Welcome to Escaping the Accountant's Trap. It's a podcast to help accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers escape what we call the accountants trap. It's where you're stuck working with low value and high demanding clients. But at the same time, you can't raise your fees because you have a ton of competition. Well, how do you escape the trap? One way is the topic of today's episode, and that's by growing your practice through getting leads and scaling your marketing.

To help me with a discussion, I've invited Christian Jones, the CEO of tax pro marketer.com, the premier marketing agency for accountants and tax professionals. Christian, welcome to the show. Hey, Adam. Thank you for having me. It's great to be with you. Yeah. So I'm really excited about this because of course, nothing really happens without actually getting a client to perform your services for and for all of us in the accounting world.

Marketing, getting clients, building relationships, sales. That's such such a foreign concept to a lot of us. So just to kick off the discussion, how how do you suggest a accountant bookkeeper who struggles with getting leads? What is one of the first things or the first couple of things that they just need to think about or do or wrap their minds around?

What do they get started? Yeah, Adam actually really, really like that question because I will and hopefully we can dig into some tactics, some strategies. But it does actually start with getting your mind wrapped around the idea that it is 100% possible, and is something that many accountants and bookkeepers are experiencing right now. You can get leads from the internet, sustainable, predictably, and you can get people that are a perfect fit for you.

And a lot of people we work with, we've been in the tax and accounting space for 15 plus years, doing digital marketing, so we've had a conversation or two about this. A lot of times people just don't. They haven't experienced any type of relevant growth from an online channel. So it starts with believing this is possible. Now, some people might have more experience or exposure with digital marketing, and maybe it hasn't worked for them yet, but they they're not skeptical that it's possible.

That's good. But a lot of people are skeptical that it's even possible. And that's where I'd want to start. You have to start with most people to make a decision. Not all. Just to be clear, not all of your leads go to Google, but a lot of them do. And no matter what you do from a marketing perspective and all the follow up, all of the salesmanship, all of the systems that you need to have in place to convert a lead, just getting a lead, getting found that upstream problem is about how do I get found on places like Google or Facebook or LinkedIn or whatever platform you want to talk about that is completely

possible for you as a business to rank there. If you don't. Currently, that's where I'd want to start, and there's a lot of ways we could take that. But that's just the psychology of, just believing that it's actually possible. Okay. And I like to how you framed it, starting off that before we talk about any of the tactics or strategies, the idea that it works, it can work.

Because that's, you know, there's a lot of different messages being thrown at accountants out there about how to market, how to get clients, how to do this. But you're saying it the first step is just really understanding their believing that it can work. So all right. So once somebody believes that then how do they make it happen.

Yeah. So the next steps is to kind of just understand the landscape of what's available to you. Because what we tell our folks is there's not there's not one way to get 100 clients. There's 100 ways to get one client as an idea. Right? So there's there's lots of ways. And let's just say, you know, a lot of your folks that listen to this podcast that are working with you guys, they're probably a lot of like the people we work with as well as they start with us.

The main source of driving leads is referrals, which is good, which is great. That's probably not everyone. There's always exceptions, but as a general rule, most people are coming to me saying, hey, Christian, I'm I'm kind of doing okay. Maybe I really do want to grow quickly and I need to kind of press the gas, but it's this like box of I want to get leads from other places, then going to networking events, referrals, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And how do I do that? Okay, so here's kind of the landscape we're going to probably talk mostly in this 20 minute session about organic ranking on Google organic traffic. But I do want to just name a few channels that we would highlight for our clients in general. So organic free traffic from Google. Google is an algorithm.

It's a set of principles and factors that distort, decide and determine if I'm in your market, if I'm in Jacksonville and I type in bookkeeper or accountant, you're going to see a few things. You're going to see an ad at the top. People are paying to be there. You're going to see a map with three businesses that the Google Maps area, and then you're going to see website links beneath that.

When I when I'm mentioning when I say free organic traffic, is that map section and the website link section beneath it. So if you're listening to this podcast, if you want to see it for yourself, just go ahead and Google in your area. Accountant, bookkeeper, tax consultant, whatever it is you'd like to rank for, see who shows up that top section of an ad that's pay to play, pay to be there.

That's a very viable option. But one thing that we see that people miss is why not aim with all of your marketing efforts at ranking for free on page one of Google, for whatever term or keyword you like to rank for. So how do you do that? That that's the goal. And again, ads on Google, on Facebook, on YouTube, on LinkedIn, there's lots of ways to get clients.

This is just one way. But what I would tell you is most of the data we see is that organic rank on Google is where the lion's share of leads come from. And here's the big three things. Google's algorithm is $1 billion thing, right. Like it's it's a massive company a really successful company. So let me just say I'm reducing the key principles that I think are most tangible, something you can really take a step towards.

But just know, like, I don't work for Google and there's a lot more to it than this, but understood. Here's the three things. Yeah, yeah. Here's the three things. It's your website specifically how your website's built. Not what I see. It's your Google business page. I'll talk a bit about that. And it's Google reviews. Those are the three big areas, the three biggest areas that if you address how your website's built, if your Google Business page is optimized and built out properly, and then if you're regularly getting Google reviews, if you do those three things, well, you weren't going to start to show up for keywords where people are looking for you.

And right now you don't show up. So zooming back out in a marketing funnel, this is the top, this is traffic, this is awareness. This is visibility. If I this if I don't get found, nothing else in my marketing funnel really matters. But I do want to say there's a lot of other things in marketing that do matter, right?

Like email, follow up in building rapport, and our whole methodology is actually about building relationships. We don't have just a clicks in traffic. Kind of ethos or orientation as a company. Like we have a relationship orientation for our customers, but all of it's predicated on can anyone find you who doesn't already know about you? So like people that know about you, great.

