While APS is a provider of practice management and related software products to the accounting profession, we are also fully engaged in assisting our clients to build better and more profitable businesses. Our team has more than 350 years of collective experience in the profession and we have been privy to many of the successes of a broad base of firms – most due to effective use of basic marketing techniques (and committed people!). We have also seen the tangle that many firms have got themselves into over marketing – mostly due to an untutored, ad hoc approach to marketing (and uncommitted people!).

In order to provide firms with some guidance in conjunction with our marketing agency, StrategyCo, we will publish ‘The APS Guide to Professional Marketing’ in a series of instalments. We hope that firms will take advantage of the marketing techniques we explore and some of the tips and tricks that we will promote.

We look forward to receiving feedback from firms as we move through the series. Please check back to this page on a regular basis for your next instalment or subscribe you and your colleagues to receive each instalment on the date of publication. Subscribers will also receive additional materials from APS including tips and tricks on such items as effective Practice Management, Consultative Sales methods and Customer Relationship Management. As with the issues we cover in the Marketing Guide, we have seen what makes great practices great – and via our APS Information Series we want to share those successes with the profession. To ensure you receive this valuable information, subscribe today.

The running order of publication will be as follows:-

For more information on any of these issues, contact

Australia: - Brian Armstrong at APS or Charles Hornor at StrategyCo.

United Kingdom: - Brian Coventry at APS or Charles Hornor at StrategyCo.

New Zealand: - Michael Donnelly at APS or Charles Hornor at StrategyCo.

About the author:
Charles Hornor is marketing adviser to the APS Group in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, via his company StrategyCo. Charles has helped accounting firms to develop their marketing strategies and promote themselves since 1986, in all parts of the world. From 1995 to 1999 he was Executive Director responsible for building MSI Legal and Accounting Network into an international force (200+ firms worldwide). He now lives in Australia and works with many professional firms in developing Marketing Strategies, Marketing Activity Plans (MAP™) and Client Satisfaction Surveys.