Meet a Member: Apoorv Dwivedi

About Apoorv

• Name: Apoorv Dwivedi (pronounced a-POORV)
• Title: Strategic Marketing Advisor
• Years of Experience: 25+
• College Name & Degree(s): University of Calgary (BComm), University of Alberta (GCPM)
• Firm Name: Fixyr Marketing (https://fixyr.com)
• Firm Location: Kelowna, BC, Canada
• Firm Size: <10
• Email Address: [email protected]
• Professional Memberships: PMP (Project Management Professional) through PMI, CIP (Competitive Intelligence Professional) through ACI
• Community Involvement: AAM!
• X Handle: https://x.com/fixyr_marketing
• LinkedIn Profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/apoorvdwivedi1/

What types of data analytics strategies does your firm employ? Our approach centers on driving insights from three key analytics:

• Performance Analytics: Tracking all sorts of engagement and conversion behavior across campaigns and touchpoints.
• Audience and Client Insights: This is the foundation of all good marketing. Interestingly, a lot of the client insights we use are qualitative and derived from client interviews.
• Competitive Benchmarking: Marketing doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Your audience has choices, and it’s important to understand what those choices are.

Do you have any recommendations for data analytics strategies for accounting marketers? Don’t collect data just for the sake of having more data. This is particularly true when you’re working with accountants who are used to working with numbers all day long. Accountants will always ask the question, “So what?” As in, “What does this data tell you?” Make sure you are focused on being able to generate insights and recommendations from the data. Most importantly, show the accountants how you’re able to improve marketing performance using data.

What are some helpful data analytics tools? Tableau, Google Looker Studio and Qlik are all great for building dashboards, but only if you have someone who is able to build the dashboards for you. They are definitely not for novices.

If you’re just getting started, start with the great granddaddy of them all: MS Excel. You can generate an incredible amount of insights using the tools at your fingertips like data visualization, conditional formatting, power query, Goal Seeker and Solver.

What have you learned the hard way? Lots of data is useless. I’m still trying to figure out what is and what isn’t.

What is a “must know” for new accounting marketers? Accounting marketing is nuanced and unique. What worked for you somewhere else may or may not work for you in accounting marketing. A good example of this is “funnel” marketing. Accounting is not e-commerce. Sure, there are lessons to be learned, but the nuances and differences are important.

What is something people may not know about you? Back in the days before Spotify I had 10,000+ songs in my playlist. I like to go down deep rabbit holes of discovering new music. Still do, but now it’s on music apps.

What is the biggest benefit you receive from your AAM membership? Accounting marketing is different, and there is no other place that you can go to learn from experienced accounting marketers and have good peer-to-peer conversations.

Share one marketing tip. Understand the customer. This is one piece of advice that will always apply and never become dated.

What do you feel is the biggest issue facing accounting marketers today? Being perceived as being able to meaningfully contribute to firm growth strategies. Unfortunately, within the world of accounting, marketing is often thought of as pretty pictures and parties, not a driver of firm strategy. It’s changing, and we have some great CMO-level execs within the association, but we still have a long way to go overall.

What would you be doing if you had not become a marketer? I’d like to think I’d be something just as cool – e.g. DJ, sound producer, etc.

What is the biggest project you are working on right now? We’re looking at benchmarking data analytics for referrals. Referrals are still the single biggest source of lead generation for accountants, yet they’re the side of marketing that is the least data driven.

If you had an unlimited budget, what is one thing you would implement immediately? Testing. Good quality testing requires lots of data to conduct lots of tests. Usually this comes at a high cost (or lengthy periods of time).

What blogs/social feeds do you subscribe to that are helpful? On the SEO side I like Dale Bertrand, Mike Blumenthal and Moz Fishkin. For podcasts, I’ve been listening to B2B Revenue Executive Experience, Marketing Smarts, Brainy Business with Melina Palmer and Built to Sell for a long time.