The age of the Novelty Website is over. Nobody visits websites any more just because they are exciting and new. These days if you want people to visit your website, you have to give them a compelling REASON.

The golden rule of website marketing is simple: From now on whenever you mention your web site address include a “tagline” that promises a tangible benefit to people willing visit your site.

Treat your tagline like a newspaper headline. A newspaper headline is meant to get a prospect to read an article. A website tag line serves almost the exact same function (getting someone to read your site content) and therefore is crafted using the exact same rules:

1. Appeal to your prospect on an emotional level, not an intellectual one. People make important decisions emotionally, so appeal to the things they are really looking for or are really afraid of. Your marketing will be much more successful if you promise benefits that appeal to a prospects greed and fear than they’ll be appealing to a prospects good sense.

2. Certain words just have a lot of marketing appeal. Use them. Of course, the word “free” is now and always will be the king of the hill, but words like YOU, YOUR, HOW, NEW, WHO, MONEY, NOW, PEOPLE, WANT, and WHY catch peoples eye and appeal to them on a very personal level. Use these words.

3. Use a tagline that promises a tangible benefit.

4. Focus your tagline to your market. For example, if you are mailing to new residents use a tagline like, “Special offer to New Homeowners!”. If you’re targeting a larger more generic group use something more universal like “Free to New Tax Preparation Customers”.

5. Mention your offer immediately in your tagline. Remember the tagline is the ad for your web site. In many ways the tag line is more important than the web address itself. After all… a good tagline is much more likely to get the prospect to read deeper than a good web address is!

Here’s a few examples of good taglines for marketing your accounting website:

• Learn 7 tax Secrets You Need to Know. Visit www.pro-tax.com
• The IRS is targeting Your Business. Visit www.pro-tax.com
• 10 things the IRS doesn’t want you to know about your taxes. Visit www.pro-tax.com

TIP

Add a Tagline to your Email Signature! Unlike traditional stationary you can quickly and easily change signatures regularly on your email without having to reprint your stationary every time. Change your email signature tagline every week or two. It’s powerful, it’s easy, and it’s free!

If you don’t know how to set up or change an email signature in outlook here’s a good place to start. If you use a mail client other than outlook, just contact your mail client vendor.

Many people use web mail clients instead of a local client like outlook, and most web mail systems also allow you to create signatures as well. You’ll need to contact your email provider for information on exactly how this is done.

Our web mail system includes such a feature. If you already have an accounting website from CPASiteSolutions you should also take a look at this tutorial for adding a signature to your google apps account.