Do You Know How Much Money
Your Website is Making?

Conversion Tracking is the Key to Making Your
Marketing Dollars Pay Real Dividends

For most businesses tracking website conversions is easy.

Most retail businesses and many services can exploit tracking software like Google Analytics that can count every purchase as it occurs, so when calculating metrics like conversion rates and cost per conversion all you need to do is a little long division. Websites for CPAs, unfortunately, can’t track sales. Traffic tracking calculates sales by counting the number of visits to your “Thank You For Your Payment” page and totaling the online payments. The whole process is pretty much automatic. You can simply divide your total sales by your website expenditures and get instant feedback on your website’s ROI.

This doesn’t work with websites for CPAs. Tracking traffic is useless for calculating ROI unless the sale occurs over the web.

Selling professional services isn’t like selling retail goods. When websites for CPAs lure new clients the lead usually come in over the phone. There’s no way a website can track these types of hits so most high end professional services; doctors, lawyers, architects, etc.; need to find other solutions for calculating ROI.

I’m not saying that there’s no reason to track the traffic on these websites. Analyzing traffic patterns on your website can help you glean a lot of important information about who your visitors are, what they want, and where they’re from, but that’s a post for another day. For purposes of figuring out your conversion costs even the best websites for CPAs can’t provide accurate tracking information in regards to conversions.

The only way accounting firms and other professionals have to calculate their ROI on their websites and other marketing campaigns is to do things the old-fashioned way. Back in the old days we called it “conversion tracking”.

On it’s surface conversion tracking looks easy, but it’s actually very difficult to implement because it usually means breaking bad habits and replacing them with good ones.

I don’t need to tell you that breaking bad habits is hard. Make it clear to your staff that you expect them to to take the new procedures seriously.

Conversion tracking takes place during the sign up phase.

When you first fill out the client’s contact sheet you need to ask, flat out, where the client heard about you and why he decided to call. Add this information directly to the client contact file and record it separately in a notebook specifically for that purpose. Once you have this information determining an websites for CPAs ROI is easy.

Your staff is going to balk. Asking these questions can be awkward and it can be hard to impress on employees the importance of proper conversion tracking. Be patient, but be firm. There can be no mistake that this is now an important part of their jobs.

The vast majority of your clients won’t hesitate to answer these questions, and most of the ones that don’t will have honestly forgotten who or what referred you. A few gentle probes will usually shake something loose.

“Were you referred by a friend? A co-worker? Did you find me on the web?”

This technique has a huge advantage over the automated techniques enjoyed by online retailers. Over time the information you gather is much more useful. By taking advantage of Conversion Tracking you not only determine the effectiveness of websites for CPAs, you can determine the conversion metrics of all your marketing campaigns.

Frequently, the first impression potential clients will form of accounting firms is their online presence. This is an excellent chance to develop solid CPA websites that are visually appealing to visitors. It is also a chance to offer information and details about accounting services the practice offers, and an opportunity to convert visitors into clients. A solid way to do this is to add a blog. Adding a blog can be very beneficial.

Blogging is very important in the modern online world. It allows businesses to showcase their expertise in their fields, and it allows individuals to share their ideas. Creating blogs on CPA websites is a great way to introduce the firm to potential clients, and present the practice as approachable to its current clients. It also establishes subject matter expertise in the field of accounting.

There are several strategies to consider while creating and maintaining professional blogs on CPA websites.

When creating a blog on a firm’s website, the firm is creating content as its own publisher. While it is important to post to an accounting blog often to keep the blog fresh, it is also important to make sure the posts all have something valuable to say first so that readers will not lose interest; a blog is not a place to just sell accounting services. Accountant website blogs should be clear, concise and contain good grammar, while sharing accounting expertise with readers.

The field of accounting is relevant to anyone who pays taxes, so firms should try to set themselves apart from the competition. Accounting blogs should have current information on tax laws and tax filing tips so that readers may educate themselves. When blogs offer something of value, readers will want to come back. A CPA blog should also list what services the firm provides, and offer to provide the answers to any questions readers may have. Creating interactivity on blogs is important. It establishes community and a loyal base of readers.

