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