The 3 Most Common Mistakes Practitioners make when marketing for New Clients

Mistake #1:  Look, we all know we need new clients to thrive, but one of the biggest mistakes most professionals make is not tracking the results of their marketing and advertising efforts.  They don’t know what works or what doesn’t. The solution is to “tag” each and every type of direct response or lead generation advertising you do, whether offline or online, with unique identifiers such as toll free phone numbers (866, 877, 888) or URLs. This way you’ll know the source that prompted the prospect to contact you. What’s even more important is you’ll know how well the lead source converted into actual clients. You can receive a lot of leads from a source without converting them through no fault of you own. For example, if you advertise in a depressed or low income demographic market, it’s likely that these taxpayers can’t afford your fees and probably owe the IRS just a few thousand dollars. Conversely, you may only get small number of leads from a “better” geographical or demographical area but they convert at a much higher rate. (These taxpayers owe a lot more to the IRS and CAN afford your fees). What would you rather have…25 leads that converted into 1 client or 12 leads that converted into 3 clients? Tracking your marketing religiously by lead source all the way through to conversion will give you the insight necessarily to grow your practice more efficiently, quickly and much more profitably.

Mistake #2: I can’t believe how many practitioners don’t have a website or if they do, they don’t capture contact information from taxpayers wanting information about their IRS Problems. They don’t have a way to capture leads online. Some of the websites I’ve seen look like they were designed by their uncle Sylvester. Today, you MUST have a GREAT website because any new potential client is going to go there first before they hire you to check you out. A great website should be created to get visitors to stay on it for a while so that they request your free content/information in exchange for their contact data. CPAs, EAs and Lawyers should not use their firm name as the big headline on their websites. Or, how many years they’ve been in business. No one cares! No silly pictures of 1040 forms, or calculators, pencils or cityscapes. No pictures of people with their arms crossed standing in front of a bookshelf full of books. You need strong direct response copy and good educational and informational content that answer questions that prospects have concerning their IRS Problems.

Mistake #3: Most professionals don’t know what it costs to get a new IRS Problem client. If conventional tax prep or accounting client is worth $300 to $1,000 obviously you can’t spend a whole lot of money marketing to this segment of the population. But if a tax resolution client brings in at least $5,000 + and “drops” exponentially more money to your bottom line, you can invest a lot more money attracting these types of clients. You need to change your thinking and realize that a tax resolution client is so much more profitable and ultimately more valuable to you than a traditional tax prep client or accounting client. Marketing for tax prep and accounting clients is not only “old school” but is a commoditized business today and has been for some time. When you only have a commodity to sell the only point of difference you can compete on is price. Not a pretty place to be. Getting back to our example of our tax resolution client…Let’s say you make a 40% net profit on this type of client, which is $2,000, how much are you willing to spend to get more of these types of clients? This is the way you need to look at marketing in order to build your practice and enjoy the lifestyle you and your family deserve.