Tips on marketing your tax resolution services
Although there is not any one-size-fits-all recipe to promote a tax resolution business, PitBullTax has more than enough years in this business to help a bit. Here you have some general tips about marketing a tax resolution business we are sure you will find useful. We invite you to try them out so you can find what combination of marketing efforts works best for your practice.
Start by taking a look at your competitors
It is healthy to wait a little before starting marketing your service because, by looking at your competitors, you should be able to notice the following few things:
- How they introduce themselves and their service
- What tone they use in their advertising material
- What claims they make and how they support them
- What promises they make and how their whole advertising material aligns (or not) with them
Continue by understanding that there is a difference between what you want to offer and what they want to find
As a professional, you want to find tax resolution clients. The more complex the cases the more you will be able to charge them to solve them too.
However, they will be looking at their money matters from very different, and varied, points of view. You will see a wide spectrum of cases, ranging from potential clients who are aware they have tax debt and want to just want to solve them to others that are sort of desperate because IRS breathing down their neck or, worse, its collection engine has already placed a lien on their cars, or "bitten" its bank accounts and wages.
For your marketing, this means that different frames of mind will quite likely require different advertising approaches. We are sure you want to keep that in mind.
Remember they will compare before hiring a tax resolution professional
If there is an immutable law in business, it is that people will hire or buy what they find most convenient for them. We may all be guilty of impulse buying now and then, but even in those cases, we thought we were buying something good for us.
For important matters like acquiring a tax resolution service, potential clients will quite likely take their time and compare. This does not mean you need to portray your practice as the one-of-a-kind, non-plus-ultra one that will solve every case you can throw at it in seconds. No one can assure that, and, above all, there is no need to lie. Your objective is to make sure your advertising has the means to win the comparison against other potential suppliers.
In addition, rest assured that your potential clients will want to know what would happen first and what would happen next. What will be the best time for you to provide them with this information? That is a decision you need to make, preferably, before starting your advertising.
Set sound objectives for your advertising
With the information above as background, the next step would be to establish clear objectives to your marketing efforts. The obvious one is getting the client, but it should not be the only one. Other objectives you may want to consider include:
- Showing profeciency in the matter, so you can earn people's trust and get more cases
- Becoming the kind of tax professional your clients will undoubtedly recommend to others (not only because you get results but also because you offer a great customer service or other benefits)
- Becoming the go-to taxpro in your area in the future
Start advertising your tax resolution services to your own (and previous) clients
Most tax resolution professionals find their first few clients right among their current or previous clients. They already know you and they already trust you. Half of the battle is won with them.
The question you need to ask yourself is this: Do all your current and previous clients already know that you are offering tax resolution? If they do now yet, how are you planning to let them know?
Onwards, remember there are two worlds out there today
For the rest of your marketing, remember there are two worlds today: online and outside (or offline, if you like).
Advertising outside includes leaflets and classifieds, posters and billboards, print and live media, and also events.
Advertising online includes your own website, search engines, mainstream sites like social networks, e-mail marketing and, literally, millions of other sites.
You want to try as many combinations of advertising as possible, without spending too much, so that you will lose money, and without spreading yourself too thin, so you can easily find what really works best for you.
You will also want to measure your results closely. If you spend $500 in online ads and $500 in classifieds ads, how will you know what client came from what source? Creating specific e-mail addresses as a reply to different ads often does the trick, but there are other ways too.
Taking this into account, here you have a bunch of tips you can use for both worlds. We took the liberty of highlighting the few we found most interesting:
To advertise outside
- Leaflets work, and they work best at a walking distance of your practice.
- Print advertising lasts longer, as printed media (especially magazines) is often reread for weeks or even months; but live media tends to reach more people at the same time.
- Radio advertising is not always as expensive as you may be thinking, considering that you may make several thousand dollars from each client you get from there. TV is way more expensive but most businesses get a return on their investment.
- Street advertising (panels, posters, billboards) will cost you the same regardless of the number of words you place on them, so make each word count.
- A lesser-known secret of the online world is that search engine optimization (SEO) goes beyond trying to appear first on search engines. It also helps your website get the words it needs to increase your business and to load faster to your users' eyes. Try to speak with a consultant *before* your next website redesign. It saves time.
- There are two ways to use social media for business: The most popular way is to try to build an audience (followers). That is, first you show and tell you know your job, people notice and follow you, and some time later they start hiring you. It works but it needs long time, planning posts and scheduling time to reply to comments. The other way is the "hunter" mode. You still keep some social media presence, but less intensely. Instead, you pay attention to social media conversations "hunting" for opportunities to grow your business. Once you find one, you reply and try to establish a connection. You build from there.
- You do not really need a social media calendar or posts templates. Most of the times, it suffices to hire someone from a gig economy website to do it for you. If you really want to do it yourself, then we suggest you to create videos. They will be more personal, and no one will be able to imitate them.
- E-mail marketing is more effective than other paths of digital marketing provided that you built your list. It is not a secret you can buy lists, but building your own is much better. How can you build your own list of subscribers? Usually, by offering something in exchange to your prospect's e-mail address. We are sure you have seen those forms with free reports in exchange for joining a mailing list already. Do the same.
- E-mail marketing requires a mailing list software. There are many mailing list services in the market, which either charge monthly or by thousands of messages; but there are self-hosted e-mail marketing software applications too. If you install one in a Virtual Private Server (VPS), you can save money.
- As for online advertising (mainly banners but also sponsored posts), the most convenient option is to pay per time or action (CPA). Paying per clic (CPC) or impressions (CPM) exposes you to click fraud, something you surely want to avoid.
- In every case, even social media, your objective needs to be drawing people to your site, where they can find all your marketing machine together. Try to avoid the mistake of working for social media platforms, giving away too much information on their sites rather than on yours.
- Lastly, you will need to make a decision about blogging. Although maintaining a blog on your site is useful, people expect your blog to be updated with new information with reasonable frequency. The alternative to blogging is to have a set of articles. Just make sure to keep the information on them up to date.
