March: This month we meet…

This month we focus on Acumen Accountants & Advisors, headed up by Director, Ross Murray. For over 30 years, Acumen has been providing accountancy support to SMEs across Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire. Now one of the region’s leading financial firms, their 36–strong team serves over 1,200 customers across Scotland and the UK from their office in Aberdeen. 

• Tell us about your PR and marketing strategy? 

Through a combination of email marketing campaigns, social media and web content, we balance an emphasis on our existing client base with our efforts to reach new clients across Aberdeen and throughout Scotland. Refreshing our website has meant re-thinking our brand’s tone of voice, and the resulting copy is sharper, more concise and hopefully more accessible to our target audiences. 

• Why do you invest in PR and marketing? 

To maintain a fresh social media presence, keep our website up-to-date, and stay in touch with our existing clients – keeping clients updated on tax compliance and finance regulations is a key part of what we do. Having a PR team on hand is also crucial for being able to quickly share our news – Instinct can turn around a high quality press release within tight timescales and share it in all the right places. Together we can discuss different types of content, topics and story ideas, and prepare blogs and social media posts in advance. 

• What are the key benefits? What has worked well? 

Round-Up, our quarterly newsletter to clients, has been well received, and is a great way of providing reminders of key dates and helpful finance tips, as well as our latest news and a focus on one of our team each quarter – a suggestion by Instinct to help show the human side of our company. We pride ourselves on being a friendly and approachable team – accountancy can be perceived as a pretty dry subject, so we’re always keen to maximise opportunities to highlight our staff as interesting people as well as expert accountants! Our social media posts have been a key part of this – we held a desk-decorating competition in the run-up to Christmas and shared the fun and creativity across our channels.  

• Where are your marketing efforts currently focused? 

We are focusing on updating our website and forging a strong presence on social media, by sharing regular updates, articles, staff successes and industry insights. Our blog posts are a priority area, and key to establishing Acumen as a thought leader in our field. 

• Where will you be focusing your marketing efforts in the next few months? 

Alongside our social media and website, we’ll continue to use email marketing as a way of staying front-of-mind and upselling to existing clients, and potentially reaching new ones as well. Working with Instinct, we’re also hoping to leverage advances in AI technology to generate content such as quiz questions, to help people find out if they’re eligible for lower tax contributions. Updating our website for SEO with regular news posts and the right keywords is another priority, to make it as easy as possible for new clients to find us. And we’ll be getting out and networking in person – face to face interactions are hard to beat when it comes to forging new business partnerships.