“So what do I do to market to these different lists, Nate?”

It’s a great question, and I’m glad you, er, asked it. Everyone’s firm is different, and I highly recommend you do some careful consideration about your particular USP (Unique Selling Proposition). In every marketing piece you put out, you need to clearly and distinctly answer the question sure to be bouncing around your prospect’s mind:

Why should I choose to have my taxes done with YOU, as opposed to anyone else out there? 

Too often, tax pros don’t answer that question, and thereby you leave to fickle chance whether or not someone will actually act off of your marketing.

Leaving aside the USP, though, there are some serious “killers” I’ve seen in far too many marketing pieces which come across my desk from tax professionals. So, I’ve compiled some of these killers as a simple checklist you can use to make sure your marketing  actually makes sales!

Remember–what counts MOST is effectiveness. These are proven principles, in EVERY service professional industry.

1) Being Boring
*Cardinal sin for tax pros. You can avoid it! Hey, just add a descriptive picture at LEAST!

2) Not telling your reader how to take action
*MANY, many ads or letters bomb because the reader doesn’t know what to do next!

3) Writing from “Me”
*The best way to form a relationship (or make a sale): talk about YOUR PROSPECT.

4) Underestimating the difficulty of the task
*In the age of internet and media saturation–you better not expect one sales letter to do it all! Follow-up with multiple steps to qualified leads (using different media). 

5) Too much “White Space”
*Riddle me this: when did white space EVER make a sale?

6) Failure to tell your “story”–why you do what you do
*Believe it or not, your prospects and clients want to be reminded of your story!

7) Logo/Business name/Address at the top
*Why not turn your “letterhead” into “letter-footer” and use headlines that actually work?

Avoid these all-too-common mistakes, and your marketing will be MUCH more effective.

God belss you and your firm!

1) Existing Client Retention

As you no doubt have realized, you CANNOT “assume” that your existing clients will come back to you this tax season. That’s especially true if you don’t have any system in place to build, seal and develop relationships.

Yes, you can send a “tax planner”. That’s a basic step, but not nearly enough.

Every year, we’d send about five direct mail pieces to our former clients, incentivizing them to come in EARLY (which dearly helped our operational systems), and encouraging them to refer their family and friends. These ranged from full letters (conversational, friendly), to postcards.

The point is — you’ve gotta make every effort to “remind” your clients that they made a great decision last year to trust you…and to keep them from being seduced by your competitors and the ever-exploding amount of “free” online options.(I just started using Mint.com to manage our family’s finances, and I’m amazed by how *easy* — and compelling — they make TurboTax to be. Mint is now owned by Intuit, and it’s a major competition for you, if you haven’t yet figured that out!)

So don’t miss the step of reaching out (regularly) to your existing clients!

2) “Lost” Client Win-Back

Did you know that the most common reason you had clients NOT come back to you last year wasn’t because of anything you did wrong?

But see — there’s this place inside of each one of us that just assumes that clients who “move on”, and off of our current client list, did so because we screwed up somehow.

That’s plain false.

How do I know?

Simple. Each year, we’d pull the list of non-returning clients (stretching back the last three tax seasons), and we’d send them a couple direct mail pieces.

Our “lost” client campaigns were consistently the MOST responsive direct mail campaigns of each season.

But you’ve gotta do it right. Rather than simply sending them your normal stuff, you really must directly address that they didn’t come back last year, and give them a good reason (read: a real offer) to come back!

3) New Client Acquisition Campaigns

Obviously, this was a large focus. Each year, we served 20,000+ clients in our 23 offices, and even with the power of our existing and “lost” client campaigns, there was always a certain “churn” of clients who moved, passed away, etc.

So we had to spend a fair amount (multiple six-figures) each year to go out and strike while the iron was hot during tax season for new clients.

Display advertising, yellow pages, online marketing, signage, “guerilla” methods, local joint venture partnerships, etc. etc., ad infinitum.

The main point I want to communicate to you here (I simply don’t have time to cover strategy for each media) is that we did it ALL. Or, rather … as many as we could reasonably implement. Contra-”gurus”: There is NO one “magic bullet” when it comes to marketing your tax business.

I don’t know “one” way to get 40 clients. But I DO know 40 ways to get 1 client.

And that’s how you should focus yourself in this area. Don’t be seduced into “building a brand”. That WILL come as you employ smart, direct-response marketing–but it’ll come as a by-product, and should NOT be your first goal.