Accounting practices need to share their blogs with others in their professional networks and in their fields. It is important that they promote their blogs on their CPA websites and print the names on their business cards. The more popular CPA blogs become, the more search engine authority they earn. This drives traffic to the blogs and brings more leads.

A critical part of keeping successful CPA blogs is that the authors should keep current with what interests readers. An excellent strategy is to periodically conduct a survey that asks blog readers what their concerns are. The survey should offer a few topics that might interest readers, and one of the responses should be left open-ended so that readers can suggest something original.

Blogging is a tremendous opportunity to boost search engine rankings for modern CPA websites. Every post that is created is a new opportunity for search engine listing. Writing CPA blogs that draw regular readers is the key. This benefits accounting firms by putting their brands in front of leads while selling their services to their current customers, and presenting the search engines good content to raise their search engine presence.

The first point of contact with potential prospects for most firms these days are professionally designed CPA websites. These sites need to establish a lasting impression of your practice.  A website markets for you behind the scenes and around the clock but it calls for persistence to manage your online content so that it’s always fresh.

You also need prospects to come across your business in the search engines. This means your website should be listed high enough that your practice is visible.

Properly managing CPA websites takes a lot of diligence, and not many accounting professionals or their staffs have the kind of spare time it takes to do the job right. One excellent method to compensate for this lack of time is to work with a student to help you with your online marketing. College students and new webmasters are always looking for opportunities to try out their web marketing skills. Some tips are below to help you work with an intern for your CPA website. They can help you with creating and managing effective online marketing strategies.

Intern Experience

It is a good idea to look for potential candidates who have existing online marketing skills. This includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) experience. It isn’t an impossible task to improve your search engine results. However, it takes a lot of effort and you must be patient. You must consistently generate fresh content for your CPA website. Ask your candidates for samples of their writing. The best candidates will have articles written about accounting and the field of financial management. This way you don’t have to spend time teaching them the fundamentals of your business.

Your current clients see you as a dependable professional. It is equally important to project this to your prospects as well. Your intern does not directly work with your clients. However, their work represents you and your practice directly. You should carefully examine their work and make sure that it is of sufficient quality to represent you online.

Your intern needs only a basic set of math skills to be able to create and monitor performance metrics for your website. An understanding of spreadsheets and basic statistics is all that is needed to measure the effectiveness of the marketing programs over time.

Working with Your Team

You should work with your intern as you work with your permanent office staff. This applies even though your intern may only be a temporary employee. You want to think about how compatible they will be with your permanent staff because they will all be working together. You want to be sure there is seamless communication between the intern and your staff, so that the site content they produce can properly reflect your firm’s image.

Online Effectiveness

Because search engine programs can take several months to produce real, visible results, it is a good idea to let the intern make suggestions on SEO and SEM programs. This is especially true once they start to make valuable contributions to your CPA website. Interns can make substantial contributions to your practice’s bottom line, so it is a good idea to keep all options open.

As soon as the first marketing campaigns come to completion, you may decide to continue working with your student beyond the original scope of the project. Business School students and aspiring webmasters can continue to bring value to your practice’s online success, especially in the competitive atmosphere of CPA websites.

When looking at accounting website templates for the first time it’s easy to get distracted. Many providers will offer you what they think you want to see rather than what your firm really needs. To that end many accounting website template providers will neglect a websites long term marketing appeal and sell an illusion of quick ‘n dirty prospect conversion.

There are a lot of reasons for this. First of all these websites are cheaper to build. Long term marketing requires a number of specialized tools and features that add to an accounting website template’s development costs. Perhaps more important, however, is that promises of short term conversions offer a significant appeal to customers new to the internet.

