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.
Google has added a brand new search instrument called "Google Instant". Google is the most significant search engine on the planet and when it modifies the way it works the rumbling it causes is heard globally. Google toolbar users will find it familiar. It’s a basic keyword suggestion tool. To the everyday observer "Google Instant" really does not look like much. Google now shows likely searches based on the poularity of previous similar searches, and displays outputs in real time immediately. When you understand how it works, you can use it to find the best keywords for your services.
There’s nothing new about keyword suggestions. Google instant, however, has made these suggestions much more important. Casual users didn’t usually use keyword suggestions, probably because of the subtleties of using the keyboard to select the ones you wanted. No such subtleties are needed to use Google Instant.
I’m sure you’re wondering how this will affect you. It means that "New York Accountants" is a better keyword than "New York Accountant" because the plural version comes up as a result in Google Instant and the singular version does not.
If you can get a good ranking in a better keyword your listing will get more exposure and your accounting website will get more visits.
How It Works
With Google Instant, a searcher might be looking for a "Boston Accountant" and Google Instant will display a search results page as you type. The City name is too generic to matter, and none of the suggested keywords will be relevant to you, but look what happens as you type "a-c-c-o-u"… and soon a relevant keyword appears among the suggestions! Most users are going to stop typing here and use their down arrow to select the search term they want… "Boston Accountants". Naturally this is a search term you want to market to!
What Does This Mean for SEO?
There’s a concern in the SEO marketing community that this could negatively impact how SEO works for long-tailed keywords, phrases containing three or more words. What impact will this have on YOUR SEO? Well, if you’re a small or medium sized accounting firm you might be pleased.
The first step in the SEO process is identifying your relevant keywords. Google instant makes this process easy. As you type, the keywords Google has found to be used most often show up in gray in the search box.
The guessing game and hours spent pouring over traffic stats to identify your primary keywords are no longer necessary. Google Instant will tell you exactly what keywords and phrases are most likely to be searched.
Keyword Basics Still Count
There are some basic rules in selecting key phrases for your accounting website that still apply. The basic keywords you need to implement into your website should consist of the services you provide and your location. This will give you a base to work with. After you have a list of base keywords, expand it by making some more specific terms that potential clients might type in. For example, someone could look for "Tampa FL Strategic Business Planning."
You’ve Got the Keywords – Now What?
Make sure to use your base keywords a couple of times on your home page and other important pages. The home page should have keywords for your primary service and your location. Scatter keywords around the rest of the site as well, and optimize different pages to different, but related, key phrases. The more you customize your site the more relevant it will appear. Make sure your service pages are optimized to your location.
By following these steps, your page’s SEO score will increase. Try to optimize as many pages as you can to as many different key phrases as you can.
Work on your website continuously. Search engines prefer dynamic sites to static ones. SEO is a duty I liken to mowing the lawn; it’s a an activity that’s never actually over. It’s a process rather than a destination.
Fortunately, Google Instant makes the journey much less difficult.
With the US economy showing a few early convulsive signs of recuperation the forces of economic competition have, for the most part, culled the weak and the sick, but countless CPAs are still clambering to stay in the fight. It might be time to bluntly evaluate your marketing model and and ask yourself a fundamental question: What steps are you taking to improve your business?
While the CPA sites I spend so much time talking about offer an enormous edge for your practice, if you really want to be successful in today’s sluggish business environment you need to do more. You also need to look back to time-honored marketing practices. To succeed you need to be more than a good accountant. You need to be willing to put time and effort into sales.
During a recession, you need to dig deeper and try to fully discover the markets for your business. Take the time to answer some important questions.
*Â What are the client’s real needs?
*Â What approaches do they respond best to?
*Â What are you looking for in your clients?
Gale Crosley, accounting business growth consultant, states, "The key competency to winning business is knowing how to discover and build value at the client level."
So how do you do this? You have to ask the right questions in a one-on-one, during which Crosley says to look for the "contextual clues" to understand the client’s needs.
Remarkably simple questions can be very informative. Try asking them how long they’ve been in business or what their goals are. Does the organization provide adequate resources? Get personal by asking how their job could be easier and what their top areas of focus are.