I sure hope this helps you — it’s a simple template by which you can frame your marketing efforts.

Today I want to encourage you to make some offers these next couple weeks.

Many tax professionals shy away from making offers to their existing contacts, assuming that the IRS deadline is “offer” enough. This is terribly short-sighted for a couple reasons, AND you can use this important marketing tool to incent a variety of actions, besides simply choosing you for tax preparation this year.

Here’s why it’s short-sighted to NOT make offers to existing contacts:

1) Your (smart) competition will be doing so. And I’m not just talking about your friendly CPA down the street — I’m referring to Intuit, Block and other huge competitors — all of whom understand that direct-response offers move the needle for prospects to get up off their tush and actually take action. With them.

2) You miss out on all the low-hanging fruit available to you in your list. There are “lurkers” who read your emails, follow your social media activity — or, if you do none of these things, let’s just say that they are “warm” to you, know who you are … but for all of these fine folks, momentum is a killer. I can tell you from personal experience that making the switch to a new tax professional is a big pain — but a nice offer gives me (and your prospect) a reason to respond.

Most tax professionals also resist making offers because they are under-priced. They carry this poverty mindset into their marketing, and don’t see how they can squeeze any margin from work for which they are already underpaid. If that’s you: raise the darn prices! I have beaten that drum a lot, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to keep on beating…

Now, here are a few things which you may not have considered making an offer around (by the way, we create these offers regularly for users of our print newsletter and email marketing services):

• Bringing client paperwork in early, by a specific deadline
• Referring X number of other clients (3-5 is a good range)
• Adding an additional service (upsells)
• Audit Protection
• Reviewing past returns from other preparers or software
• Posting about you to Facebook or Twitter

You see, there are a whole host of things which you can incent your client or contact to do on your behalf. It’s not just about using your tax prep services.

Break out of the box! Oh, and now is really the time to start doing this … but don’t neglect it when the bullets are really flying come February and March. Keeping it going then just pours gasoline on the already-existent fire!

Talk again soon — I hope this calm before the storm is a productive time for you.

Write some offers.

Our offices are closed today and Monday, which  means that those of you who use our email marketing service will not see your emails posted until Tuesday (I don‘t write them ahead of time, preferring to keep news and perspective as fresh as possible).

So check your inbox on Tuesday for when they’re available.

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Today, rather than sending out my normal marketing advice, I‘m borrowing a meditation written by my wife last year. I will warn you that it is explicitly meditating on the Christmas story, so if you‘d rather not participate in that, delete away. But I also believe that, laying aside theological/worldview differences, there is much to be gleaned from the story of Christmas — even if you do see it as but a story.

The very improbability of it makes for quite a statement.

So I‘d like to join you in lifting my eyes a little today — by turning them downwards and considering what it would have been like for that lonely, fearful girl, given such weighty news…

The One Who Bore Hope

by Sara Hagerty

(taken from her blog, www.EveryBitterThingisSweet.com)

Wee thing, what were you thinking that night? When visited by the divine messenger, with words declaring that your frame would carry the hope for the world, did you struggle with fear at what this might mean for your own life?

Young child, made woman prematurely. Or just in time. Not broken by the world. Dreams not yet formulated to have been delayed. Fresh perspective that comes with youth. Hope unfettered. Your child-likeness wasn’t an effort, it was you. Eyes wide and arms ready to receive hope, in your womb. Heavenly secret-keeper until your body could no longer contain the whisper.

Yet even then, the Son was misunderstood. His mother a harlot? You were overshadowed by holiness, yet the world shamed you. Your fetus, who wore the government on His shoulders, was born into the inn of meekness. And your most private prayers prepared you for the impossible call of raising up Hope.

You got to be the first one to gaze into the beauty of the Son. You, wee young thing, beheld the very thing that I, almost two thousand years later, long to know. His eyes.

His expressions. The complexity of a face born to represent justice, truth and mercy.

“She who believed!“ Elizabeth called you. God called you. With childhood  nipping at your heels, you knew hope before Hope came to visit you. First. Your prostrate expectancy invited the Father of the great mystery to invite you in. Expectant prayers from the whimsical well of youth. God loved it. And He chose you.

And, for a few months shy of a year, the hope you already knew grew steadily inside of you. The inaugural appearance, on the night when scores of men called wise came to confirm, was allowed preview by an innocent young girl. The hope which gave birth to belief in your spirit was invited to warm in your womb before being introduced to the world.

