How to Consistently Acquire New Tax Resolution Clients
Acquiring new tax resolution clients is unlike traditional tax practices of getting new tax preparation clients. With the sporadic nature of clients' tax problems, nobody really has a go-to person for resolving tax problems. It requires different strategies to bring in new clients consistently.
This guide will review some of the top strategies to attract new tax resolution clients consistently. We’ll explore various marketing methods, community engagement, and more to help you grow and succeed in the tax resolution industry.
This guide is written in collaboration with the owners of TaxCure, who combined have more than 30 years of experience in the tax resolution industry, with a primary focus on marketing. We have spent millions on marketing, tested many marketing methods, and worked with the largest companies in the industry. This guide will cover some of the main techniques to consistently bring in tax resolution revenue for your practice. If you want further customized assistance, please contact us. We have various plans tailored to different size practices. Our goal at TaxCure is to create transparency in this marketplace dominated by scam review sites when we know taxpayers want someone local if given the opportunity.
Website Optimization for Tax Resolution
Your website is a powerful marketing platform that you have complete control over. A powerful website allows you to control what potential clients see when researching or hearing about your services. Your website is your digital storefront that can make or break the deal for a client. Your website can become your most powerful asset to drive new clients, and wise investing in it is essential. Below are some subcategories on how to invest in your website to drive more tax resolution clients.
Search Engine Optimization Specific to Taxpayers that Need Help
Obtaining rankings for terms that taxpayers search into search engines when they have a tax problem or are looking for help can significantly boost traffic and qualified leads for your business. It is essential to understand your potential clients and understanding common search queries to focus on what will drive the best return on investment for your business. (For example, if you arrived at this page through a search engine, you got to this page because TaxCure researched the queries that tax professionals use when searching for ways to obtain new tax resolution clients. We made this article specific to your needs, and we aim to provide valuable content for you to grow your business.) With this article, we hope you sign up as a free profile to be listed on TaxCure to grow your business.
One way TaxCure grows business for Tax Pros is by consistently publishing content about various problems and services our members help with. There is a science to this, and it is one piece of the puzzle to drive more prospects your way. If you are looking for help with this aspect of your business, you can always contact us to see if we are a good fit for your SEO services.
About Us & Bios for Website
Often this is overlooked. The value of providing valuable insight about yourself and your business helps form a connection with the taxpayer that has arrived at your website. Obtaining new tax resolution clients is a balance between marketing, sales, and quality services. Sales is a major aspect that many companies struggle with. Having a good about page to help people connect with you or your business can help close the deal before they even contact you.
Client Testimonials of Prior Tax Resolution Clients
A page dedicated to testimonials of prior tax resolution clients can be very powerful in closing the deal. It is crucial to showcase real testimonials. Consider using video testimonials as consumers trust them to see real people talking about their experience.
Professional Badges and Certifications
Use your website to showcase professional certifications and badges. Professional certifications show prospective clients that you have gone above and beyond while training to take care of their tax problems, and this helps to build trust in your services. Additionally, while you train to become a Certified Tax Representation Consultant or a Certified Tax Resolution Specialist, you learn valuable skills that allow you to provide top-notch services to your family.
Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising for Struggling Taxpayers
Your website is the first thing people see when you do pay-per-click advertising. This is a game of constant optimizations and a clear call to action. Having a professional site to give the taxpayer confidence to reach out to you and specifically giving them confidence you can assist with the service or problem they searched for is imperative.
Doing PPC isn’t something you can do overnight and get it running successfully. The PPC market is extremely competitive, with some of the highest costs of keywords to bid on. For example, if you wanted to advertise on the term “Tax Relief Attorney,” you would likely spend $25+ per click. It is important to know what you are doing here before jumping in and knowing which keywords will likely generate the clients you want. You also need to ensure your website is optimized for conversions and has the appropriate KPIs to limit wasted spending.
When optimized, this method can be one of the fastest and most reliable ways to bring in business consistently, but it will cost you a lot of money. You can read more here on what you should pay to bring in a new tax resolution client to put some things into perspective.
Places for Tax Resolution PPC Advertising
- Google Ads: The largest PPC network with the highest potential, the most competitive, and some of the highest prices for keyword bidding. If you don’t have experience with this, it is suggested to hire an expert to assist, especially in the field of tax resolution. Even companies specializing in all-tax marketing tend to fall short when it comes to marketing tax resolution services, and it is a very niche industry. Working with a company with experience is essential to lower your wasted spend.