The key to success isn’t the questions, it’s the answers. Most people are eager to talk about their businesses. All you need to do is get them started. Train yourself to really listen for clues that will tell you what the client really needs from an accountant. If you’re long term goal is to keep the client don’t fall into the trap of looking for chances to increase your billable hours. Look for ways that you can really help the client run his business more smoothly.
There’s a term for people who can do this well. We call them rainmakers.
Most firms have at least one good rainmaker. Some are fortunate enough to have a great one. Take the time to watch these people in action!
You’ll be amazed how much these people can learn by gently shaping simple small talk. A great rainmaker can gather personal details that can lead to bigger opportunities down the line and a bigger bottom line for the company.
Even if you struggle with the process you can still profit by trying to learn it. Take what you learn from these meetings and try applying it to your own clients. Try to get into your clients head. Learn what drives the decisions they make.
By understanding what the great rainmakers do, you’ll be able to step beyond the "idle social chitchat," work past what might seem like "random acts of networking," and gain the ability to figure out the reasons behind how a client makes a decision.
When you figure out the "how," you’ll be able to insert solutions into a conversation and gain the confidence of your client.
Taking the time to do this will give you new tools for getting through the recession.
What exactly do you need to do, then, to keep your business strong? It’s simple really. Learn how to pursue your customers socially. Really listen for signals about the customer’s needs and motivations.
Finally, take your place as your company’s new rainmaker.
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:
- Hire the right team
- Invest in the right partner and technology
- Apply metrics to your efforts to get a clear sense of the benefits
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.
There is presently no consensus as to Twitter’s marketing value. On one side there are a host of number crunchers and most of them seem to feel that the ROI of Twitter isn’t good enough to warrant it’s use. Other marketing professionals jeer at trying to measure the ROI of web based networking instruments like Twitter. I stand with the marketers on this one. I see an advantage to online social marketing and twitter is a central tool in that effort, but at the end of the day you’ll have to decide for yourself where you stand.
Let’s get one familiar question out of the way. What is Twitter? How can it help you build your CPA Practice?
In the most basic possible terms it enables it’s members to post short notes, called "Tweets", to their friends, or "followers". It is an exceedingly successful and popular instance of what is often referred to as a "social networking site". This isn’t Email. No recipient is specified when you "Tweet". Copies are posted to all your "followers" homepages, but they are also distributed publicly.
So what’s the tangible marketing value of Twitter?
There are actually a lot strategies you can practice. Client retention is a good place to get started.
The first sound incentive to use Twitter is merely that your many of your clients use it. They will note that you’re expressing an interest in their lives by following them and that you’ve spent the time to join a community that has value to them.
Placing your brand in front of clients is also easy on Twitter. You can use your tweets to show them how hard you are working for them in a way that feels personal to them. You will also gain knowledge of things about your clients that you would not otherwise be privy to just by paying attention to their tweets. You’ll often find it appropriate to respond to a tweet on a more direct level. I’m not just talking about catching a client tweeting about accounting problems that you can help them or their friends with. That most likely won’t happen especially often. I’m talking about their lives. You are frequently not privy to subjects like births, marriages, graduations, and deaths in time to send out suitable congratulations or condolences. As accountants we’re typically not the first to discover this kind of information, but it’s exactly the kind of thing people tend to tweet. Twitter will put you in the loop.
Will anyone argue that regular personal contact isn’t healthy for client retention?
Lastly, all tweets are public. While they are displayed on to your followers’ home pages they also appear on Twitter’s primary homepage (at least for a few moments) and there are tools you can use that will allow you to keep an eye on this flow of information and warn you if anybody sends out a tweet about, for example, you or one of your associates. It’s a terrific way to not only discover the clients that are offering optimistic referrals, but to learn about complaints in time to address them.
Accuratetly finding Twitters ROI seems improbable to me. Can you really fix the dollar value of these kinds of client retention techniques? I’ve not yet met a client that tracked his conversions meticulously enough to answer "yes" to that question. In deference to Twitter’s various and oftentimes well-thought-of doubters, there’s also no way to prove without doubt that they work out either.
Things get even more cloudy when you contemplate client acquisition, but this is where I believe that Twitter has the opportunity to actually shine.
So, how do you attract new clients with twitter?
