Writing a blog is easy and fun, but without readers your blog will not help you market your firm. Building a sound following, though, is a ton of work. There aren’t any cheats. It takes months, perhaps years, to solidify your reputation as a blogger. Much has been written about the need to offer interesting and continually updated content for your blog to be successful but there’s much more you need to do to get your business blog off the ground.
So how do you draw subscribers to your accounting blog?
1. Make your blog part of the way you communicate.
Your employees are a built in audience, and your blog makes a great place to post staff birthdays, meetings, after hours get-togethers, and other daily updates. Your clients can also make great readers. Use your blog to keep them appraised on tax law changes and other news that directly affects them. Don’t be shy. If you have a client that can benefit from your post send them an email and ask them to leave you a comment.
2. Don’t make visitors dig through your website for your blog.
Website users are accustomed to getting what the want when they want it, and if you don’t make it easy for them they leave. Most won’t take more than a few seconds to find your blog on your home page. Display the link prominently on your accounting website . Put it on the navigation menu where it can be seen without making them open or roll over anything. Add a nice banner link to your home page.
3. Display your website address everywhere!
The more places you post your web address the easier it will be for potential readers to find your blog. Business cards, stationary, email signatures, yellow pages and other ads are all natural places to post your URL. Also, post your URL on any blogs or forums that you participate in. When posting your URL online ask yourself whether it’s more appropriate to link directly to your blog rather than to the top level of your domain. Visitors looking for your blog won’t want to navigate through your home page.
4. Share and share alike.
Bloggers are a tight-knit, cooperative community. If you help them out, they’ll help you out. Doing this will get your name out there on other blogs in the industry and help gain exposure for your content. As a rule you’ll get a link back to your website or blog for your trouble. This is not just a great way to drive visitors to your site, the search engines also look at these links as adding authority to your domain.
Conversely, you can return the favor by inviting guest bloggers of your own. Help others help you!
5. Use your networking skills.
Putting yourself out there in online communities is a must. Joining a LinkedIn group or a more traditional forum are two ways you can do this. Don’t just promote your website. Put a link in your profile, sure, and site your blog when the opportunity arises, but it’s more important to engage the group according to their needs and interests rather than your own.
6. Mention your influences.
Use social communities to talk to your clients, prospects, and contacts; especially other bloggers.
Your contacts will very likely see and appreciate these "plugs". Most online networking sites like twitter and Facebook have tracking services that will allow your friends to get an alert when you mention them. This will get you noticed. If you help them get noticed it’s much more likely they’ll take the time to get you noticed.
7. Contests draw a lot of traffic.
It’s a fact – people love to win things. The prize doesn’t need to be exrtraordinary; it can be as simple as sharing your blog link or posting the most comments. If you want to get even more comments you could offer something even more valuable. A free tax prep might seem like one obvious choice.
Contests can also be used as a good way to cross sell your off season services. Offering a free compilation and review for a local business owner, for example, can kill two birds with one stone. It will often bring that client into the monthly fold, and it can be used to create a new blog post that highlights the value added by exploiting financial statements.
8. Keep it dynamic.
Eventually every blogger gets stuck in a rut. Once you succumb to a formula it can be hard to get past it. Don’t succumb to the doldrums! By the time you feel yourself starting to drift into limbo it’s a pretty safe bet it’s already happened. Mix up the content on your blog so your readers remain surprised and interested in coming back for me. One nice addition to your repertoire is video, and when you upload the finished piece to YouTube you draw in additional readers who might not have found you otherwise.
If you employ these tactics you’ll have a much better chance of cultivating a real following. As always, keep your content novel and keep reaching out. As long as you’re engaged, your readers will be, too.
The time honored concept of "best practices" is a bit of a fading star in today’s business environment. The concept isn’t a bad one, but it has a slight problem that tends to influence the way we think about doing business. It tends to confine us to into old rules, methods and assumptions. This is because "best practices" can be an encumbrance when it comes to innovation.
I think it was marketing Guru Mark Brownlow who first suggested that it would be better to change the term to "profit practices". He’s trying to change the way we think about these practices. Rather than simply following the status quo this new term leads us, hopefully, to making sure our efforts are actually generating revenue.