Before being introduced to me.

I long for God to fill me with the hope you carried and the expectancy you birthed that precious night.

Oh expectant mother, oh one who carried the seed of Hope, my prayer to your Son is that my life might also ”declare the greatness of the Lord.“ Though my calling is surely less than yours, my opportunity for expectancy is the same. Your offspring is my access.

And His birthright is my hope.

God bless you — enjoy these holidays.

Today, for the first time in her life, she gets to be celebrated (a bit on why this relates to you in a moment).

But you should have seen her face when we woke her up this morning … you see, she’s been counting down the days since this fall, after watching her siblings all be celebrated on THEIR birthdays, and I know how hard it was for her — but she was an amazing sport about it all, loving them each so well. We’re planning a surprise party for her tonight after dinner (shhh, don’t tell!).

Here’s why I tell you all of this (aside from the fact that I like to give you a window into our world):

Your clients, likewise, crave affirmation, celebration and acknowledgement.

And tax season is the perfect time to give it to them. And, in fact, doing so gives you one of your most powerful opportunities to seal your relationship with them, for life.

Train your staff (and/or yourself!) to learn this art of acknowledgement. Because you and they will be getting a clear picture of how your clients’ businesses and families did — from a revenue perspective, and, of course, other metrics.

Afer all — how many other people do they really allow to see these sensitive financial details? Not many.

Just a few things you can celebrate with them:

Increased profits in their business

Promotions reflected by an increase in pay

Paying their mortgage down further

Robust charitable donations, in the midst of tight circumstances

Adding employees to their business (and providing a living to their families!)

And more — I think you get the idea.

Now, it’s probably also true that some of your clients are NOT doing so well. So this is your chance to acknowledge their struggle, and affirm their persistence in it.

Sometimes people just need someone to believe in them. And when it’s done in the context of their being fully known (from a financial perspective) it carries that much more weight.

So, I know that with Christmas and Hanukkah looming, many tax professionals are taking the next couple weeks “easy”. But even if that’s your plan, I suggest you make a point NOW to train your staff on this crucial opportunity which you and they will have to form an emotional connection with your community of clients, these next few months during tax season.

Feel free to share this email with your staff, if you think it will help. [Or just steal my words and pretend like you wrote it yourself! You have my permission:)]

God bless you — enjoy these holidays.

(Oh, and if you’re interested, my wife posted something on her blog about my sweet Lily’s birthday right here:
http://everybitterthingissweet.com/2011/12/her-first-birthday/ )

You see, the Pareto principle has become a bit of a cliche, unfortunately. You know it, perhaps as the “80/20″ rule. Today I’d like to issue you some marching orders which will put it to, in my opinion, its most profitable use. 

I’ve discussed before with you how 80% of your profits (key distinction there–NOT revenue) likely comes from 20% of your clients.

And 80% of your hassle (and LOST productivity and profits), similarly, comes from about 20% of your clients and/or vendors.

It’s time to cut the fat.

Really — is there a BETTER time than right now? Here’s the simplest way to go about it: Raise your prices on these clients, and show no mercy. Now, I’m all for mercy. Benevolence is a good thing. But when it’s coming at the cost of your mental health (or your staff’s), it’s time to take a real hard look at the REAL P/L of dealing with this particular client, taking everything into account (I’m referring to emotional, spiritual and true time costs).

Go through your client files now, and identify 10% which you hate dealing with, provide little revenue, and much hassle. Ask your staff for their input too (you’ll be a hero to them if you step in with this sort of action – trust me, I’ve done it a few times here at BuildaHerd), and you should be able to easily identify a few stinkers, at least. 

By the way, this is actually the *kind* thing to do! Before tax season strikes is the perfect time to shoot them a kind email, or make a nice phone call, so that they have the chance to take their problems (and their profit-drains) to your competitors.

Say something like:“Mr. Jones, I’m sorry to say that the amount of work which we’ve had to do on your files over the last couple years necessitates that we raise our prices to $XYZ per form/hour.We’ve taken on some new clients, and our prices simply have to go up. If these are too highfor you, I’d be glad to recommend another competent tax professional in the area.”

Hey, maybe they’ll TAKE your price increase (teaching you a small lesson in the process, perhaps, that your prices are too low to begin with — a very likely reality), and they become a PROFITABLE client (even accounting for the emotional toll they inflict).

