CPAs, What Are Your Marketing Objectives Post 4/15?

Come 4/16, does the faucet turn off until September?

We know the drill. Tax season is upon us, and right now it's heads down, focus on existing clients, and deal with growing the firm after we all get back from vacation in June... July... or August.

But you know deep down that THIS is the time of year when you should really be focusing on business development, because tax time is the ONLY time people really want to hear from you.

That doesn't mean you're going to get a whole bunch of new clients before 4/15 by casting your line today. Good marketing doesn't take hold over night, and it's asking a lot of both of you to try and onboard and file that quickly. However, because they are actively engaged to your service offering given the time of year, the soil is as fertile as it ever will be, and now is the time to start planting seeds.

Before we shuffle this task off to the summer, let's review the areas that need addressing, and determine if it can wait or if getting started today makes more sense. Here are 5 marketing objectives examples and their best strategies for helping you find your way.

First, let's break down your sales & marketing objectives into bite-size nuggets:

1. Low Hanging Fruit

• Existing clients - Let's never forget the importance of developing relations with our existing clients. Online branding is more than just finding new prospects, but also delighting your current ones so they don't feel like you only care about them when billable hours are in the mix. Try blogging (need some killer blog topics? Go HERE) and connecting with them on social media.

• Prospects on the fence - Calling this low-hanging fruit may seem niave given how long they've been sitting there, but the reality is that they just need a push to get over their hesitations for making the move. By nurturing these types of leads with email drip campaigns you keep your brand message in front of them, position valuable content in their inbox, and allow them to decide when the timing is right. Best of all, you can stop chasing them.

• Current website visitors/strangers - These are the folks visiting your site because they found you in a Google search or somebody recommended they check you out. But if you don't have the proper mechanisms, driven by free gated content, they're going to just show up as blips on your traffic reports. Don't just have a website to have a website. Have a plan.

2. Short-term Goals

• Attract new prospects - Finding visitors for your website can be done in one of two ways: organic SEO/SEM tactics or PPC advertising (pay-per-click). When you have a strong SEO strategy you're not just attracting visitors though. You're attracting the RIGHT visitors. So, waiting until June to run some Adwords campaigns isn't going to be nearly effective as starting off with an SEO strategy today.

• Off-season tax projects - Some of your clients and prospects could use help with off-season projects like audits or studies. If you position yourself as an authority and thought leader, they're likely to keep you on their radars. Come June, you already have eyes on you because of your helpful blogs and downloadable content, so when the need for audit defense arrives, you're on the list.

• More visitors to your website - More visitors means more leads, which means more clients (if you have a lead conversion path, of course). But what's really strange is that so many of your competitors discount the value of digital marketing, and their websites are proof of it. They have no SEO strategy. Their blogs are actually case-studies or copmany advertisements. And the user experiences are clumbsy and boring. But Google and friends will favor you for putting real effort into developing organic content and updated blog pages, and they'll show their love by delivering more visitors to your doorstep.

• More engagement with your visitors - Like I mentioned earlier, more visitors isn't nearly enough. You want to engage them if you ever want to convert them into clients. If you're blogging for business purposes that interest them without overloading them with esoteric industry jargon, they're going to like working with you. If you connect with them on LinkedIn and publish posts from time to time to provide helpful hints to stay out of tax trouble, they are going to LOVE working with you.

• Converting more visitors into leads - Again, as mentioned with the low-hanging fruit, you want to have marketing tools in place that help you capture these leads. Don't just put on a dog and pony show and hope they call you. Calls-to-action, landing pages, thank you pages, and content. There's your path for fluid digital marketing. Run with it.

3. Long-term Goals

• Bagging the big fish - The biggest clients are some of the hardest to convert. They often just want to start by dipping a toe in, but to get the whole pie, you have to WOW them, AND their current guys have to crash and burn. But attempting to wow these big ones in the summer when they'd rather be knocking off early to enjoy the weather and their family is a mistake. You also don't know WHEN those other guys are going to trip up, so wow them YEAR round.

• Converting consulting projects into more - These are usually the big guys, but not always. By blogging in terms that make sense to your cilents and prospects (again, NO esoteric industry jargon - this is the most common mistake I see on accounting blogs), and providing value they can use year-round, you are accelerating your position as an expert and stripping away the reasons why you shouldn't get the big win.

• Leveraging existing clients to find new ones - If you're actively blogging (still not convinced of this one? Go HERE) and curating quality content on social media, you're providing channels for distribution that takes the sole responsibility of promoting your firm out of your hands. What do you think is more powerful? YOU telling the world how great you are or your CLIENTS doing that?

Use your down time to catch up on life, not trying to squeeze blood from a stone:

I realize that kicking off an inbound campaign or any type of marketing campaign with substance feels like it could be a daunting and resource-heavy task, so my last piece of advice is to find help. Many firms with multiple partners have the designated "rainmaker," so put them on this and have them explore the wonders of inbound. Getting started may take some outside help, but if you use the right tools and have clear, smart goals at the outset, you can do the work of 3 marketers at the cost of less than one.

Either way, don't wait. Your off-season should be allocated toward housekeeping items, cultivating an expanding pipeline of prospects, and working reduced hours so you can spend time with the family and your golf game. You'll be amazed at how well you hit that driver knowing that your business is out there planting seeds even though the lights go out early on Fridays.

To schedule an inbound marketing consultation for your firm, go HERE.