An easy way to meet your customers where they are is to use transactional e-mails. This is an e-mail sent in response to a visitor’s actions on the site. One place where transactional e-mails can benefit a CPA is on your website’s service pages. At the very least put an e-mail form at the bottom of all your service pages, or better yet make a special offer. You could offer a short report on the subject. Prospects that read that far and respond on that form are very hot leads. Follow up on these inquiries immediately with a transactional e-mail.
Transactional e-mails bring in revenues between three and six times higher than bulk mailings from the same clients, states a report from Experian. Transactional e-mails are a key profit opportunity.
Respect the permission of e-mail subscribers by not bombarding them with e-mail or sending irrelevant messages. When you do this, you risk losing subscribers and the amount of revenue they bring in to your company – which can be very high. A recent study from Epsilon put the value of an e-mail address at $23.
Use social media carefully. Fans of your facebook page may not necessarily want to be marketed to, but you can use your facebook page to collect e-mail addresses from the ones that do.
Don’t spam. Sending e-mails to people who have never heard of you is pointless. Potential customers who choose to hear from your company and are interested in your products are worth vastly more than those acquired through buying lists or other ways.
Exercise restraint. Sending too many e-mails causes people to skip over your messages and to unsubscribe from your list – it’s just that simple. If you annoy people with constant e-mails they will eventually get annoyed. Down the road when they actually need a CPA it’s unlikely they’ll even consider you.
Occasional e-mails about a product or a special promotion is okay; force-feeding offers to your customers, though, will turn them off quickly.
Treat e-mail marketing like the revenue stream that it is instead of just another number in the marketing budget. This means you should:
The biggest challenge of e-mail marketing is to meet marketing objectives while offering compelling and relevant content in your e-mails. To do this, pay attention to what content customers click on within the e-mails. What prompts them to take action?
Employ these "profit practices" to improve the revenue from e-mail campaign instead of using aged "best practices."
About the Author
Jim Tourville is the Director of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country’s biggest website design businesses dedicated entirely to CPA sites . His firm at present provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, and tax preparation firms.
When it comes to social networking, there’s frequently a disconnect between accounting practices and a practical understanding of the significance of the opportunities new web-based networking websites can present. There are many such instruments available. Facebook, Twitter, Ping.fm, Multiply, Google, Tumblr… and accounting professionals who are serious about the future have to familiarize themselves with all of them. Arguably the most notable of these instruments, from a business networking perspective, is a website called LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is like Facebook in several ways in that it uses profiles, status updates, and groups, but it has less on your "social" and more of your "professional" life. Instead of your connections sharing pictures of their cat, the focus is on employment, networking, references, and virtually anything else you’ll need in the business world.
This information is reflected in your profile rather than your favorite bands and movies. Your LinkedIn profile shows your current employers, descriptions of your experience, recommendations from your clients and co-workers, and a personal summary where you can highlight your specialties. You can also include your website, Twitter, and even any instant-messaging handles you may have at the bottom.
Once you have all this filled in (LinkedIn will give you a percentage-to-completion box on the right side, indicating how ready you are to get out and start networking), you’re free to start connecting with contacts, requesting recommendations, and joining groups. One of the nice things about LinkedIn is that it’s like a dynamic resume—constantly updating and showing up-to-date progress, while providing an ever-changing face for potential clients.
But where LinkedIn provides many opportunities to its users, it isn’t going to do the work for you.
The key, says Barry Macquarrie, "is participation". Macquarrie, who is director of technology at the KAF Financial Group, recently posted a blog on CPA2Biz outlining seven essential LinkedIn activities. His first four activities are fairly straightforward. They basically cover the process of setting up a complete profile, keeping your status updated, and connecting with your clients and employers. The last three steps are more involved. Once your profile is established you need to join groups, share links, and start following other companies and competitors.
He also suggests that CPAs should join certain groups. Specifically he suggests creating/joining a group for your own firm as well as those of your competitors. He also recommends his own group, SocialCPAs, AICPA, your state’s CPA society, and the International CPA Association.