Unfortunately anyone familiar with internet marketing knows that this is a false promise. Very few of your first time visitors are going to be looking for an accountant. The vast majority of the people visiting your site are looking for information. It won’t matter how flashy your site is or how expertly written your sales copy is if you don’t offer a visitor the information they want the overwhelming majority of your visitors are going to leave without giving your site, your brand, or you a second glance.

There are a lot of reasons not to push too hard for a first visit sale. Dedicated buyers are going to buy whether you push them or not.

Unfortunately the reality is that not many of your visitors are going to be dedicated buyers. Maybe our visitor already has an accountant she likes. Maybe she’s still able to use the short tax forms. This doesn’t mean she’s not a good prospect!

According to market research the average life expectancy of a client/accountant relationship is 6 years. That means statistically speaking just about everyone visiting your site is a long term prospect. Maybe her accountant is at the end of his practice. Maybe he’ll get married and move. Or take a job with a large firm. Any number of things could happen. Even poor folks could need you someday. Income changes. People get married. One day they could start their own business or even just buy property. I’ll never forget the panic I felt the first time I laid eyes on a 1040 long form and knew I needed to fill it out.

The real key to using a website to grow your firm is providing not only the information the visitor wants, but also offering such an overwhelming quantity of high quality content that the visitor will come back again and again. What we’re offering them isn’t just a service page and a contact sheet. We’re offering them a library of financial information. Each visit exposes your brand to them again and again. Long term marketing isn’t about making a sale, it’s about positioning yourself as the natural solution to turn to when the prospect is ready to buy. Down the road it’s a pretty safe bet that everyone will need an accountant, and if your website has been engaging and informing a prospect for months or years when that time comes the odds are you won’t even need to make a sale. The prospect will call you pretty much ready to buy.

So… How can you identify accounting website templates with a long term marketing strategy?

It’s fairly simple really. Look for content.

Financial guides and free-reports are great soft sell tools and are very effective at attracting return traffic. They also offer a great side benefit in that they can help you cross-sell your off season services to your existing clients. Use these articles to showcase ways you can help your clients save money, and position you as the expert that can help you do it. You want your visitors to have easy access to them. Divide them up into categories (Business Owners, Home Owners, Self Employed, etc) and make them searchable to make it easy for visitors to find information of interest to them.

Other great features for luring repeat visits are interactive financial calculators, tax due date pages, downloadable tax forms and publications, and most importantly a high quality email newsletter.

Aggressive old-school marketers will advise you to block this content. They’ll tell you to use it to “trap” email addresses for direct marketing. DON’T DO THIS. As soon as you start demanding contact information you’ll alienate your best prospects. Savvy visitors will know full well that if you won’t give them what they want one of your competitors will.

When looking at accounting website templates keep long term marketing in mind. Look for these features in addition to the standard short term marketing features; services pages, contact forms, driving directions, etc; pretty much all providers offer. Long term marketing will not only bring in more conversions over time, it will also bring in better ones.

Tax Time Is Here! Are You Using Your Website to Optimize Your Firm’s Operations?

Today’s economic backdrop is pretty tight and CPA firms are increasingly making use of experienced designers to produce CPA websites to augment their marketing programs.

What many firms still haven’t realized is that the value of your CPA website goes far beyond simple business promotion, it can also substantially trim your business’ expenses and streamline your labor costs.

Sounds too good to be true? Here are some of the basics:

