Growth hacking ideas for an online bookkeeping startup?

What are some growth hacking ideas for an online bookkeeping startup company in Australia?

Our startup will offer online bookkeeping services that provides audit proof financial statements from professional accountants to small Australian companies.

I'd be wary of copying your competitors' marketing, because if I understand you correctly you are an innovator in a conservative market.

My favourite growth hack for this case starts with some hard work.

First, come up with short sentences describing something customers want but can't have (from your competitors, but maybe also from you). This isn't about your existing differentiators, it's about customers. And you need 30+ sentences.

Next, for each one, come up with a bold claim that captures the essence in just a few words. Five or fewer is ideal.

Then, for each one, ask how could we deliver on that claim, if we wanted to? Scrap any where just you couldn't deliver, or even get close.

Make landing pages for each bold claim, and run ads based on the most obvious (and yes, that means the most expensive) keywords. You're looking to learn which claims get the most click-throughs, and the conversion rates (just for email capture) for each. Get down to one, two or three that score highest overall. If there's no leader, you're probably being as risk-averse as your competitors, and need to start over.

Finally, you have to work out how you need to present or/and adapt your service to make the bold claim true (enough), and pick from the shortlist. And there's the platform for your growth hack: a bold claim that resonates with your audience, which your competition would shudder at, but which you can back up.

It's this claim that you need now to get out there, in PPC and SEO, and in old-school marketing. And because you're saying something your competitors couldn't and wouldn't want to say, you're unlikely to end up in the usual negative sum game.

Since your product is an enterprise product, targeted advertising should be your best bet (but feel free to look at the tens of different ways to grow and promote a product).

Each customer you sign up will bring you $XX of revenue over time. Those customers are best caught while they google for "easier bookkeeping". Check out the price of targeted AdWords. Run a campaign and invest a small marketing budget. Measure how many customers click, sign up, and eventually pay. If the cost of the ad is less than the profit you make, congratulations you have a path to grow!

I always consider competitor analysis as the best way of marketing tactic.

Just go to OpenSiteExplorer and enter your competitor's URL. Find where are getting their backlinks from. You will get a clear idea of what are they doing. Accordingly, you can start your promotion ideas.

Next is Google AdWords targeting. Before going for AdWords, try to spy on your competitor's running ad campaigns. Marketing is all about spying. Use SpyFu to find out the keywords which your competitors are bidding on. Try to fine tune it and you will find a way.