“So many fail because they don’t get started – they don’t go. They don’t overcome inertia. They don’t begin.”
– W. Clement Stone
Gearing up for some BBQ? I know I am–my family heads to the beach this weekend for the week…last year, we went there just following our return from Ethiopia with our children, and we snapped this:
Do things change? Well…almost one year later:
Maybe they don’t actually change much, huh? 🙂
Alright, forgive my Papa self-indulgence. But you know what? Here’s another thing that hasn’t changed much: The essence of good marketing.
Look, I’ll be blunt (as usual): Too many independent tax & accounting firms FAIL online because they neglect what marketing *really* is: building a relationship.
When you understand this very simple dynamic, it affects EVERYTHING about how you market your firm.
And the online “space”? Forget the fancy widgets, and the techno-babble confusion. It comes down to three things. I wrote about them last week, but let me expand on my current theme:
1) “Lead Magnet” /Capturing information — THE INTRODUCTION
2) Follow-Up /Conversion to client — BUILDING & “SEALING” THE RELATIONSHIP
3) Traffic /Sending prospects to your site — FINDING MORE INTRODUCTIONS
Too simple? Well, it only becomes complicated when you don’t understand the right way to go about accomplishing these tasks, especially online.
Look–you DO get this, when it comes to conventional, face-to-face selling. But you can replicate this process online.
In fact, you MUST, if you want to have any kind of success in the current (& future) online world.
Read on…
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Client Story of the Week++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Not really a question but a praise for Nate,Troy and the other staff at BuildaHerd: So glad that you convinced me to go over the edge and use email and social media marketing…it has paid in spades for the continous client communication even outside of regular tax season…when it is needed the most. Thanks!
John Walters
St. Petersburg, FL
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Online Marketing is About Relationships
So…you’ve captured the information of your target prospect in some capacity, with your effective “Lead Magnet”. [Quick Summary of a “Lead Magnet”: a compelling reason–besides “Subscribe To Our Email Newsletter”–which incentivizes your website visitor to give you their information.]
Well, now what?
When you understand the necessity of forming relationships with your prospects, it’s now up to leveraging the right tools to immediately start to work on building that relationship.
So, you want an effective “auto-responder” sequence, built into your email response, which begins that relationship–and, at the minumum, gives them a sense of who YOU (and your firm) are, and why you’re different.
Effective email follow-up is the missing ingredient in your online success, Test. It’s still the tool most relied-upon by ridiculously-successful online marketers for the simple reason that our email inbox is the “Dashboard” of our personal lives.
I say this in my video about email marketing, because it’s the cold truth: examine YOUR email inbox, and you tell me if it isn’t one of the primary places where you conduct your business and your life?
I thought so.
So–if you’re not in THAT space, you’re toast!
Oh, and when you systemize this thing, that’s when it becomes fun. Watching leads come into your business and “magically” converting into well-paying clients, because you’ve taken the time (or invested in someone else’s time & expertise) to create this automatic, relationship-building system.
One more critical thing: remember that email is an “informal”, relational medium. It tracks with the steady “de-formalization” of our culture in general, and the truth is that when email recipients receive your notes as just that — ‘personal notes’ instead of corporate-y boilerplate–that’s what unlocks the crazy effectiveness of this medium.