Category: Advanced Tutorials

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The Complete, Yet Simple, Marketing Plan For Solo Tax Practitioners

Are you riding solo on the tax firm highway?

If you are a licensed tax professional (EA, CPA, attorney) in private practice, then this is the article you are going to want to save. Bookmark it, print it, star it.

As a solo practitioner, you are on your own. You are the marketing department, sales department, client services department, all wrapped up into one person. Building your practice is going to take work, and you must also successfully manage your time between case work and marketing.

In general, I would suggest you plan to spend at least one to two hours per day working on your sales and marketing.

Marketing is not a 10 minute per week activity. In fact, most business consultants will tell you that you should spend at least half your day on marketing…even more if you are just starting out. With the simple, yet effective, marketing plan I will outline here for you, you’re going to need to commit one or two hours per day. However, using the plan outline here, you will be successful and make a living, as long as you commit to following the steps.

Do note that I am not addressing fee structures, technology setup, list building, and other such concerns in this post, I am simply addressing the marketing and sales plan. So, here we go…

Step 1: Write a weekly article about a topic of interest to your target audience. This article should NOT be your typical “tax tips” sort of thing. Your prospects and clients comes to YOU for handling their tax matters — they don’t care about how to do it themselves. Think more along the lines of:

  • Client success stories related to tax planning, real estate investing, tax debt resolution, etc.
  • Your personal analysis of Congressional and state legislative action, IRM updates, etc. Let people know the gist of what’s going on, why they should care, and how you can help.
  • What you’re doing to increase your own knowledge and improve your skills for your clients. Write about the CPE/CLE courses you take and how that will help your clients.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Take that article and use it in as many places as you can:

  • Post it to the blog section of your web site. If you don’t have a blog attached to your web site, one of your highest marketing priorities should be to get
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How to leverage written tax articles to get more leads

Today it’s called content marketing, but the reality is that it’s one of the most effective marketing strategies in the history of capitalism.

The core idea behind this strategy is to create engaging content that entertains and educates your target market, while simultaneously reminding your prospects that you possess the solution to their tax problem.

That problem can take numerous forms, from the frustration of completing their tax return to the nightmare of owing millions in back taxes.

In my tax resolution practice, ALL of my marketing leverages the concept of content marketing, in one way or another. Everything from my free reports offered in response to letters and postcards, to 24 hour recorded information lines, to my books written for consumers — all of this is content marketing.

What’s this about writing articles?

Despite the prevalence of video on the Internet today, the fact remains that the Internet is a platform built with and for the distribution of the written word. We still use words to search for things on Google, and Google must still use words on pages to determine the relevance of web sites.

On top of that, direct mail is still one of the most effective means available for reaching new prospects, reactivating lost clients, and keeping existing clients coming back. From reaching out to new movers in to the neighborhood for tax prep season, to tax lien marketing, to client newsletters, direct mail, and it’s inherent use of the written word, is something that should be part of every tax professional’s marketing arsenal.

The written word, despite the audiovisual world in which we live, is still a remarkably valuable form of communication. Aside from being a tool for appearing high in search engine results, the written word is a vehicle for attracting new prospects and converting prospects into clients.

Why is this? Never forget that, no matter what services we actually provide to our clients, we are in the people business. People do business with other people, something that some really big accounting, legal, and consulting firms seem to forget.

Before a new client ever gives you a dime, three things in particular must happen:

1. They must come to know who you are (which is why we do marketing).
2. They must come to trust you and your ability to address their needs.
3. They have to like you (this is the step that … Continue reading

Tax Marketing Advanced Tutorial: The one hour per day marketing checklist (with 4 hour expansion pack)

I have long advocated that marketing needs to be a daily priority within your tax practice. In fact, unless the building is burning down, it’s your absolute, number one, top, nothing-else-matters priority for running your business.

Never forget: Without marketing today, you have no new clients tomorrow.

The point of this checklist is to provide you a tool for accomplishing your marketing tasks with laser-focused efficiency. This checklist should be completed during the time of your day when you are at peak performance. Your marketing deserves the best you can give it each day.

For many practitioners, the nature of running a busy practice makes it difficult to do these tasks during the regular work day. Certain items on this checklist can (and often should) be delegated to staff members, with you verifying their completion. But some items require your undivided attention, and I’d encourage you to consider arriving to the office before any other staff each day in order to accomplish these important revenue-generating tasks.

Do note that this is not a marketing startup checklist. Rather, it assumes that you already have the referenced systems in place, and this is your daily roadmap for operating those systems. If you are focused on doing the tasks, and have systems in place, then you can easily hit the by-the-minute markers indicated.

The “bonus points” section of this checklist, which includes tasks that can take several additional hours each day, helps you to achieve ideal tax practice growth. Finding ideal clients, creating marketing systems that feed long-term lead generation on autopilot, and tapping into more complex and lucrative lead generation channels.

To get this checklist, which is combined in the same PDF as our fee quotation guide, sign up for our email list here and it will be sent to you automatically.… Continue reading