Otherwise, you can sic ‘em on your competition. They might even THANK you!

You build up some good will in the area, AND your book of business gets a whole lot cleaner:).

Try it next week. Feel free to thank me later!

Prepare your marketing for tax season now.

It’s very tempting to take this time between the just-completed extension season and the beginning of January to rest and let what comes of tax season be of the harvest which you may have reaped from last year, and over the course of this calendar year.

That would be a critical mistake.

However, it’s not just about sprucing up your website, diving more deeply into  social media.

You need to prepare yourself and your team in the following critical categories (in fact, use this as a little checklist in your strategic marketing preparations): 

1) Salesmanship (over the phone, over email, and in print)

2) Precision targeting your prospects (i.e. understanding exactly the “who” your business should be approaching)

3) Referral stimulation within your existing list

4) Using your tax-season meetings to “upsell” your existing (and new) clients into other profitable services

5) Raising your fees

6) Testing new client acquisition marketing in a variety of media

If you have a WRITTEN plan for these 6 areas, you will be poised for breakthrough come tax season.

But what about new clients?

Let me begin by asking you this question…

What is getting a new client worth to you? Would you spend $5 to get a new client? How about spending $30 to get a new client? Suppose you are averaging about $200 per tax return filed, and you had a guy on the street come up to you and say, “I’ll bring you five new clients a day for 30 days if you will give me $150 a piece for each of them.”

Would you give someone $150 bucks for every new client they brought you so you could then turn around and net an additional $50 on the deal the next day?

Well, I should hope so.

That’s like saying, “Hey buddy, you bring me a $100 bill and I’ll give you $75 bucks back and let’s do it at least ten times a day for the next month!” 

This sounds like an easy question to answer, but I run into tax business owners all the time who fixate on the overhead costs associated with their practice, or who refuse to give out money for referrals. (Greed? Stupidity?) Look, I know people are going to refer your tax business to other people whether you reward someone with cash or not.

That’s not the point. 

The BIGGER ISSUE is understanding what one particular client is worth to you over the lifetime that he or she does business with your firm.

You see, if you had enough money to bank roll yourself for a couple of tax seasons and not take any money out of the business, you could afford to “buy” more market share and broaden your client base to be the most dominant tax firm in your area.  

What do I mean by “buying” clients?

Well, if you understand the LIFETIME VALUE of your typical client, you can estimate the revenue he or she will generate over the next five or 10 years. 

You could go through your database right now and see, on average, how long a typical client continues to return and do business with you. (Three years, six years, maybe more if you cultivate good relationships with your client list.) 

Let’s say, after you average all your clients from the last 10 years, considering those that stay only one year, you estimate that your typical clients will stick with you about five years. (That’s five years multiplied by $200 per return or a $1,000 lifetime value.) 

Now let’s go back to the example of the man on the street. It’s the next tax season and you now have a better understanding of your clients’ lifetime value. Let’s say he comes up to you and says, “I can bring you 10 new clients per day for a month, are you interested in giving me $225 a piece for each of them?” (Your fees staying the same.) 

Knowing what you know now, would you sacrifice some (or maybe all) of this year’s tax season profits and put it towards “bank rolling” 300 new clients into your business? 

Putting aside whether your fees are in this range or not, how you answer this basic question will determine your overall marketing strategy for bringing in new clients. 

We’ve already had a fantastic trip (yes, four kids in the car did GREAT), but it’s true: you can never really “go back”. The kid at the coffee shop I used to frequent was fired for stealing. The roads have changed. Friends have moved, the faces are different … it’s just … a different place for us now.

Which brings me to your clients.

The last time we were here was just about one year ago. And already, the place feels radically different. And chances are very good that your clients, too, are in a radically different frame of mind and/or financial situation since you met with them before or during last tax season.

Do you know about their changes?

When was the last time you sent them an email which they felt the freedom to respond to?

Have you taken the time to look over the books of your write-up clients for revenue increases, decreases, staffing changes, capital improvements or other such fluctiations?

Have you invited your 1040 clients to share their fears and struggles with you — and their successes?

These changes are a ripe opportunity for you to get pro-active before tax season to let them know that you care … AND to bump *your* bottom line in the process.

It’s time to go on a treasure hunt.

