same thing.
At the end of every meeting of my online Sole Practice Club, I invite members to share their key learning points and the actions they’ll take before our next meeting. They are often inspired by each other’s experiences. What they don’t do is blindly replicate someone else’s marketing activity. They recognise that understanding why something worked is far more valuable than simply copying what they did.
That’s the distinction that matters.
The purpose of studying another accountant’s approach is not to reproduce it exactly. It’s to understand why it may have worked, identify which parts are relevant to your own practice and adapt them intelligently. This also applies to almost every topic we discuss at the Club.
It’s also why, in 1-2-1- conversations I also suggest that before committing time to any new tactic, accountants need to consider the clients you want to attract, the strengths you bring, the resources you have available and the type of practice you’re trying to build. And, only after having done that, to decide whether the activity supports those objectives.
The right strategy is rarely the one that appears most popular. It’s the one that makes sense for you and your practice and that you’re prepared to implement consistently enough to give it a fair chance.
Copying may feel quicker. Thinking first usually saves far more time than it costs.