You already grasp the importance of social networking. Don’t let the advantages offered by online networking sites slip past. Exploit social networking sites, and LinkedIn is the appropriate place to begin. The possibilities are endless, and it’s not an opportunity to be missed!
About the Author
Brian O’Connell is the President and founder of CPA Site Solutions, one of the country’s largest website design companies oriented exclusively to accounting website design . His firm currently provides websites for more than 4000 CPA, accounting, and tax preparation firms.
The fact you can buy your website a good listing in the search results of Google is not by any means a very well kept secret.
If nobody has heard of it having a great CPA website isn’t going to help you sell your firm all that effectively. There are lot’s of ways to publicize your website, and one of my favorites is advertising using Google Pay-Per-Click.
If you’ve ever done a search on Google, and who hasn’t, you have no doubt seen sponsored listings. They appear on the right side of the search results page, and often up to the first three positions on the left side. These listings are being displayed through Google Adwords pay-per-click (or PPC) marketing platform. An ad incurs an impressions when Google displays the ad on the search results page. An advertiser pays for the click when you click on one of the sponsored listings. In other words, that advertiser pays Google per each click their ad receives.
The cost of the click that is payed to Google it ultimately impacted by the landing page quality score. Quality score is driven by a lot of different factors, including the relevance of the page content to the search term, and the Click Through Rate, or "CTR".
Click through rate is the rate of clicks to impressions. If your ad is displayed 500 times, and receives 100 clicks, then your CTR is 20%. A high CTR signals to Google that you are showing a relevant ad for the search phrase, and this will improve your quality score for that keyword.
The higher the quality score is of the landing page, the lower the actual cost per click will be. Adwords is essentially an auction. You bid on keywords. In very straight forward terms, the higher your bid, the higher your website’s ad will be displayed.
Now there are a number of valuations and specific calculations Google makes to define where your ad will be placed. These calculations occur in real time when a search is performed. In a future article, we will take a closer look at the specifics of these calculations. For this article, it is simply important to grasp that your bid is not what you will ultimately pay for a click . If your quality score is 7 and you bid $5.00 for a click, you will pay less for a click then if your quality score is 4, and you will never pay more then your bid, or $5.00, for a click.
Remember Google’s first priority is to show relevant search results, even for the sponsored listings. They could just give the first spot to the person who bids the most, but that would only ensure the person willing to spend the most money would be listed first. The highest bidder however, may not be the most relevant search result.
A very good illustration of this is your company name. Let’s say you are Adidas, and you want to bid on the keyword “Nikeâ€. The most relevant search result for the keyword “Nikeâ€, is obviously the Nike website. Google is going to give Nike a higher quality score for that keyword, in effect rewarding them for their relevancy for that keyword.
Before we look at tips to improving your quality score, it’s important to also understand match types. There are three match types you can and should bid on for each keyword. The three match types are exact, phrase and broad.
Exact Match: Exact match is the best keyword to bid on. An exact match means the search phrase being searched on is an exact match for the keyword for which you are bidding. For example if you are bidding on exact match for “Accounting Firmsâ€, your website’s ad will be displayed only when someone searches for “Accounting Firmsâ€.
Phrase Match: Phrase match means your keyword is a phrase within the search string. For example, if you bid on a phrase match of “Accounting Firmsâ€, you ad will be displayed when someone searches on things like “small accounting firmsâ€, or “accounting firms and CPAsâ€.
Broad Match: Broad match essentially let’s the search engine determine if the search phrase is a match for your broad match keyword or not. Bidding on broad match keywords is both important, and dangerous. It’s important because a broad match for “accounting firms†might be triggered when someone searches for “accounting servicesâ€. It also can be triggered when someone misspells a word, such as “acounting firmsâ€. The danger is that Google may determine that “Accounting Supplies†is a close enough match to “Accounting Servicesâ€, and trigger your broad match keyword. This is why Google allows advertisers to declare "negative keywords". We’ll talk more about negative keywords in a moment.
Now that you have an understanding about your keyword match types and website’s quality score, here are some pointers on how you can improve your quality score and click through rates.