1. Email Newsletters: Switch from sending traditional newsletters via the postal service to using an email service. We’ll will create and deliver your enewsletter for you, and there are many other vendors that will be happy to do the same! This completely eliminates the costs of printing, postage, and staff costs to label and fill your envelopes. It also allows you to cheaply expand your mailing list to include even remote prospects and this brings even more qualified leads to your website.
2. Tax Forms and Publications: Another great use for your website is distributing tax forms. It’s very labor intensive and expensive to mail tax forms to your clients and over time the cost of the staff time accumulates. These are lost hours for which you cannot bill. Instead, create a document center on your website. This document center can contain tax forms that your clients can download.
3. Tax Organizers: Every tax season mailing your tax organizer becomes a major expense. It consumes staff hours and costs a fortune in printing and postage. This can cost hundreds of dollars, depending upon the size of your client base. Use your CPA website to host a PDF document instead. This way your clients can download it and print it from their homes. Some modern CPA websites, including your basic CPA Site Solutions Silver and Web Tools Packages, have their tax organizers posted as an online form. This can be securely sent online directly via the website. 
4. Online Secure File Transfer: Tax time is an expensive time of year. This is particularly true for postage expenses. As the April 15 deadline approaches, clients sometimes procrastinate sending their documents, which is frustrating for both you and the client. Frequently, you must resort to overnight mail so that you don’t miss deadlines. A CPA website can include a secure file transfer feature, which allows your clients to submit their confidential documents quickly and safely, without the postal service expense.
5. Frequently Asked Questions:A CPA website does much more than just marketing. It can also contribute to business optimization initiatives. During the year, your staff answers a lot of calls that are not billable, which can add up to hundreds of dollars of labor cost. The time loss for these calls isn’t just time spent on the phone, because the calls also need to be documented. Every time one of your staff members is interrupted, even for a moment, it takes them several minutes to adjust and return to task. Of courss let’s not overlook the main benefit of these features. In addition to helping out your customers, they can also attract prospects and website leads…
   • Interactive Financial Calculators can help your clients find answers for themselves.
   • A “Track My Refund” feature can give your clients a reasonably accurate estimation without clogging up a phone line.

While a CPA websites’ most important role in your firm is prospecting, it can also save you money by decreasing your operating overhead and helping you better serve your clients.

Effective communication is a key factor in the success of any accounting firm. It can mean the difference between a hectic and stressful tax season and a smooth and efficient one. Therefore, websites for accountants should be designed with communication in mind. Communications systems can be integrated into websites for accountants to make the entire office communications streamlined. Employees and clients will benefit from a centralized means of communicating throughout the company. The better your communications features are on your website, the better experience you and your clients will have with your company as a whole.

Designing websites for accountants with streamlined communications features may seem like a lengthy and costly project, it will pay off with improved productivity and efficiency throughout your entire company. You may want to implement these changes in the off season when you and your employees have time to adjust to the new methods of communication. Keep in mind that you may need to assist some employees and clients with the new technology. Allowing yourself ample time in the slower months of the year to roll out the new system will allow for a smooth transition.

The New Year means the beginning of a few intense months of work for accountants. Every second counts during tax season and an organized office with streamlined communication is the key to ensuring efficiency. This will allow you to better serve your clients throughout this stressful time of the year.

There are many ways to make the work flow during tax season more efficient in your office. One easy way to accomplish this goal is to set up a website that supports chat between co-workers. It should also facilitate sending and receiving email. These communications features will allow office workers as well as those who telecommute to communicate instantly. An instant messenger chat system will truly speed up the work process within your office because people will free up a lot of wasted time trying to make contact with other co-workers. A simple status message will alert people to when the person they are trying to contact is busy or available. In the meantime the co-worker can focus on other tasks until the other person becomes available.

Another important component of communication is networking. Networking is absolutely essential to any accountant. Therefore, effective websites for accountants must have a networking website on the company network. The networking website will enable employees to network with ease. Accountants need to network with co-workers, clients and other industry contacts. The website should support communication and networking capabilities for those who are away from the office. Employees who work from home or are traveling should be able to access the company network so that they can remotely participate in the work flow of the office.

Another great option for networking is the social networking website, LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a valuable resource for accountants. Encourage every accountant at your firm to set up a profile. This will allow them to send and receive referrals from colleagues and clients. In many cases this will draw in new prospects. An added benefit of LinkedIn is that you can set up a private group for your company within the site. This is ideal for interoffice communication and brainstorming in one central networking site. It will bring employees who work remotely into the discussion as if they were in the same room.