- Microsoft Advertising: Very similar to Google Ads, but with a far lower reach and also a bit looser on being able to target specific keywords. This can be effective and should be considered, especially with their potential to increase market share, as they have the first-mover advantage of using AI in their search platform.
- Facebook Advertising: Different from your typical keyword bidding platform, you can target audiences. It can be difficult to target taxpayers that have issues with FaceBook, but there are clever ways to do it.
Email Marketing
While there can be many aspects of email marketing, we will cover some of the top ways you can use email marketing to increase your tax resolution clients.
Email Marketing to Your Client Database
If you have an existing practice doing tax prep or other tax services, you should have a list of your current clients and their emails. This is a great way to let your services be known to existing clients. Maybe they don’t know that you offer these services and may come into a tax problem. Emailing your current clients that already trust you is a great source of securing existing clients for more services. Even if you only do tax resolution, following up on an annual basis can help ensure you stay in their mind if they come across another tax issue. Many tax resolution clients tend to come into future tax issues as well.
Email Opt-ins on Your Website
Leverage your website to have potential clients sign up for a newsletter or other email communications. You can offer incentives like a free e-book on resolving tax problems, tax savings tips, etc, to motivate them to share their email address with you. You can then email them in the future to stay in their mind about your services. Many taxpayers are struggling financially, like to try things themselves sometimes, and aren’t ready to move forward with services. If you give them an offer that doesn’t require them to spend money and you can help them in some way without much effort, you can have their contact information for a future time when they may want to reach out to you.
Getting email opt-ins requires traffic first, so don’t build out this campaign before you have found an effective way to drive some traffic to your brand first.
Drip Campaigns
These email campaigns help nurture a potential prospect who may have contacted you on your website or inquired about your services but have yet to become a client. An effective email campaign that will consistently send them emails about your services and highlight your company can greatly assist them in making the final decision to move forward with your services.
Networking Event Emails
Networking events can be a powerful way to drive client referrals. If you have a non-competitive business but you share a target audience. Staying in front of these people is essential to drive potential referrals to your business. Have a newsletter that provides value to these clients and keeps them aware of your services, and you are open to referrals. Be sure to collect business cards at networking events, save their emails to your marketing platform, and create a specific campaign targeted just to them.
Claim Relevant Online Listings - Review Sites
People often overlook the value of many online listing services. Business listings are very important for brand reinforcement. Finding ones that reinforce your brand and promote your services are the best, but most are just mainly suitable for brand reinforcement.
Why is Brand Reinforcement Important?
Various studies have been done on how many touch points it takes before a customer makes a hiring decision. You can have the most optimized website, but people know that you control this information and can say whatever you want. Therefore, many people seek external references before making a hiring decision. They then do a brand search on your company name or a search on your name, and it is vital to have solid listings that support the work you do outside of your website to increase your close rate significantly.
I’m going to list a few below that can be suitable for tax professionals that offer tax resolution services. You must be active on them and only claim the ones that will rank for your brand and aren’t loosely regulated to prevent fraudulent reviews you can’t do anything about.
TaxCure
We have crafted our system to showcase your expertise and give positive feedback to anyone looking for information about you or your company. We have professional profiles as well as company profiles. Not only do we reinforce your brand, but we also promote your brand through our search and various other aspects of our site features.TaxCure is open to enrolled agents, CPAs, and attorneys to claim their profiles. We allow client reviews that are highly vetted to ensure the professional was explicitly hired for tax resolution services for the review to be published. Our unique system allows you to only show to taxpayers that match your unique skill set to ensure taxpayers can obtain the best quality services and the tax pros can obtain new business from clients that meet their skills.
You can obtain further reach in acquiring new leads by upgrading to our TaxCure Pro membership. This membership is an easy win to obtain new clients at an excellent return on spend.
Google Business Profile
This profile is one of the most critical profiles you can claim and optimize. Google Business Profile helps with brand reinforcement when someone types in your company name, showing in the results a lot of information about your services. This listing also is essential for catching those local searches where searchers have the intent to make a hiring decision. This is a separate listing from your website and can drive a good amount of traffic to your brand if optimized correctly.