You can put links in your posts. This can be used to drive guests to your website, and (if the material you’re linking to is noteworthy) there’s a fine chance some of your followers will "ReTweet" it, meaning they will forward it to their followers. This works terrifically if you have a personal blog, but even if you don’t you could just guide them to a free report. For example you could have a report on, "How to get Top Dollar for Your House". There’s a good chance that several of your followers are acquainted with at least one person who’s selling a house. If so they could ReTweet it, and this tweet will be shared not just to the individual who’s selling, but to ALL the ReTweeter’s followers, too. Tweets can, and often do, "go viral"; and this can acquaint your brand to numerous new people.
There is a small amount of search engine optimization (often called "SEO") advantage to tweeted links, also. I won’t get too into this because I don’t want to get distracted with technical details. In a few words: tweet backlinks don’t carry any "Page Rank" but they do pass a little bit of "Domain Authority" and aid the search engines in detecting and indexing new pages.
Now I have made a good living doing professional accounting website design for many years, so what I’m about to say may give the impression of being self-defeating at first blush. It isn’t however. I design my sites with this marketing paradigm in mind. An effective CPA website is designed to be a networking tool.
Why?
The smartest, most discerning, most successful business owners don’t, commonly, pick their accountant willy-nilly from Google searches or the local phone directory. The best prospects select their CPA by networking. They reach out to you because someone they know and respect endorsed you. Sites like Twitter and Facebook are a material online evolution of traditional network marketing, and as such, deserve profound respect as marketing tools.
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:
- Monitor your referral sources and organize your leads.
If you keep track of where your best business comes from you know how to invest your time in the future. Organize your referral contacts. Assign each a priority, high, medium, and low, then formulate a communications strategy for each group.
- Never assume your clients are happy.
Delighted clients are your most important source of referrals. Survey your client base to identify those who are merely ‘satisfied,’ then look for opportunities to convert them into fans. While you are at it, review everything your client sees, hears or touches. Is your reception area nice? How about your receptionist? When a client calls, are they likely to get a real person or do you make eveyone wade through your voice-mail? Are your accounts covers ? Are letters well-written and easy to read? Are your staff skilled communicators?
- Get to know your clients vendors and professional service providers.
These referral sources very likely don’t know you and your firm, but they should. By getting to know your clients vendors and service providers you establish a referral source, cement client relations, and enhance your image and reputation.
- Focus on your client’s profits (not your own).
OK, a lot of my colleagues will vehemently disagree with me on this one, but I sincerely believe that the best way to win the network marketing game is to be the best at what you do and doing it. Nobody is going to refer you if they feel gouged. There is a limit to the demand for tax return preparation, services and audits. There is also, however, an unlimited demand for accountants and consultants who can help clients improve net profits! If you are still focusing on increasing your chargeable hours, charge rates, or net fees, it’s time to reorient your thinking. It’s not about increasing your billable hours, it’s about increasing your services to the clients!
- Develop a marketing plan.
Most partners and managers have only 100-300 hours a year to devote to marketing. Why not organize this time the same way you would a 300-hour client engagement? Focus on your desired outcomes, actions, steps, money, time, and a budget.
- Talk about Value, not Fees!
When meeting prospects, focus on the value you offer, and on what makes you different from (and better than) your competitors. If the client agrees to the service, and if your terms are fair, you can assume the close. Fee terms should seem like an afterthought to the client.
- Get to know your clients’ team.
Before the tax season starts, meet the financial teams of your ten best clients. These are valuable contacts. Build a great team for your client and you will build a great team for yourself too.
- Don’t hibernate the tax season away.
Clients are never more interested in help with their business than when confronted with last year’s financial results and this year’s tax liability. Plan now to cross-sell to every client you meet during the season. Capitalize on this effort. Use press releases, articles, and mailings.
- Learn to ask better questions and listen to the answers.
Asking the right questions is the foundation of being an effective adviser. The client doesn’t know what he needs, he only knows what he wants. Listen between the lines. You are failing in your duty as an accountant if you can’t sell a client on a service he really needs. Identify what your clients’ needs are and use what you know to help your them meet those needs. Ultimately this will benefit both you and your client.
- Tomorrow is more important than yesterday.