A final element that all websites for accountants with the aim of improving office communication should have is a means of managing clients. Integrating a client relationship management program is an ideal way to organize client information more effectively. Everyone in the office will be able to track client information and feedback. It will also create a centralized place for organizing information such as email addresses, documents, telephone calls and business deals. A comprehensive approach to office communications through websites for accountants will allow accountants to work efficiently throughout the craziest of tax seasons.

How many practices, I sometimes wonder, are paying an expensive professional to design and manage their CPA websites? There´s almost nothing worse for your professional image than having a tired site full of obsolete content and out of date “news” just because you´re avoiding the expense of updating it.

The way CPA websites are built and managed has changed enormously. A good deal of education was required to be a designer a decade ago. Web designers had to be proficient with HTML editors like Dreamweaver, and they had to be fluent in bizarre programming languages like HTML and ASP.

Well, stuff changes.

Don’t misunderstand what I’m saying. These people are still major components of the website design industry.

But…

There is an astonishing new instrument called a “CMS”, or “Content Management System” that renders them much less essential in the construction and upkeep of just about any individual small business website. Any moderately computer literate person on your staff can likely use these tools to manage your site.

A CMS is essentially just a “point and click website editor”. It can be used to add and remove pages. All CMS also have what’s oftentimes referred to as a “WYSIWYG” editor, a simple word processor that permits you to alter pages. As usual the lingo isn’t nearly as daunting as it may sound! WYSIWYG is only an abbreviation for “What You See is What You Get”. It permits a user to arrange the pages, upload photos and other images, and construct tables. By allowing you to make alterations to the website’s Navigation Menu you can also set up a site’s whole experience .

All the tasks that took a master coder hours to do only years ago can now be promptly and without difficultly fulfilled by nearly anybody with the help of a Content Management System.

A complimentary or inexpensive content management system is available from very nearly any leading hosting provider specialized in respectable CPA websites.

Obviously the outstanding difference between a CMS and a custom website designer is expense. For most small CPA firms this is a big difference. Despite making make upwards of $25 an hour, most website designers are normally not as motivated as you are to get your tasks completed in a timely manner. It´s not uncommon for waits on pro web design jobs to be a a month or more.

If these costs seem high to you brace yourself: they don’t even include the cost of actually designing the site. Constructing CPA websites from scratch can easily take 200 hours or more. That translates to months of lost time and thousands of dollars spent.

CMS web site providers void these costs by creating the websites in advance and presenting menus of “ready-to-use” templates.

More and more CMS providers are able to tweak their existing templates quite inexpensively, if not straight-out re-create your current site, for those site owners who are already very happy with websites they have already spent lots of money on (or those who just protest using “templates”). While this is a recent technology it’s disseminating fairly fast.

Of course the trouble with sites built in this manner is that, while inexpensive and simple to manage, they often lack essential content. The requirement for industry specialized content has given birth to a whole side industry encompassing the demand for CPA specialized content, so before running off to a general purpose or retail website provider, do a Google search for providers that focus on superior CPA websites.

CPA Site Solutions is the best of these, as far as I’m concerned. For more than ten years we have innovated fantastic CPA sites.

If you’re not a CPASS client, or if you’re a new client and you’re still not sure what your new CPA Site Solutions website has to offer, Take a look at this video demo and you’ll see what we mean when we talk about “CPA specific content”:

Make a note of the tools built principally for website owners in the CPA field: free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive financial calculators, email… A website like this may be comparatively utile for a very limited number of companies outside their intended market, possibly a head-hunter or business consultant could use much of the content on this site, but it would be squandered on a business like a retailer.

For selected large national CPA practices it´s worth the time and cost of retaining expert designers, but for nearly all small and medium sized firms, especially in these hard economic times, it´s time to consider new solutions. Finding a CMS that specializes in accounting websites will cut your costs and at the same time improve your management over your website.

Most accounting practices have high quality websites to promote their practices these days. Standing out on the Internet is all about offering something of value to the viewer. If you are able to consistently offer something of value to people, you will establish trust and loyalty. Content like free reports and interactive calculators offer a lot more marketing punch than a simple list of services.

