In a typical week, I get at least one, and sometimes as many as three or four, people contacting me completely out of the blue that are telling me that they think I’m the best person to help them with their tax problem and wanting to hire me.
These are folks that I’ve never talked to before, never marketed to before, never had any one on one contact with at all. But they’re reaching out to me, with their checkbook open.
How is this possible?
It’s actually quite simple: I took the time to establish myself as an expert.
Never forget that people do business with other people that they know, like, and trust. This is the single most important thing you can ever learn about running a service business. Period.
Establishing yourself as an expert, as the go-to person in your area or specialization, you automatically build credibility. Providing ways for people to get to know you, even if you never actually speak to them, builds on this. Over time, people that know you will get to like you and trust you (assuming you’re likable and trustworthy, of course).
People get to know you via the content that you produce. On my tax firm web sites, I provide a ton of free or extremely low-cost information for people, including how to negotiate their own Installment Agreements and how to draft their penalty abatement applications. I also provide pointers to appropriate IRS resources and other information that can help them.
This material costs me nothing but time in order to create. After the initial creation of a few backlinks to those sites via press releases, articles, or videos I post elsewhere ,I do no further active promotion of those sites, I just let Google and Bing find them on their own and determine whether they are worth including in search results or not. I don’t try to “game” the search engines, and I update the sites far less frequently than the so-called SEO “experts” say that I should.
It also helps that a little over a year ago, I took the time to write a short book and self-publish it on Amazon. That book is now one of the best selling books on Amazon on the subject of settling tax debts. The end of every chapter includes a call to action referring back to my primary practice web site, which offers additional resources. … Continue reading