Ad Copy
Your ad copy should reflect the search phrase, or keyword you are bidding on. The person doing the search will be more apt to click an ad that has their search string. For example, if you bid on “CPA Servicesâ€, you want the headline of your ad to be something like “Quality CPA Servicesâ€. If your ad title says "Jim’s Accounting Firm", the person doing the search then has to stop and think… if they click your sponsored link, are they going to find what they are looking for? They often make their decision within a split second, so you don’t want the prospect to have to stop and think. Give them exactly what they want. If that means writing 50 different ad titles for 50 different keywords, so be it. Your work will pay off in the end.
Landing Page
The landing page is the page on your site that the searcher is taken to when they click your ad. Typically this should not be the homepage of your website. If someone searches for "Strategic Business Planningâ€, they should be taken directly to the page on your website that explains your business planning services rather than a generic accounting related homepage. If the ad goes to your homepage, and they have to search through a big pile of CPA related content just to find what they are searching for, they’ll probably just click the back button and go to the next advertiser.
If your website doesn’t have a suitable landing page for the keyword, add one. It really is that important.
Introduction
There is an exciting new trend in SEO that can increase your search engine authority and page rank quickly and easily. Google and friends are spending a great deal of time and energy on indexing videos for competitive keywords. Looking to take the inside track on your market? My next few articles will discuss how to take advantage of Video in optimizing your CPA Website Design.
Why use videos?
People Search For Videos
More and more people are adding the search term “video” to their inquiries.
Video Gets Extra Prominence In The Search Engines
That’s right. Even if the searcher DOESN”T include the word “video” in their search videos are still highly likely to be ranked for it’s related keywords.
Video is Viral
Video consumers tend to be very computer literate and active. They tend to share content with one another. Unfortunately they also tend to be young, so the personal viral element is not likely to be too profound. Still, there is an automated viral element to video sharing sites. They tend to copy videos from one another.
Nobody Else is Doing It
Just ask Bill Gates. Doing it first means EVERYTHING. Apple invented GUI, not MS. Mac has a better GUI than MS. I love OSX. But I don’t use it. Never will. MS got Windows packaged and out the door first. The things I like to do on my computer, the things I NEED to do (Like provide first rate CPA Website Design and Accounting Firm Marketing Support), require Windows. That’s all it takes. Be the first to do it and you’ll be the first to reap the benefits! Sit on your hands and someone else will do it first.
This SEO Focus will have 3 more parts…
How to make your Video
How to Submit your Video
How to Publicize your Video.
As always, this series of articles will assume that you are working on an Accounting or CPA website design. If you are an executive search consultant, financial planner, or some other type of web owner in a completely unrelated field, you’ll need to extrapolate an appropriate strategy yourself but the basics of these articles will still apply to you.
Marketing is a state of mind.
‘Marketing’ used to be a dirty word in the accounting world, but that’s not true any more. Forget your instinctive associations with telemarketing and expensive advertising. Successfully marketing and growing your accounting firm is about developing the right attitude towards your clients, prospective clients and referral sources.
Accounting firms operate in an increasingly competitive marketplace. Gone are the days when ‘marketing’ meant a plaque on the door and perhaps a Yellow Pages ad. Now even small sole practitioners are setting up organized marketing campaigns, and extravagant CPA website design is a virtual requirement for success.
But before you hire a marketing guru like myself and you need to open your wallet, there are some simple, cost-free steps you can take to transform your approach to growing your practice. This will benefit you in the short run by improving your marketing mindset and in the long run, when you really do need my help, it will make my job a lot easier.
Here’s my top ten:
Marketing is not a dirty word, and neither it’s not black magic. If you want to succeed in today’s market you need to change your attitude about marketing. Clients and referrals can have remarkable results in maintaining and winning business – and you can do it for less than the cost of a plaque and a Yellow Pages ad.
Kenny Marshall
Marketing Consultant specialized in CPA Website Design
It’s no secret that I provide websites for accounting firms. It’s what I know best and what I love, so obviously it’s what I write about.
I’ve noticed that when new clients come to me they are often myopically focused on Search Engines. This is a mistake! As you can see from our past posts there is SO MUCH MORE to internet marketing than just search engines.