National Association of Enrolled Agents (NAEA)
The NAEA has professional profiles for enrolled agents that will help you claim a place in the top 10 listings for you as a professional. They also offer other services as well. They do have an annual fee for their membership, but the standard profile is a great promotion to show great credentials at the top of the search results.
AVVO
For attorneys, this is a powerful directory that can provide clients as well as a high-ranking profile for your name and brand. They don’t drive a significant amount of traffic for tax-related topics to drive client referrals, but the listing helps strengthen your brand.
Having a presence on LinkedIn through a personal profile and creating a company page can help boost your brand visibility. Generally, these profiles rank in the top 10 search results and are essential for brand reinforcement.
Yelp
Yelp is one of those sites that aren’t great for generating tax resolution clients. It can be suitable for brand reinforcement. If you have a profile already, make sure you maintain it and get some good reviews because it generally is favored high in the results for your brand. This is a go-to place for people to post negative reviews, and it is tough to combat them. This is not a high suggestion of ours, but an easy place to grab a place in the top 10 results for your brand. This can be valuable to those professionals that offer other tax services, like tax preparation, to generate some referrals.
Super Lawyers
Super Lawyers is a site for lawyers with a profile page that can rank decent for their brand. They have a free listing option, and not all lawyers can get listed. It can be a good place to reinforce your brand and claim a listing if you are an attorney.
Justia
Justia is for attorneys general, blanketing many aspects of the law. For tax resolution, they can showcase your experience. They don’t receive significant traffic from people with tax issues. However, their platform allows your profile to rank high in search for your brand.
FindLaw
FindLaw is another directory just for attorneys. They cover various aspects of law and allow you to create a profile for yourself and your company. This can be great for brand reinforcement as long as you put some effort into it. They don’t receive much traffic related directly to tax, so don’t expect direct referrals from here. If you have a solid profile it should rank top 10 in the search results for your brand.
Better Business Bureau (BBB)
This long-standing brand is well-recognized and a trusty entity. Having a listing here and in good standing will help reinforce your credibility. A BBB profile for your business generally ranks highly in the search results, and if you maintain it well, it is a good profile. The BBB has built somewhat of a strong reputation to give extra trust to clients knowing they have an intermediary to get involved if there are any issues. The BBB does assist in helping resolve client complaints, but the main benefit of their service that is not stated is you get a nice listing that ranks high in the search results for your brand and lets customers know they have some BBB “protection.” This does have an annual or monthly fee to be a part of, but generally, if this listing can sway one person a year to use your services, it will l likely be worth the cost.
Facebook Business Page
Facebook can play a crucial part in enhancing brand reinforcement. With a Facebook business page, your brand is more visibility to your audience. It shows great in search for your brand in search engines and helps foster trust and engagement. Having a Facebook business profile can help to show you are actively engaged with your clients, but it can also hurt you if you don’t show frequent updates and give the impression you aren’t that involved. Generally, this profile ranks high in the results for your brand and is an important marketing angle to maintain.
TaxBuzz Profile
If you like it or not, you probably already have a profile here if you are a tax professional since they use web scraping technology. They rank well for brands, and that is what they have built their business on. They drive much of their traffic from people searching for certain tax professionals and possibly doing a bait-and-switch tactic, especially if you haven’t claimed your profile. If you haven’t claimed your profile, we suggest you claim it and update you with relevant information. Especially if this profile already ranks for your brand in the top 10 results for your brand name.
Buying Tax Resolution Leads
Sounds easy, right? Just pay to receive prospects with tax issues and seeking help. Well, it isn’t quite as it seems, and this can be an expensive way to acquire new clients, but many businesses base their whole business solely on this type of marketing. We have a very detailed article on how buying leads works & how to avoid getting ripped off.
Tax Lien Mailers
This approach involves acquiring lists of individuals who recently had tax liens filed against them and sending them an informative and professionally designed mailer. There are some companies out there that offer this service from obtaining the lien lists to sending the notice. There are many businesses who have relied solely on this practice to build their business. While it can be an effective strategy, there can be times where it isn't effective when the IRS isn't being aggressive and implementing new tax liens. This can also be an expensive form of marketing with the cost of acquiring the lists (there are free ways to do this), printing copy, coming up with the creative for the letter, and setting up effective split testing to see which gets the best response and then the cost of mailing the letters.
