website copy to help recruit a new team

Your website needs to attract potential employees as well as clients

website copy to help recruit a new teamYou want to build a new website that will attract the right kind of client. Qualified, ready to buy, educated, and (if you have one) within your niche category.

As you’re doing that, don’t forget to incorporate what will appeal to the right kind of team member, as well. When done right, you will draw in accountants and employees who are qualified in as the right kind for you, ready and enthusiastic, willing to contribute and make a difference, and capable of understanding (or learning to understand) your clients and their needs.

How do you do that?

Here are my tips for you:

1. First, focus on your dream clients. 

Building a site that is focused entirely on the best kind of client – their needs, their issues, and what will make their lives better – will naturally deliver the result of being appealing to the best kind of employee.

How well do you know who those dream clients are?

Can you describe and define them in one or two sentences? Do you have a “buyer persona” put together, which potential team members could read and connect with?

Don’t merely build a website that is clear in its appeal to your target audience: build a firm that is.

That’s the kind of accountancy firm the best accountants (and marketers, and admin and support people and techies and web developers) will want to be part of. See point three below!

2. Build rock solid brand consistency. 

Potential team members will be extremely impressed with your firm when your brand consistency is evident in everything you do. Not merely your logo, but all the elements of a brand, such as:

  • Tone of voice: What words do you use and not use?
  • Colours: Are you always consistent, using the right hex code for the particular blue or green or pink or whatever colours are in your logo and brand?
  • Visual style: Does your imagery match the type of impression you want to give of your firm? Are you still using outdated stock photography, or do the visuals reflect who you are and what you stand for?
  • Social media: Do you write, speak, share, and communicate on social in a way that fits with the brand you want to be?

3. Remember that you’re not only hiring accountants.

…At least, I hope you’re not. The journey for the best accountancy firms needs to move from “an office full of accountants” to “an amazing business that happens to sell accounting services”. And that kind of business hires more than accountants: it hires marketers and website developers and techies and HR managers and who knows what else. Great people, that’s who.

You don’t have to hire all those people straight away. But it is critical to begin thinking about who you want to hire, eventually, and build a website that appeals to more than only accountants (even the best ones).

Join our upcoming webinar with Thriveal to explore the accountant’s marketing team journey.

4. Build landing pages exclusive to potential team members.

Most firms have a Careers or Meet the Team page: but how appealing is that to the type of people you wish to hire? In the same way that you build a services landing page that is relevant and interesting to your clients, with messages that appeal to them, you want to do the same for hiring new team members as well.

As with any page, think about these three elements:

1. Core message: What’s the one thing you want to get across more than anything else? This is based on their ultimate need (not yours). Make sure you know what that need is, and address it clearly.

For example, if you want to hire those who have tried working in a bigger accountancy firm and found it frustrating or stifling, you could say “tired of the big firm life? Come work with a flexible team”.

2. Call to action: What is the ONE thing you want them to do? Think very hard about your recruiting process. (You may want to get some strategic support or a business mentor to help you work through this.)

How will you make sure you don’t get the traditional, conservative accountants if you’re looking to build a fresh and modern firm? The old school approach of asking for CV’s is a bit dead. Will you have them record and send you a video? Send you a message on social media? Ask them to complete a tester project of some kind?

Whatever the CTA is, keep it simple. Have one call to action, not multiple ones.

3. Other messages: What supporting messages to your core message do you have?

This could be…

  • a description of what you stand, and your firm values
  • a link to meet all the other members of the team that this employee would be working with
  • a video from the owner of your firm
  • description of all the amazing benefits they will get from working with you

You notice that i don’t mention anything about going into massive amounts of detail about the job description or the role.

You may want to highlight a few points, but if you want to hire the best and the brightest, they already know roughly what kind of tasks they will be asked to perform.

It’s similar to the way your potential clients already have a general understanding of what accounting and tax is, and what they are trying to do on the website is get to know who you are as people. Determine if you’re they’re kind of people, and whether they will enjoy doing business with you and get done what they need to in the best possible way.

5. Write content that will appeal to the team members you want to hire.

Finally, make sure your content marketing plan allows for content that will appeal to the right kind of team members for your accounting firm.

This could include:

  • Landing pages: (see point 4 above)
  • Blog posts on topics relevant to your potential team members: think about what they are interested in, and what they want to read about
  • Social media: directed towards the best and brightest accountants (or other team members)
  • Video: Record a welcome video from the firm owner or management team; have each team member record their own video; get the whole team involved in a joint video to help potential team members see what it’s like to work there.

There’s always more, of course: but that will get you started!