Summary
“We wouldn’t be sufficiently important in their portfolio, and I doubt they look after companies [with] under a million turnover.”
This sentiment, taken from 2015 KPMG research, encapsulates an all-too-common belief among British small business owners – namely, that KPMG is too expensive, too detached, and has zero interest in working with them.
Overcoming this perception has been critical in building the reputation and reach of KPMG Small Business Accounting (SBA): the professional services provider’s small business arm. But it isn’t something that’s happened organically. A considered, well-designed website created and delivered by Silver Agency launched ahead of deadline, combines rich visuals with numerous reasons to register for content and make contact.
The new website has been pivotal in converting interest in KPMG’s disruptive new offering to a 400% week-on-week uplift in inbound quality leads, which delivered a 120% week-on-week increase in sales.
The websites success has put the KPMG SBA service in the enviable position of being oversubscribed, and other divisions of KPMG globally have already used this new UK template to redesign their site.
About KPMG SBA
Launched in January 2015, KPMG SBA is an accounting service aimed specifically at UK SMEs. It offers great value for money on mission-critical accounting services – including returns, bookkeeping and cash-flow analysis. The service, which starts at £125/month, provides personalised support from a dedicated KPMG accountant, alongside the latest cloud accounting software to mitigate the administrative burden associated with running a small business.
Access to additional, specialist KPMG knowledge and exclusive SME-specific networks come as part of the package, with further bolt-ons including company secretarial services, payroll, full pension auto-enrolment and an ultra-low cost, online business valuation service.
Strategy: KPMG SBA’s broader business objectives and how this activity relates
KPMG developed its SBA service off the back of research, which had found that:
- 56.2% of small businesses pay their accountants >£3,000pa
- There was a stark contrast between the services that accountants offer and those that small business owners actually deem to be important.
Its primary aim – as outlined earlier – was to provide a better value all-encompassing service from a trusted brand within the accounting sector. However, the same research showed small business owners were:
- Convinced that working with KPMG would be both expensive and impersonal
- Content with their high-street accountants, because they were unaware a different option existed.
KPMG SBA needed to find a new mechanism to:
- Drive brand awareness
- Demonstrate its unique brand proposition
- Find new customers.
The development of a brand new website launched in October 2015 was critical in both overcoming SMEs’ perceptions and delivering on the three business objectives bullet-pointed above.
The strategy was as follows:
- Implement striking visuals of small business owners at work to make it clear that this service is indeed for them
- Communicate through narrative and stories that KPMG helps improve business performance while making business leaders’ lives easier
- Provide downloadable content and resources in abundance.
The site was all about positioning, establishing credibility, and then converting visits to leads.
Campaign objectives
The website development had the following tactical measures of success in helping KPMG SBA achieve its sales objectives:
- Create a live, high-quality website within an ambitious two-month deadline (by mid-October 2015)
- Increase web conversions (i.e. passive readers actively inputting their contact details into KPMG SBA’s brand new website) from 32 to 100 per month.
Target audience
The new website was targeted at UK sole traders and owner/managers of the SMEs that comprise 99.9% of the private sector and are responsible for 60% of all private sector jobs. It was focused specifically on businesses with an annual turnover of less than £5million, of which there are currently c.4.9 million across the UK.
Media/channels used
Features of the new website included:
- A brand new website, successfully launched within an ambitious two-month window in October 2015 – just as research commenced for the various components of the wider campaign.
This comprised:
- A highly visual and simple-to-grasp pricing model
- Client stories (via video, case studies and pop quizzes)
- Relevant news for small business owners
- A blog
- FAQs
- Contact details
- A range of easy-read guides for different types of SMEs.
To herald the launch, other media/channels included:
- Digital marketing. Specifically, a set of five emails were developed, following the themes set out in KPMG SBA’s ‘Little Book of Proverbs’. These allowed prospects to link through to the website, watch a video, or download a relevant guide from KPMG SBA.
- Social media. The professional services provider launched an always-on lead generation campaign from October 2015, delivering lead generation cards through LinkedIn as well as promotional tweets using the @KPMG_SBA handle. In both instances, the focus has squarely been on highlighting the benefits that KPMG SBA’s new software affords small business owners.
Campaign timescales
October – November 2015
Launch of new website and social media
Research for upcoming media campaign
Campaign planning
Concept and messaging development
Campaign development
January – February 2016
Campaign execution
March 2016
Campaign review and analysis
Results
The website exceeded KPMG SBA’s objectives:
- Going live mid-October 2015, well within the ambitious two-month window from plan to launch
- Increasing web conversions to 168, versus a target of 100, within a month of launch – representing a 400% increase (double the target).
The website has also set a new benchmark for KPMG globally, with other countries now looking to use the template for their own launches of Small Business Accounting.
Impact on sales
The website has directly and indirectly helped KPMG SBA achieve 40 wins per week following its launch, versus a target of 30+. This represented an extraordinary 120% week-on-week increase in new sales.
ROMI
The activities outlined above are given 20% of the credit for the impact on overall sales during the campaign period. Based on multiples of the increased profit generated from these new sales versus the investment in this specific element of the marketing strategy, it can be deemed that the website has already delivered a net return on marketing investment (ROMI) of 525%.
Business performance impact
KPMG SBA has gone from a situation where the forecast was just 70% of its annual target to one where the business was actually receiving more sales than it could cope with. The division is now forecasting an end-of-year performance of 110% of its annual target.
“The output of this campaign was phenomenal; it was exactly what we were after. It was edgy, it was cool, and it was relevant. It got us much more engagement with our audience,” Bivek Sharma, KPMG partner and head of Small Business Accounting.
