Accountants may share a label, but their trade can widely vary – from providing tax prep alone, to specializing in QuickBooks training to SMEs, to representing clients before the IRS. That’s one of the many reasons I love helping them so much.
One undeniable truth binds them all together: no matter how unspecialized or tightly focused their firm, they can’t afford not to gain a clientele, or they will fall apart. This hurts not merely you, but the whole community. It doesn’t matter how talented or client-centered an accounting professional is – without enough new clients to provide revenue and keep the lights on, his company will cease to be.
So, if you’re an accountant looking to get established in the field, how do you get leads?
It may sound prosaic, but there’s an important truth to running an accounting practice these days. Whether you like it or not first-class accountant websites are the key to any successful accounting business.
The internet is today what the yellow pages was a few decades ago. These days, you have to have an online presence, or your marketing efforts will fall flat.
This won’t change in the future, either. With thousands of students studying accounting, coupled with one of the most challenging of economies, finding clients is becoming a very competitive endeavor. Having a website will remain critical.
Here are 10 tips for how to use accounting websites to find accounting clients:
- Make sure your website looks professional. Technology has change the web. Creating a site is no longer a rarefied craft. There are several choices out there that allow you to obtain a domain name (your URL or web address), as well as easy-to-use software programs that will allow you to tailor your website to target the clients you want.
- Don’t try to do it yourself – use a web designer. While your strength is with numbers, a professional web designer knows how to make your site look great and run smoothly.
The key to designing accountant websites is to keep visitors on your site once they are there. Make it attractive and informative.
- Don’t overlook the importance of social media sites for getting the word out. This isn’t as much of a hassle as you may have heard, although the more energy you put into it the better your results will be. The simple act – which takes all of half an hour – of creating profiles on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn is enough to gain exposure.
The king of social media right now is Facebook. To get started on this popular social sharing platform, simply create a personal profile and then create a “fan” page for your business. Ask your friends and current clients to “like” your page and you’re on your way. You can use these sites to send out advertisements about business deals and reminders about tax season.
- To get more visitors to your site, you need to post plenty of links to other sites (as strange as that sounds). The best way to do this is to add links to your social media profiles. If someone visits your site and likes what they see, this will be an easy way for them to help you spread the word. Add a button that says “Like me on Facebook” or a “Follow me on Twitter” link and your social profiles will get a boost.
- Post links to the websites of your notable clients. When folks see your client list, and maybe even click through to your clients’ websites, it acts as that all-important “social proof” that helps you appear trustworthy. This benefits your clients as well because inbound links from reputable accountant websites give them a boost in the search engines.
- Useful websites for generating leads are online merchant sites such as eBay and Craigslist. Sites like these, along with other, similar ones, see mega numbers of visitors, and when you advertise in their classified section, your visibility goes through the roof. Normally, there is no charge to list services; advertising with these sites will expand your reach to well outside your local client base.
- Don’t forget about ads in the newspaper that include your web address, which still work well for local clients. Getting people to click on links and visit accountant websites is a lot easier than getting them to drive accross town to visit or even just pick up the phone and call. Check your local newspapers. Chances are they have an online edition that uses banner ads as well as a services or marketplace section. In addition, seek out papers and local publications in surrounding towns that aren’t too far for a new client to travel from.
- Hike it up a notch; see if you can find websites that cater to accountants alone. Accountant-Finder.com, for example, is just one of many sites that provide potential clients with a starting place to find you.
- Bid system and lead generating websites such as adknowledge.com are plentiful online. These services, when used properly, can get you in contact with the clients you want and who need what you have to offer.
- Finally, seek out and listen to experts in your field and take the time to learn from their mistakes and successes. Find online resources – such as Websites4accountants.com – that can teach you some tricks on how to obtain new clients.
So-called experts who assure you it’s simple to obtain clients and develop a thriving accounting firm are, sadly, hiding the truth. However, when you make use of a stand-out accounting website as the starting point, your marketing can be surprisingly effective – and more than worth the effort.