Enhancing your online presence so you get the right clients during the 2018 tax season: part 1 of 3
Tax season is approaching, and for business owners, that means it’s time to get clients in the door and grow business. Before things kick into high gear, it’s important to check up on one of your most powerful marketing tools: your online presence.
In this 3-part blog series, we’ll go through the simple steps you should take to make sure you market your tax and accounting firm to the fullest during tax season. That way you get the best ROI with your marketing dollars and can keep growing.
First thing’s first – check up on your website
One of the main sources of new business for tax and accounting firms is referrals. Once a client is referred to you by family, a friend or a current client, it’s likely that they’ll check out your website. Follow this quick 4-step process for ensuring your website is up-to-date as you start to generate more leads this year:
- Double-check your office locations and contact info: don’t let misinformation prevent a prospect from getting in touch with you. Make sure your contact info is on the homepage and easy to find.
- Make sure you have a professional domain and email: take the extra step to make sure you’ve secured your own domain and email address. Mostad Marketing Cloud offers domain registration, hosting and secure email.
- Update info for 2018 tax season: make sure you have this year’s tax info on your site, including any important dates clients should know about. It’s also helpful to let people know what they’ll need to bring when they meet with you.
- Update the heading and intro copy on the homepage: Search engines like Google love to see new, fresh content. The best thing you can do to your website homepage right now is to make simple changes to the content is new and relevant. * Pro tip: update content now and use cloud-based marketing tools like Mostad Marketing Cloud to automate content changes as tax season approaches.
Double-check your SEO keywords
It’s not as scary as it sounds. In fact, most SEO (search engine optimization) keywords are words that people would use naturally in conversation about tax and accounting. How would you explain taxes (in general) to a child? Think about that and the terms you’d use and think about how clients talk about their taxes. If you’re curious, Google Ads is commonly used to evaluate keywords.
Make sure your website homepage has:
- Terms that talk about your geographical location sprinkled throughout your website
- Your firm’s full name (exactly as you want it to appear in a Google search)
- Tax and accounting (or variations of the phrase) at least two or three times on your homepage
Check your business operations
For small business owners, efficiency is key. And one way to be efficient is to make operations of the business as automated as possible. Here are some key tips for making your day-to-day operations more efficient:
- Allow clients to make appointments on your website (or through a smartphone app).
- Make sure there’s an option for clients to send secured emails and/or upload secured documents. *Pro tip: Dropbox and Google Drive are not recommended for sharing files securely.
- Set up payment reminders with marketing automation so that clients are automatically notified when they have a bill ready or a payment is due.
Remember, when you save time on administrative tasks you open up more billable client time!
Start getting referrals and new clients, today
Taking a bit of time to ensure your firm’s online presence is working will help you be more prepared for the rush of tax season. Want a way to make it easier? Use Mostad Marketing Cloud website services.
Start by scheduling a consultation with Mostad Marketing Cloud website services to ensure all your systems are running smoothly and efficiently. Our cloud-based marketing tools also help you make sure your online presence is optimized so the right clients can find your business.