Even I can lose focus from time to time, and a great article has appeared recently on Squidoo that has reminded me that there are tons of great ways to market your accounting firm that have nothing to do with your website. This new contributor to Squidoo bears watching. I can tell you for a fact he has a real passion for internet marketing, and best of all he plugs our blog!
His first ever article, however, has almost nothing to do with internet marketing. Instead the focus of the article is using the news media to grow your accounting firm. I recommend you check it out, especially the section called “Winning the Media Game”.
It doesn’t matter how good your CPA Website is if nobody knows about it. In order to make money off a site, people need to KNOW about it.
Once you have a website, you’ll want to publicize it as widely as possible.
We’ll be talking about these strategies a LOT! Put your URL on all your stationery, business cards etc. Also… Include it in your email signatures and ask your friends and clients to mention it to their contacts.
And remember the golden rule of website marketing!!!
Online directories such as Superpages, YellowBook, and City Search can also be useful ways to drive traffic to your site.
You’ll also want to consider search engines. There are various ways of approaching search engine optimization. Submitting your site to Google, Ask. com etc is easy, but getting to the top of the rankings and staying there is not and, depending on what you want to achieve, can be quite expensive. Google offers pay-per-click advertising for search terms, which can be very effective. This subject requires a whole fact sheet for itself – if you’d like CPASiteSolutions’ free guide to search engines, email a request to ken@cpasitesolutions.com.
Who’s Kenny Marshall?
Kenny is a vice president and marketing consultant with CPASiteSolutions.com, a leading provider of websites for accounting and CPA firms. He has been marketing accounting services for over 10 years and has been working almost exclusively with internet marketing for more than half that time.
I can tell you exactly what their response will be. Your son or daughter will look at you like you’re an alien (you know that look) and say something like, “You don’t have a website?”
Out of the mouths of babes, eh?
Ask anyone between the age of twelve and twenty-one: the web makes the world go ’round. Whether it’s renting a summer house, buying insurance or choosing a dog groomer, the first thing most of us do these days is consult the internet. If you’re offering a service in a competitive marketplace and your prospects can’t find you on the internet you will miss out.
Professional service firms are no different.
And the website is not just there for anonymous browsers googling for “accountants in Sacramentoâ€. These days you can bet that word-of-mouth referrals will have a quick look for your site before deciding to become a client. Referral sources will pass on your URL or perhaps even just say “they’re on the webâ€.
We’re beyond the time where accounting firms can get away with not having a website. Today, if you don’t have a site, people will wonder why.
Maybe you just can’t keep up?
And this will only become more and more the case – it’s never going to go back to the way it was before the world wide web came along, so go out RIGHT NOW and start looking for a good CPA Site Design Firm.
Rapidly changing technology will never change one fundamental truth about acquiring new clients for your accounting firm… Your best new clients will always be referrals garnered through good, old fashioned network marketing.
So why do I need a website for network marketing?
A website for accounting firms is a great way to increase your firms networking power! The net is a great place to get a buzz going about your practice, and your website is your home base for that effort. One word of warning, though… If you want to create a buzz about your website you’re going to need to do most of talking yourself. In order to do that right, you’re going to need to get to know your website.
Get in the habit of telling people about your Internet presence. The most important website promotion is word-of-mouth, and you’ll have a lot more people talking about your site if you do your part.
Make people aware of all the services that you provide on the site. Don’t forget to tell all your clients about your new site and ask them to refer it to their friends. This is especially important when you are dealing with new clients.
When networking… focus your message on the person you are speaking with. For example, suppose you have one of my websites for accountants and you are using it to network. If you’re talking to new parents, tell them about your College Savings articles. If you’re talking to a business owner, direct them to your Business Strategies section of your financial guides.
Of course in order to do this, you’ll need to continue to do the hard work of networking:
you have now succeeded in developing a positive relationship with your prospect. Even if that prospect already has an accountant he or she is happy with, no relationship lasts forever. In a few years when their accountant gets a job in the corporate sector, or retires, or gets married, or moves, or whatever, you’ll be right at the top of their list!
Get used to giving out your Web and email addresses at the same time as your phone and fax numbers, and get to know your site so when you’re networking you can focus your message to your prospect.
Copyright CPASiteSolutions 2008