Your clients are more worried about today and tomorrow than they are about yesterday (which is the traditional province of the accountant). You can really help most of your clients by helping them use financial statements as a cornerstone for making better business decisions.
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
Ask Yourself Three Questions
- Where do most of your new clients come from?
- How do you know that your clients are happy?
- How can you effectively cross-sell services to your clients?
For most of us the answer to the first question is, “Most of my new clients are referrals.†Recommendations make up the bulk of new business for almost all professionals, not just accountants. Some people, however, find it awkward or overly forward (some even say ‘unethical’) to ask their clients outright for referrals. A survey built into your CPA website design can be a simple, non-pushy but effective method for gaining leads from clients.
Identifying happy clients is usually much easier than identifying unhappy ones. Clients, for example, will only refer your services or invite you to birthday parties if they’re happy with you. These clients can provide us with valuable information, though – you need to know what you’re doing right so that you can keep on doing it.
Unfortunately, many unhappy clients won’t tell you until it’s too late to fix the problem. A survey gives them a way to tell you what you need to improve in time to fix the problem!
Finally, a vital source of business is cross-selling new services to existing clients. But again, how can you go about effective cross-selling without being pushy?
A survey can be a very simple, cost-effective solution for all of these problems. A quick and easy client survey allows you to gauge the satisfaction of your clients, nip potential problems in the bud, cross-sell services and gain hot leads.
Few firms regularly survey their clients, and even fewer get surveys right. Typical reasons given for avoiding surveys altogether include: “We won’t learn anything we don’t already knowâ€; and “We’re too busy serving clients to survey themâ€.
Behind these excuses lies a dangerous attitude: “We’re worried that we’ll hear something we don’t want to hear.â€
Designing Your Survey
Even when firms do survey, the questionnaires are often too long, too complicated, and produce results that don’t really lead to any obvious conclusions or actions.
Avoids these traps. Keep it down to a few well chosen questions so clients are more likely to take the time to complete it.
Carefully word the questions to get straight to the heart of the matter and at the same time make them general enough that the client can say what he wants to say. A good survey will provide you with precisely the information you need to decide on effective follow-up actions.
Example
The Questions
- Can you suggest any ways that we can improve our service to you?
- Our mission is to help you achieve success on your terms. To what extent have we helped you do this in the past year?
- We are here to help you achieve your personal and business objectives. Where do you want to be this time next year?
- What would it mean to you to achieve these goals?
- What more can we do to help you in the next year?
- Is there anyone you know that you feel would benefit from our expertise? If so, you may wish to use the space to provide contact information. We always appreciate your referrals!
What the answers can tell us
- This question gives clients an opportunity to express dissatisfaction, but forces them to do so in a way that gives you constructive feedback and an opportunity to fix the problem.
- This is a chance for the client to give you positive feedback, but it requires them to be specific, enabling you to identify areas where things are really working well. If this client appreciates a particular service, so will others.
- Questions 3, 4, and 5 are all about positioning yourself as a trusted adviser. This question will help you identify your clients goals and judge the feasibility of your clients expectations.
- This will help you understand your client. There are very few “selling points” (things that people really want). This question might help you identify what selling points are most important to your client. Does he want power? Security? Status? Acceptance? Is he just looking for a good time? This question often provides us with insight as to what this clients best selling point is.
- These answers allow you to further identify the right services to cross-sell. The answers will give you an ice-breaker when calling the client: “I noticed that in our survey you said you wanted to cut down on the time you spend on routine admin work. Did you know that we can help?â€
- This is a great, non-pushy way to gain strong leads, since it forces the client to think about specific contacts.
Adding the Survey to your Accounting Website
Every CPA Website Design provider is different. If you are already one of our clients adding a survey to your accounting website is free, and getting started is easy using our Customizable Online Feedback Forms. If you are a Gold or Platinum client just type up your questions and send them to support@cpasitesolutions.com and ask us to set you up with a Customer Satisfaction Survey page. If you are a silver client just log into your portal and click “Modify Your Site”. Go to “Add Page”. Select “Form Page”. Click next. You can rename the page and position it on the Nav Bar normally. To modify the form itself, just click on it.
If you have your website through a different CPA Web Design firm you will need to contact them to determine availability and cost for your online survey.
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”.
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