Unfortunately, it takes more than first-class design to turn prospect’s heads’ these days. Making an impression on the web requires adopting some new marketing skills.

One option is to utilize the power of YouTube.

Video clips that are strategically used to promote financial services have plenty of advantages over other marketing efforts. A quality marketing video doesn’t cost much at all, but it takes time, thought and preparation. Once posted it can effectively generate interest in potential clients and help attract new visitors to your website.

There are many people who need the assistance of a CPA. Most of those people search for CPA services on the Internet search engines. The majority of these people are often in need of assistance with a problem they can’t understand or deal with on their own.

It’s easy to understand why videos that discuss common accounting problems are a great addition to CPA websites.

You don’t need to hire a production company for your videos. All you need to do is present yourself well. A good option is narrate the videos yourself. Another option would be to have somebody on your staff take on the task.

Remember to focus on making the video simple to understand, professional and welcoming. The videos should make people want to stay on your website and come back often. They will also help to build a certain level of trust and loyalty to your company based on the quality information they receive. Who knows, they may even become new clients.

The purpose of YouTube video marketing on CPA websites is to demonstrate the knowledge and credibility of the CPA. A lot of people don’t know anything about accounting or financial practices. Personable video clips can help your visitors feel more informed and position you as the expert to turn to for more information.

If they are done in a professional manner streaming videos can often be more effective in gaining the trust of the consumer than other forms of marketing.

YouTube advertising will connect you with the people who are looking for videos about accounting. Search engines LOVE to rank videos, and if you can get a video to rank for an important search term this will help you to effectively reach your market.

Keep in mind that YouTube itself is a search engine of sorts, and it will also drive traffic to you. Because people are actually searching on YouTube for the information you are presenting, the chances of them finding you is greatly increased. It is an active way of finding people rather than the more passive traditional print or television ads.

Videos give viewers someone they can relate to, which is important in an online setting. It is particularly important when you are marketing a subject that is somewhat difficult for laymen to relate to. The human face will naturally allow people to relate to your business. Think about it, would you rather read about accounting or view an accountant explain it in an easy to understand manner in a short video? The personal connection you make through a video will be lasting. After viewing a helpful video or two, your business will be the first one that comes to mind when they need a CPA.

So with all of the benefits of YouTube video marketing, you’d think it is expensive. It is actually very affordable and in many cases free. The beauty of the Internet is the low barrier of entry for communication. All you need is a qualified spokesperson, a video camera, and/or some kind of screen capture software.

Youtube offers an excellent opportunity to show off the experience and knowledge of your CPA firm. Be sure to link all of your videos to your CPA website. This is one of the best approaches to promote a company that is part of the financial sector.

The Internet is growing in importance as a promotional medium and the full potential of video marketing is just beginning to be recognized. Looking forward the web will be increasingly valuable so it’s becoming increasingly important that CPA firms give more and more effort into applying it to its full potential.

As a successful CPA starting your organization from scratch is fun and exciting but to get started you need to ensure your business can attract new clientele. At minimum you want adequate clients to maintain your organization through the busy tax season. Then after the tax season passes by, you’ll want to develop your business even more so that it can sustain itself through the next season as well.

Providing this level of service leaves little time to market your business into a steady and continuous revenue stream. You need to ensure your success in the long term. To do this, you must learn how to successfully market your business.

“Interrupt”, or “outbound”, marketing techniques are expensive and they do not work. They are usually only 3% effective at best. A much better strategy is to shift the allocation of your marketing budget towards inbound marketing techniques. Your only cost is the expense of labor it takes to create them. Inbound marketing will give you more time to do what you do best, which is accounting. It will also free up more of your budget so you can invest in other parts your business.

To successfully use inbound marketing, you must have a solid strategy. The best strategy is to carefully blend the following techniques:

Pay per Click Advertising

Get yourself a Google Adwords account. The fastest and easiest way to get a good listing in Google is to buy one. It may seem a little expensive at first, but you’ll find it will start paying for itself in no more than a few months.

