What Is The Best Marketing Technique For Tax Professionals?

Marketing Tax Expertise

What Is the Best Marketing Technique for Tax Professionals?

What is the best marketing technique for tax professionals?  If you could only choose one marketing method, what would it be?  This is a common dilemma all tax professionals face: how can I concentrate my marketing efforts on stuff that actually works?

Most tax pros answer this dilemma by saying that referrals are the best marketing method.  Yes, agreed, referrals are the best way to acquire new clients.  The “catch” with referrals is that it’s something that’s outside of our control.  It’s something that someone else does.  Yes, there are ways that we can increase the likelihood, quantity, and quality of referrals—and we absolutely should do those things, as a top priority—but I can’t wake up this morning and control whether or not someone refers me.

In the course of serving thousands of tax clients myself, while also training and supporting over 20,000 of my fellow tax professionals through Pronto Tax School, I’ve noticed one marketing technique that works better than any other for tax professionals seeking to grow your client base and your career.

One-to-Many Education Marketing for Tax Professionals

I’ll skip you to the summary, in case you’re short on time!

Based on what I’ve observed in the tax industry, the best marketing technique for tax professionals is one-to-many education marketing.

Meaning: you show your expertise to a group of people, and then a certain percentage of that group of people chooses to work with you.

At that point, marketing becomes a numbers game.  How many people can you “get in front of” and how “good” can you be while you have their attention?  Long story short, the more people who see you, the more clients you get.

“Manifestations” of one-to-many marketing for tax professionals include:

  • Conducting in-person seminars (presenting at your Chamber of Commerce or whatnot)
  • Conducting online seminars (typically referred to as “webinars”)
  • Making short YouTube videos on hot topics for your client niche
  • Writing blog posts on a highly-trafficked and respected website, such as TaxConnections.com
  • Appearing on relevant podcasts, radio shows, TV shows, etc.
  • Providing helpful information on social media platforms (commenting on posts, etc.)
  • Building up an email list and regularly communicating valuable info to your list

And much, much more.  Too many variations to name.  It’s a way of life.

You likely already do one-to-one education-based marketing for individual clients, right?  For example, you offer a “free consultation” and then educate the prospect about her problem and how you could solve her problem, and then you ask the prospect to become a client.  If you’ve done one-to-one education marketing of this nature, and you’re any good at it, you already know it works.

Exponentially multiply the “reach” of your knowledge-sharing, by adding one-to-many manifestations, and now you’re starting to realize the huge power of one-to-many education marketing for tax professionals…

How Tax Professionals Can Structure Your One-to-Many Marketing for Maximum Success

I’ve performed thousands of one-to-many marketing efforts, as well as studying the masterminds of one-to-many marketing.  Some of my “presentations” have gone well, some have bombed and been approximately as much fun as getting a root canal.  I stay humble because I’ve been humiliated!

In the process of succeeding and failing, I’ve learned a few things about how to do one-to-many marketing in a way that works consistently in terms of getting clients from these efforts.

If you’re thinking about using one-to-many marketing, or you’re already doing it and you want to do it more and better, here’s my best advice for you:

  • Invest time to understand your audience.
  • Focus your efforts on solving problems for your audience. Almost nobody cares about all the technical information we have in our heads; they care about solving their own problems.  Speak to that and realize that our technical expertise is just a “vehicle” to get someone from Point A (having a problem) to Point B (not having a problem).
  • The first part of your presentation should be all value. Be generous with your knowledge.  Go all out for your audience, treat their time exactly how you want your time to be treated—with respect!
    • Take this blog post as an example. I could “hold back” my best tips, and not “really” tell you how to “really” do what I do, right?  But I made a commitment a long time ago to not act like that.  To go the other way and be “generous to a fault” in sharing my hard-earned knowledge.  I realize it can be painful as a tax pro to feel like you’re giving away what you worked so hard to acquire, but if you do it right, being generous pays much greater dividends.  Don’t be “half-pregnant” is one way to think of it.
  • Once you’ve delivered enough value to justify your audience “being here today,” give your sales pitch. Make a compelling special offer that people can take action on right away.  If you’ve done a good enough job delivering value in the first part of your presentation, people won’t mind you giving a sales pitch—in fact, they often want to know how they can work with you!
  • Give them a reason to get onto your list. Most people are not going to do business with you right away, no matter how great your offer is.  Some “nurture” will be required, for most prospects.  Give people a reason to jump on your email (or text message) list.  A simple way to do this would be to let people download the slides from your presentation, and then once they download those slides, they automatically go into your email marketing system and receive follow ups.