Companies that have this dialed in can have an effective and repeatable model of generating new clients. Many people jump in and think they will achieve great results right away, but generally fall short of the return needed to continue. With consistency and testing while having the appropriate KPIs in place, this can become an effective method.
With the mailers, be sure not to come off like you are a tax agency. This was an old-school method used by many marketing companies and shady tax resolution companies back in the day. While this did probably produce good results for them, in this day an age with technology, this will only make a bad name for you and your company, which will hurt your long-term success. Be sure to explain how your services can assist in resolving their tax debt and the benefits they can receive by taking timely action. Be sure to promote trust and include client testimonials and information about your firm to establish credibility. Be sure to have a clear call to action, maybe a phone number that you specifically track so you can attribute that call to the mailer, or a website that you can track that it came from the mailer (maybe acquire a similar domain to yours or a very short name domain that redirects to your site that passes a UTM parameter that you can effectively track traffic from that source).
Social Media Presence
Why Is Presence on Social Media Important?
With over half of the world on social media. This is a tool that no business can ignore. We’ve already mentioned the importance of this in various aspects of marketing above. Here are some tips on leveraging it to help grow your tax resolution services.
- Establish Presence and an Indexable Profile: These profiles show high for your brand in search. These profiles should be complete, up-to-date, and reflect your brand’s messaging.
- Share valuable content: Share things that meet your target audience. Even if they don’t find you directly through social media, this is your platform to showcase things when someone searches for your brand. Things like tax law updates, tax tips, client testimonials, and more. Just think, if someone was to hire my business or are an existing client, what type of information would they like to see to solidify their commitment to my business?
- Engage: Be sure to be responsive. Being responsive will lead to new clients and will also show you are a business that cares and will respond to your client's needs.
Social Media Platforms to Consider
- LinkedIn: This is a good platform that showcases your expertise. This is great for creating a company profile and a professional profile. This ranks well in search engines and reinforces your brand to potential prospects. This isn’t that powerful in terms of generating new prospects, but it is an important profile to have. This can be important for professional networking and having a place to connect with other professionals that you may receive referrals from.
- Facebook: This has a broad user base. Many taxpayers will look up companies' information here, and it has become an essential platform for all businesses to get on.
- Twitter: A good platform for sharing updates, engaging in discussions, and connecting with customers or similar businesses with similar target audiences. Generally, this profile ranks high in search for your brand and can be valuable for brand reinforcement.
- Instagram: While this may not seem like an intuitive choice for tax resolution, Instagram can be effective for sharing visual content, such as infographics that simplify complex tat issues and images about your company to help build more trust.
- Youtube: Creating video content allows you to show in the second largest search engine in the world. This is also a powerful profile where potential prospects can see you and make a connection with you, which can significantly increase the close rate when they reach out to you. Youtube can be an effective way to generate valuable content that can directly drive prospects and grow your business. This is a good place to showcase your skills and answer common questions from tax problems that you frequently help resolve, and this can help generate potential prospects that meet the types of skills that you have.
Partnerships and Referrals
- Professional Networking: Collaborating with complementary service providers such as financial planners, real estate agents, attorneys, accountants, etc. These professional connections can lead to referrals for the services you offer. Networking events, industry conferences, and online forums can be a really great way to build some of these connections.
- Client Referrals: Happy clients often recommend services to friends. Tax resolution is a touchy subject, and staying in touch with prior clients is important to stay in their minds for possible future services or to remind them of the services you helped them with so that maybe they will refer others to you.
Final Words on Acquiring New Tax Resolution Clients
Attracting new clients requires strategic planning, a good understanding of your target market, and a commitment to providing top-notch services. There are a variety of strategies, and it is best to use multiple techniques to diversify your mix in the ways you receive new clients.
It is important to find strategies that work for you that can be consistent and repeatable. The more consistent you can become with implementing various acquisition strategies and consistently putting effort in, your client base will consistently grow over time.
In the challenging landscape of tax resolution, having a company like TaxCure on your site can make a big difference. We cater to firms of all sizes, providing services that help reinforce your brand, generate new leads, optimize your website, pay-per-click services, and more. You can reach out to us to learn more about the services we offer. Let’s make success a reality together!