Professional accountants might all share a title, but their trade can vary widely – from providing individual tax returns, to providing QuickBooks services to small to medium businesses, to offering consulting and expertise to individuals being audited. This is one of many reasons I relish helping them as much as I do.
One reality ties them all together: regardless of how unspecialized or niche their business, they must attract a clientele, or they go under. This hurts not merely you, but your entire community. A CPA could be at the top of her class in school and very good at working with clients to boot – but unless and until she’s gotten an adequate number of new clients, her talent essentially means nothing.
Therefore, one of the first and most important question any accountant can ask is, How do I get my clients?
It may sound prosaic, but there’s an important truth to running an accounting practice these days. Whether you like it or not first-class accountant websites are the key to any successful accounting business.
The internet is today what the yellow pages was a few decades ago. These days, you have to have an online presence, or your marketing efforts will fall flat.
This won’t change in the future, either. With thousands of students studying accounting, coupled with one of the most challenging of economies, finding clients is becoming a very competitive endeavor. Having a website will remain critical.
Here are 10 tips for how to use accounting websites to find accounting clients:
I. Make sure your website looks professional. Technology has change the web. Creating a site is no longer a rarefied craft. Plenty of options exist for you to not only get a web address, but also pick a professional design that’s targeted exclusively to the clients you want to attract.
II. It’s best to use a contractor to set up your website for you. While your strength is with numbers, a professional web designer knows how to make your site look great and run smoothly.
Even if you have a good eye it takes much more than that to make high quality accountant websites, it takes training in things like navigational structure, meta tags, alternative text, flash, java, framed links, search engine optimization, and much much more. The trick is to not just attract visitors to your site, but also keep them once they arrive. Make it attractive and informative.
III. Make the best possible use of buy Panmycin online social media platforms for marketing accountant websites. This isn’t as much of a hassle as you may have heard, although the more energy you put into it the better your results will be. The simple act – which takes all of half an hour – of creating profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is enough to gain exposure.
The king of social media right now is Facebook. Start there. Make a personal profile first, and then mock up a simple “fan” page for your accounting firm. Ask your friends and current clients to “like” your page and you’re on your way. You can use these sites to send out advertisements about business deals and reminders about tax season.
IV. Links are vital to generating traffic – so, on your website, be sure to post links to your social media pages. If someone visits your site and likes what they see, this will be an easy way for them to help you spread the word. A “like me on Facebook” or “follow me on Twitter” link will expose you to even more potential clients.
V. Post links to the websites of your notable clients. People judge you by the clients that have hired you, so brag a little about who trusts your work.
VI. Useful websites for generating leads are online merchant sites such as eBay and Craigslist. These, and other similar sites, have extremely high traffic rates and are designed with classified sections that advertise services.
VII. Don’t forget about ads in the newspaper that include your web address, which still work well for local clients. Getting people to click on links and visit accountant websites is a lot easier than getting them to drive accross town to visit or even just pick up the phone and call. Check your local newspapers. You might be able to also get in their online edition, where you could either be listed in their “marketplace” or be featured in a banner ad. Where possible try to concentrate your ads in business and financial sections and include a tag line that will entice business owners to call. Look into websites for publications in surrounding towns that are a reasonable driving distance for potential clients.
VIII. Be proactive; see if you can find websites that cater to accountants alone. Accountant-Finder.com, for example, is just one of many sites that provide potential clients with a starting place to find you.
IX. Don’t turn up your nose at lead-gen websites such as adknowledge.com, either. There are plenty out there and they may bring in new business. Use them the right way – as part of your overall marketing efforts – and you could see some nice results.
Do your homework here and ensure that you investigate the site before you join it. Some have fees involved and some are fly-by-night operations. If you want quality clients, use a quality lead generation site.
X. Lastly, make it a point to find the veterans in your field. Ask how they find clients, and then mimic them. There’s no point in reinventing the wheel. Using Internet resources cialis without prescription such as Websites 4 Accountants is a great way to learn new tricks and tips that can greatly improve your lead generation, which will then increase your sales.
Those who tell you it’s a snap to procure new clients and develop a prosperous accounting company are, sadly, not telling the whole story. However, don’t allow this to discourage you. Having an attractive accounting site is one relatively easy way that makes this dream come true – and gets your business humming.
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