Crafting your online presence doesn’t happen overnight, or automatically. Those local tax professionals you see everywhere online crafted this local visibility by taking specific steps to strengthen their online presence for tax season months ago.
And here’s the thing: with just a couple of months to April, you can too. You can build a local online presence faster than you think when you follow the straightest path to greater online visibility.
How Clients Find Tax Professionals
Whether you’re with a firm or an independent CPA, people will now find you primarily one way. That’s online. But they’ll take several critical steps before scheduling an appointment.
These future clients of yours will first search for specific terms like:
“tax services in {your town}”
or
“tax professionals near me”
Either way, search engines like Google recognize this as a local search. So, even though you see those big national companies everywhere such as TurboTax, Google wants them to see the small, local businesses like yours.
You can dominate Google’s local search results with the right localization strategies.
Potential clients can also see you on Google Maps, so they know where your office is. They can see your star rating and choose to click through to your website or Google Business Profile.
But that’s not all.
They’re more likely to see you, recognize you, and click if they’ve seen your name somewhere before. That’s why it’s important to think beyond just search engines to social media, where they see your localized posts and social media ads.
Something starts to click. As they see you even during casual social media scrolling, they say. “Hey, this CPA is in my community. I should check them out.”
If only that were the happy ever after for your company. There’s one more big step they take before choosing you.
They’ll view testimonials, read reviews, and examine your social media page more closely to determine whether others would recommend you.
Then, after they become your happy clients, they’ll go back to social media and review sites to share their experiences. With each new client review, you add to the social proof that turns people searching for tax services into new clients.
Whether you target businesses or individuals, this is more or less what the client’s journey will look like—give or take a step.
So, let’s take the steps needed to ensure this journey leads to you by creating an online presence for tax professionals.
We’ll walk you through the steps. And if this sounds like a lot, know we’re going to share the secret of doing this time- and cost-efficiently to maximize your ROI.
1. Build a User-Friendly Website
You probably already have a website. So, it’s time to localize and ensure it meets client expectations.
Start by ensuring that it’s easy to schedule and pay for services on the website. There are reliable third-party apps you can embed to enable this.
Next, make it easy for leads to find your reviews. Put them in key decision-making locations on your website. Ideally, the reviews are automated, so they feed directly from a review site.
This makes showing the most recent reviews to leads easier. When it comes to reviews, financial services leads want to see reviews that are recent, relevant, and plentiful in addition to having mostly 4-5 stars. So, we’ll talk about getting more reviews in a later step.
2. Localize Your Website
Localizing your website allows search engines like Google to show your website more often in local searches.
A combination of local keyword research and publishing content that is locally relevant are two excellent steps you can take toward localizing your website.
Show you’re part of the community through:
- Local imagery
- Local tags
- Participation in local events
- Networking with other local businesses
- Giving to local charities
Document your activities on your website as part of your content strategy.
3. Claim a Google Business Profile
Think of your Google Business Profile as an extension of your website. Many tax preparation leads will book appointments from here and never visit your website.
Fill it out completely, incorporating local key terms naturally in the descriptions and begin posting updates here.
Keep in mind: The things you post on your website, you can often post on Google and social media. So, while this may sound like a lot, you’ll find a lot of overlap as you hash out your processes.
4. Set Up Your Other Review Sites
Other review sites like Yelp, social media platforms, and professional review sites can become direct lead-generation pipelines. But they’re also important because different people, search engines, and voice searches will use various sources to learn more about your online reputation.
You’re also building links to your website from reputable sources, which strengthens how search engines like Google see your website. This can impact your ranking in search and key locations like Google Maps.
Ensure your NAP (NAME, ADDRESS, PHONE) is consistent across all review sites and directories to avoid miscommunication with potential clients and to ensure search engines know where you are.
5. Leverage Local Listings and Directories
Make sure your financial services business shows up when people are searching for tax help by claiming your listings on sites like Google Business Profile, Yelp, and other local directories. It’s an easy way to get noticed, especially when tax season rolls around and people are looking for help. Just keep your details up to date, and use keywords that people might type in when looking for services like yours. It’s a small step that can bring in a lot of local customers
6. Localize Your Social Media Presence
Next step is social media. A lot of the groundwork you’ve set in previous steps will make this part easier.
Create and share helpful videos, infographics, polls, and posts. Encourage two-way conversations, comments, and engagement to increase your local visibility.
Consider boosting posts to a larger local audience with geotargeting features on social media ad platforms. That way, you’re not paying for views and clicks from people in another state.
Network with other local non-competing businesses to host live Q&As or webinars to further engage your audience and demonstrate your connection to the community you serve.
7. Implement a Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising Strategy
Notice how many steps we completed before we got to paid advertising. The tasks you’ve completed up to this point are going to make your ads so much more impactful.
Just be sure to use geotargeting features to make sure the right people are seeing your ads in search results and on social media. Create and test your ads to improve their performance over time.
Explore the ad types you can choose from on social media and search. Different ones can help you more effectively reach different objectives. Take a little time to check out these features. It will help you optimize your ads for success.
8. Automate Review Requests / Encourage Reviews
As mentioned, people want to see a sufficient number of reviews and know they’re recent. So, it’s vital to create a system that generates honest client feedback regularly.
You can automate review requests and even suggest the review site where you’d like reviews. You can also use review software to track your online reputation.
Responding to all reviews—good and bad—in a professional way strengthens trust with those using the reviews to decide if they want to hire you.
9. Stay in Touch with Email or Text Message Marketing
You can follow up with leads and clients with email or text messages to nurture the relationship. This strengthens your bond with them and can turn one-time clients into lifelong loyal customers.
You can certainly use these platforms to keep clients updated about their projects. Automating these updates can ensure people receive communication just when they need it.
This reduces the frantic customer service contact and improves client perception. Better client perception that you’re “on it” translates to better reviews.
Then, with permission, you can also use email or, text, or both in moderation to share special offers and helpful resources that further enhance the client connection.
10. Monitor Analytics and Adjust Strategies
Now, you’re making it happen! You’re creating an online presence for tax professionals that will be seen, encourage clicks, and result in new bookings. It will result in amazing reviews you can leverage to generate more leads.
It’s time to start streamlining your processes and adjusting your strategies to get the most out of these efforts.
The best way to do that is to make sure you’re tracking performance across these platforms. You can see what’s working. And you’ll be able to home in on areas you need to tweak to get better results.
It sounds like you need an all-in-one marketing platform that helps you monitor performance in one place, to prioritize your efforts.
Surefire Local was built with small, local service businesses like yours in mind. With our marketing platform, you gain access to local marketing tools, analytics, and automation that streamline the process of creating an online presence for tax season.
You’ll need to see it to understand better just how easy creating a local online presence can be with the right tools. So, we encourage you to schedule a free demo of our software.