three you must be on.
by sandi leyva
the complete guide to marketing for tax & accounting firms
a few of you know i moved from california to plano last year. we rented a house for a year, then started looking around for a house to buy. we found one in april and in may, we moved.
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well, i thought it was going to need about $20,000 of work, but that was an understatement. my challenge now is to find high-quality contractors i can trust to help me fix the house up right.
and what i learned is it’s really hard to find contractors you trust, especially when you move back to an area and things have changed significantly.
that’s when i joined angie’s list. it was such a blessing. i could look through thousands of reviews to see what other people said about the contractors that were listed.
i have seen many of you get business from these review sites and your online profiles. even if you hate testimonials yourself and don’t read them, your clients do. and you will be left out from other cpas and accountants who take advantage of this part of the web.
here are the profile sites i feel you must be on:
1. linkedin
accountants are well represented on linkedin. it is heavily used in recruiting and is also great for studying someone you are trying to win business from. whether your client is there or not (and some probably are), accountants should have their linkedin profile up to date and maximized.
2. software certification profile listings
if you have certifications in software and the software company provides pages listing people who have certified, then you want to make sure your profile is maximized so that you will receive more leads.
examples of these programs include:
- intuit’s proadvisor program. with more than 50,000 advisors (according to intuit), the program is pretty saturated, so it’s best to get your advanced status. there are only a few thousand advanced proadvisors.
- bill.com’s guru and expert certifications
- xero will list you after you’ve gained a certain number of clients.
- fishbowl, method, intacct, and many, many more
3. google places
for those of you who have an office, your search engine rankings will be higher if you claim your address in google places. go to this link and follow the directions to get verified. google will send a postcard to your address, and you can enter a code to validate your listing: https://www.google.com/business/placesforbusiness/
this is an extremely important step for higher search engine rankings. go ahead and fill out your company profile and add some pictures as well.
those three profiles above are the most important. if you have more time, consider these additional ideas:
- yelp
- manta
- angie’s list
- anything you are a member of. be sure to use all of your online member benefits.
once you have these profiles, you will need to do a couple of things to each one:
- fill them out as completely as possible. a half-filled-out profile could signal to a prospect that you can’t complete things. the most important parts are your photo and bio.
- ask your clients to complete recommendations for you. these should be on linkedin, your proadvisorprofile, your google places listing, yelp and angie’s list. here are a couple of tips about this:
- consider doing a webpage like we did for laura madeira years ago. you can send people to one central place and they can choose which ones they want to do: http://www.quick-training.com/postreview/
- as i was hiring those contractors from angie’s list, there was one who stood out. our garage door spring broke on a saturday morning after a few months in our new house. i frantically logged into angie’s list and found someone with really good reviews. he did a great job and left behind a brightly colored 5.5” x 8.5” paper that said this:
abc garage doors
(logo, address, etc.)
customer compliments
email xx@xx.com with all compliments. also write us a review on our website xx.com and let us know how we are doing by clicking on customer lobby read client reviews logo at the bottom of the page. we will send you a non-expiring coupon worth $50.
ok, not so elegant, but a great idea to steal. here’s the wording i would recommend (and without the bribe, which is pretty unethical if you ask me).
your business name
(logo, address, etc.)
client feedback
we strive to gain your complete satisfaction in the services we provide for you. if you are happy with our work, we would love to have you post a testimonial on any or all of these places:
(then list the urls of your specific profiles.)
we are grateful for your time and support.