Maybe you’re looking for something more complicated?  Sorry to disappoint!  Simplicity is perfection.

Find people’s problems, generously share your knowledge about how to solve those problems, and then ask people to raise their hands if they want your help to solve those problems.

Easier and Faster One-to-Many Education-Based Marketing for Tax Professionals

Now like anything related to marketing (or life in general), it’s one thing to know how to do it, and it’s another thing to actually do it and consistently get results.  Just because it’s relatively simple doesn’t mean it’s easy.  If it was easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

Here are the common reasons we see as to why tax pros “know about” one-to-many education-based marketing but never get traction in implementing it:

  • We think of ourselves as shy, introverts, non-salespeople, etc. Getting in front of people seems antithetical to who we are.  As human beings, we don’t want to “violate” our identity by doing stuff that’s “not us.”  Meanwhile, shy, introverted, non-salespeople “types” who commit to learning how to do one-to-many marketing are making partner, making money, and making a difference…
  • “I tried that and it didn’t work.” This is always a fun one.  Somebody does something once, and then if it doesn’t “pay off” right away, he proclaims it doesn’t work.  With all due respect, my friend, when you were a toddler and tried to walk, did you fall down?  Where would you be today if you reacted to falling down by saying, “I tried walking.  It didn’t work.”  A ludicrous thought process, correct?
  • Your content is not compelling. It can be quite challenging (and time-consuming) to put together a piece of content that people actually want to absorb.  It’s a skill that can be learned, absolutely, but most expert tax pros are already so busy with other things…somehow that content doesn’t get finished, or gets finished but it’s not that great.  I’m guilty, too.  I “planned” to write this blog post 30 days ago, and it’s just getting done now…
  • Not enough distribution to justify the time invested. As tax professionals serving clients, time is by far our most valuable resource, correct?  If you don’t already have a list of people to who you can communicate, it can feel like speaking to an empty room, and the Return on Investment (ROI) doesn’t materialize at a level that works for you.
  • Insufficient follow up. You didn’t get people on your list and follow up with them.  In my experience, at least 80% of your sales from one-to-many marketing will come later, i.e. not immediately after your “presentation.”  That later payoff only arrives when you’ve kept in touch with people.  We’re farmers.  Farmers plant and water seeds.  And seeds grow over time.  Would you agree?

In light the above difficulties for tax professionals to not merely “know about” one-to-many marketing but actually do it and consistently get results, we launched a major initiative at Pronto Tax School to help our fellow tax professionals share your knowledge and get recognized and get clients using one-to-many marketing.

Our goal is to make it EASY and FAST for tax professionals to share your knowledge and get recognition and clients using one-to-many education marketing.

We have various ways of helping you share your knowledge, the most popular option is our “Weekly Webinar” series where we help tax pros create brief, actionable training sessions that showcase your specific expertise and raise your profile among your fellow tax professionals.

If you’re interested in learning more about how we work as one-to-many education marketing teammates to our fellow tax professionals, jump on our email list here, and you’ll receive a few emails from me.

Respond to one of those emails letting me know that you’re interested in sharing your knowledge.

I’ll reply back to you personally and let’s see what we can do together.

Meanwhile, I hope this blog post is of value to you!

Here again is where you click to jump on our email list and move one-to-many education marketing from your “I should do this” list to your “I’m doing this and it’s working” list.

By Andy Frye, Founder & CEO, Pronto Tax School, Inc.

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