If you subscribe to most SEO, email drip, or social media feed services for accountants, over 90% of what’s going to get dripped out to your audience is tax tips.
Today, I’m going to explain to you why these services are doing you a disservice, and what you should be writing about instead as you dive further into content marketing for your tax firm.
Why the hate, bruh?
Due to the fact that so many thousands of tax pros subscribe to this email newsletter, I, in turn, get automatically added to quite a few email newsletters sent by you. Basically, whenever one of you signs up for an email newsletter service, that service will offer to scan your contact list inside your email, then add all those people to your new email newsletter. Voila, Jassen winds up on a lot of such email lists.
This means that I see ALL the email newsletters. Yup, all of them. From every service provider that provides turnkey websites, social media, and email content for our industry.
And most of them suck.
Yup, I said it. Not gonna pull any punches on this one.
Each of them sucks to a different degree, and for different reasons. But there are three common characteristics amongst the suckage:
#1). They’re overly technical. Very, very few of your prospects/clients care about the nuanced details of this deduction or that credit or that new Revenue Procedure. They seriously just don’t care. Those details are what they pay you for. Sure, they want hear that some new thing exists that will benefit them — the proverbial what’s in it for me? — but that’s the extent of it. Better way: Here’s the thing, it exists, let’s see if you qualify. That should be the marketing communication — not a treatise on the technical details.
#2). Because they’re overly technical, they don’t actually provide content that people want to read. Your email newsletter, blog posts, social media posts — it’s all utterly worthless if nobody actually reads it. Remember, the modern consumer has a short attention span — they’re not reading your 27-point fact sheet on the Child Tax Credit. They just aren’t. Folks want the quick win, the simple points, easily digestible. For most of your clients, you are likely their only trusted advisor in the entire financial universe. From you, they want to hear about more than just “tax tips” — they want advice about saving money, planning for college, growing their business, etc. There is a reason that the financial press exists, and that personal finance celebrities like Suze Orman, Dave Ramsey, and Clark Howard are so popular. Dwell on that for a bit — really dwell on that hard.
#3). They lack a clear call to action. Follow up marketing without a clear call to action is an absolute waste of time and money. This is an incontrovertible fact. If you’re paying some company to do this part of your marketing, and they’re not including engagement mechanisms to get those readers to take an action with your firm, then you are literally burning money. Within every piece of marketing communication you release into the world, you must, in very explicit terms, tell people exactly what you want them to do next. This is universal across all marketing media, online and offline, paid or free. This is an absolute. Over and over again, I fail to see this most fundamental of marketing realities just missing from mass-market “tax tips” marketing services.
From these three common points of failure, it should then become clear what type of marketing material you should create
It is also for these reasons that for our Titans members inside the Tax Resolution Academy®, we don’t create “tax tips” type emails and blog posts for you to use in your normal, weekly distribution. Yes, we do include one longer tax resolution article for you to modify and post each month on your blog for local SEO purposes, but for the shorter weekly items — nope, those are different entirely. They’re usually more along the lines of small business operating tips, personal finance tips, consumer alerts, things of that nature — with passing mention of tax implications or opportunities + a call to action.
Want to learn more about the fundamentals of online marketing for your tax firm? If so, join in on a complimentary 2-hour marketing class on September 21. If you’re a CPA, you can even earn 2 CPE hours for attending. Get all the info here:
Toodles,
~Jassen
P.S. Oh, by the way… For a limited time, we are offering a 14-day sneak peek inside the Tax Resolution Academy®. If you’ve been on the fence about joining and want to see how the platform actually works, now you can — at no charge. Sign up for a 14-day trial of our Foundations membership here: https://community.taxresolutionacademy.com/landing/plans/132642