Take the time today or early next week, to review the books or to reach out to your 1040 clients and invite them to have a tax planning session or a  biz analysis. But what will make this invitation *effective* is when you come to them with evidence that you’ve done your homework. Find out what’s really happening, and they’ll rush to sit down with you.

But do it soon! Tax season clamors its way to us pretty shortly.

Do they eagerly anticipate hearing from you — on MORE than their particular tax or books questions?

Now is the time to do something about building momentum within your list before tax season, because if you wait until January, it’s too late.

Last week, I wrote about 3 ingredients which are the best place to start:

1. Personality
2. Philosophy
3. Frequency

I hope you’ve considered those with seriousness. Because in the age where almost anyone can set themselves up as an expert, the only advantage you’ll ever really have is your deepening relationship with YOUR existing “herd”.

So here are a few more strategies…

4. Dependency

When you can create real results for your clients, and they are depending on you, it is quite possibly better than any of the other herd building techniques. For example, crack dealers don’t have to work real hard to keep their herd together. They don’t have to have a good location. They don’t have to be in a good neighborhood. They don’t have to dress well. They don’t have to send out a customer newsletter. They don’t have to have client appreciation events. All they have to do is have crack and the right semantics, and they’re good to go.

Let this be said loud and clear: Your best marketing is the excellence of your work.

The next closest thing to it is true emotional dependency. If your clients don’t pay attention for a week or two, do they start to feel withdrawal symptoms about not paying attention to you or not hearing from you? If you want to test this, just don’t send your stuff out for a month and see how many people call. If the phone ain’t ringing three or four days after it usually gets there I got news for you, you’ve got problems.

Which is why it’s always morbidly “fun” when clients who’ve been using our print newsletter or email marketing, and stop for some reason come on back to us soon thereafter, saying that their clients are asking: where did your emails go? That’s how you know this stuff works.

5. Motivation

A lot of people don’t motivate their herd enough. Even people who appear to be successful by comparison to others in their type of business or their community lack the capability to be self-motivated and confident. The truth is, most people are not self-motivating individuals.

There’s a reason why NFL players have a coach, and get a pep talk before they go out to play every big game. Logically this should not be necessary. These guys are getting paid millions of dollars to go out there and play the game. They’ve practiced all week to play the game.

Some of them are five years, six years, and seven plus year veterans. They know how to play the game. They should not need somebody standing up on a chair giving them a pep talk and leading them in the cheer. But, watch what happens when a coach decides not to do that.

There’s a word for it, two words actually: Dallas, Cowboys. (I’m a suffering Redskins fan, what can I say?)

6. Multi-media touches

When it comes to tactical implementation you must think of the media that you can use. People respond to different media. Most people will welcome more frequent and constant contact if it arrives through multiple channels rather than one channel. So if you’re only showing up one or two ways, it’s easier to overdo it and your clients will more readily start to say, oh goodness, it’s HIM again … than if you’re contacting them frequently through multiple channels.

If you stick to your narrow core range you will lose the interest of the herd and you will have longevity problems. You must expand the scope of your discussion with your herd over a period of time in order to hold their attention. Now, the good news about that is
they want you to. So if they buy you as an expert about ‘A’ they want you to be their expert about B-C-D-E and F however unqualified you may be or however irrational that may be, they want it. So the foundation is there.

7. Referrals and Involvement

Ask yourself how many referrals actually generate business? That’s a very good measurement because it’s a higher standard. Subjective measurements are necessary to evaluate where you stand with your client base. Are they writing to you like they would write to Elvis if he wasn’t dead? Are you getting fan mail? Are they writing and telling you personal stuff? If so, that means they have a personal relationship with you.

Are they sending you gifts? Do they bring you stuff? Not necessarily big stuff. How many clients made something for you last year? Did you get cookies? Well, that’s a subjective measurement but it’s an important measurement.

8. Sharing successes

Is your herd looking to you for acceptance, acknowledgment, and recognition? Or, do you have to chase them down in order to get testimonials? Are they coming in voluntarily? Do they want to participate?

So, chatter online, chatter offline and in person. The most important thing to build your herd is you must measure and evaluate your success. You need to have measurements in place. You need to be cogniscent of it. You need to be working on it. Don’t just be focused on how many followers. You must focus on value — because all the equity, all the wealth, and all the sustainability is in the value based on the relationship, not the numbers and certainly not just “the list”.

The list you’ve got. It’s time to turn it into a herd.