If you’re a CPA Site Solutions customer call your design representative about setting up Adwords for your website.

Creating a Blog

Make yourself known as a thought leader by starting an accountant website blog. This is an excellent way to establish yourself as a subject matter expert in the field of accounting. Show off a little, but don’t be too pretentious. A blog is a great place to show your prospects how much you know about the field of accounting

SEO – Search Engine Optimization

Increase your rankings with search engines and domain authority by optimizing your website. This will increase the visibility of your site online. Be sure that your content is optimized for the keywords under which you would like to rank on search engine results pages.

Social Media: Expand Your Firm’s Network

Use social media outlets such as Facebook and Twitter to establish and engage a community around your business. In this way, people can see the faces behind the firm. It also helps you establish trust. Links from social media sites rank highly with search engines. This can help with search engine rankings for your website.

One added benefit of using Facebook is its feature-rich marketing toolset. Not only does it contain a robust advertising engine that helps you fine-tune your target audience, but you can also offer exclusive specials to your Facebook users. Promotions such as these can take off on their own. They require very little work.

Video Distribution

Producing and distributing great website videos are an excellent way to educate and in some cases, entertain your community. Use videos to show your prospects how to prep their documents for tax season, or create a client testimonial where your firm helped a client maximize their return. Videos are favored by search engines. They help boost the authority of your domain.

Article Distribution Sites

Blogging offers many benefits, and article distribution opens up a whole new channel via the web. This not only helps your rankings with search engines, but it brings interested leads to effective websites for accountants.

Inbound marketing kinda fun and you’ll soon discover that a successful inbound marketing campaign is far easier to create than a traditional outbound marketing campaign. It is also far less costly when compared with outbound and interrupt marketing campaigns. Perhaps most importantly, inbound marketing campaign delivers uniform, long-term results.

More and more accounting practices are getting on-line with their marketing. Pretty much all accounting firms today have smart-looking, professionally designed web sites. But while great websites for accountants are the beginning of a successful internet marketing campaign, they are certainly not the end-all.

Here are a few contemporary internet marketing strategies that your competitors may not be taking advantage of yet:

Social Media
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are three of the many social networking websites popular today that gather immense attention from individuals and businesses alike. Facebook especially has grown into the choice hangout spot for most big companies and the “like” button has evolved into a valued commodity.

Twitter is similarly utilized to fire out short messages to followers, many of whom might be looking to utilize the business’ services in the future. LinkedIn, being a professional network, can lend credence to your company and your name as well.

Video Sharing
Your business may be able to find new clients on YouTube. Millions of people peruse “how-tos” and information on the site, so posting your expertise can help people discover the resources you have to offer. These needn’t be complex videos and needn’t take up much of your valuable time to create, either: a simple “today’s business/financial tip from *Insert Your Company Name Here*” will suffice.

Article Distribution
If you can, hire a writer or two to create articles for you which can then be published in article databases, generating links back to your site. As above, the articles will need to be informative and interesting or your prospective clients won’t want to read them. These articles will not only guide traffic to your practice’s accountant website, but also attract internet search robots to link to you.

Search engines find your article or site in a number of ways: not only by keyword but also by taking note of hyperlinks contained in the body of the text. Your ranking in the search engines depends partly on the number of hyperlinks in your story. Naturally you don’t want to spam your article with hyperlinks and keywords, but strategic placement can generate a ton of new leads.

Blogging
This includes guest blogging on authority sites, maintaining your own company blog, and participating in blogging communities frequented or run by likely prospects. Blogging is superbly equipped for informing people of your CPA firm’s latest exploits in detail – something essential as you create a longstanding awareness of your business in the minds of possible clients.

When blogging, avoid over-committing to a rigid schedule. Instead, plan your blogging to fit into the time you have available.

No matter what kind of marketing you try, know one thing: forming this broad-spectrum knowledge network about your business is the very top trick to attract new customers reliably and steadily.