Have a website. I'm talking about your website, your Google presence being visible to people that are trying to figure out who they're going to work with. It's totally possible. We see it all the time. And those are the three big area. So before I get tactical on that, Adam, any questions on that or things on your end? You wanted me to clarify.

Yeah. So I yeah a couple things. I think it's I think it's worth highlighting that you're suggesting that somebody targets locally that they, they try to get or ranked organically in Google for just your local market. So anybody listening, you don't have to target the world. You don't have to even target the here. Yeah. The state that you live in just target the hometown.

Because most people who are searching for accountants or, you know, bookkeepers or tax professionals, they're going to be local. They they would probably want somebody local. And that's what you're suggesting. I'm guess I'm guessing Christian, is that it's going to be easier to be found if you target locally, correct? That's right. And Adam, I'm really glad you brought that up because here's the reality.

Most people we work with can serve a client or customer from any state. A lot of people, even internationally, that's a part of their business portfolio. And so when I tell people this, you're right, Google's algorithm for the tax and accounting space functions just like restaurants, electricians, plumbers, local businesses, they see the accounting and tax based bookkeeping space as a local based business.

Now, just to be clear, advertising can help you break out of that. So here's how you can get traffic from other areas. If you're in Jacksonville, you're going to show up best in your backyard organically. But you could open an office in Miami and then, you know, get a Google page and a minimum set up at that address and be pulling traffic from that market.

That's actually not a bad idea for expansion. If you need new territories, it's one way to do it, then the other way, the more cost effective way in terms of not needing infrastructure and a new brick and mortar location is to advertise. I can advertise to any zipcode, any city. That's fine. But the way Google works is exactly like you said.

Don't make the organic algorithm from Google that is designed for local businesses. Try and be national or regional like your whole state. Let it be local. Play the game that they set up for you, and then use the tools that are available to you to reach in other markets. And we've got people that advertise across the country, across the world.

I actually have a gal, I always reference her because there's just a funny situation. She was in rural Tennessee and she did expat tax work, and we were advertising in London and Dubai and Brussels. It's that's not hard. I mean, that's what advertising can do. But a part of the creating buckets for your audience in terms of how this works is not to like, I'll get into this here in a second, not to take your Google business page, which you can do.

You can do this and say, I target the whole United States of America. What happens when you do that is if you look up your business, you're going to be off the Pacific, coast in California in the middle of the ocean, and your box will target Alaska, Hawaii, and the whole kind of continental United States. And that actually is a glitch.

Like you, you don't get either. You won't get local traffic because you haven't said what your local area is, and you won't get national traffic, because that's not how that works. You are not going to compete nationally by using your Google Business page to do that. That's a little kind of in the weeds tactical thing, but I see that all the time.

Great question. Yes. Let this be local. Let this be what it is, and then use the other proper tools like advertising or opening a second location in another market. Let that be your expansion strategy instead of your one office, virtual or otherwise, because you can use Google if you're a virtual office and you can tell them, I don't serve people out of my place of business, I serve this area.

Make your area tighter than you might want it to be. It can be your larger metro. That's fine, that you're a part of. But don't take metros or areas or states you know, that are too big or not related to where you actually are.

Somebody I completely agree with you. But what if somebody says, well, I don't know if there's enough enough, prospects in my area, say to that. Some of our most successful clients are in towns of 20 to 50,000 people. It depends on your services. So that I might be referencing someone that's more tax preparation oriented. And your audience, there's still volume there in ten, 20, 50,000 person towns.

That being said, there's a lot less I have also there's also a lot less competition. And so that's the the push and pull of if I'm in New York City, there's a ton of volume, but there's way more savvy marketing, being done by more firms. There's both more firms and there's also a higher concentration of competency, within marketing, there's kind of a sweet spot, like there's some markets where it's like it's big enough.

It's, you know, 500,000, you know, person town or million or less. And so there's like enough volume and then there's not a ton of competition. But I would even tell you some of the biggest markets in our country, we get people super well ranked because this is the thing you need to really understand, which hopefully will help create some belief that this is possible.

Surprise, surprise, we've already identified. But let me say it another way the tax, accounting and bookkeeping space is not that good. A digital marketing. They don't do a lot with that. And there's a lot of agencies, website building, companies that build template ized boilerplate, kind of not very effective or powerful websites. That's kind of like point number one from us is if you build a powerful website that doesn't just look good, okay, that matters, but that's not the sum total of success.

If you build an engine in the shell of a Corvette, well, that's going to go places. If you just want a shell of a Corvette with no engine, okay, it'll look good on your street. Be some curb appeal for your house. But I that's really common. We deal with a lot of people who are like, oh, like, I think my website looks good.

I like the content in the photos. Why isn't it working? And it's like, it's the thing you don't see. Yeah, building beautiful websites is easier today than it's ever been, but esthetic and website design, all of that is a separate category of marketing from SEO, which stands for Search Engine optimization. And so as it, you know, as you'd expect, you get what you pay for.

So there's a lot of companies that spring up and charge cheap fees for good looking websites that Google never rewards. And there's a reason. So that's a part of why I think people lose belief that this is possible because they've tried this. And it's like it doesn't work. And it's like it does for some people and for your website.

It's specifically about how it's built. And so whether you're in a big city, small city, you should just again leverage the fact that Google sees you locally. And then if it's not enough traffic, if your ideal client is hundreds of miles away in some big city and you're in a rural area, you did the Covid thing, right. You moved to the country, you bought some land, you're doing remote work.

There's actually a lot of people that did that. That's fine. I've got some people that moved to Mexico and live on a beach as an accountant and then want to serve different markets. And guess what? You can advertise wherever you want. So advertising is your tool to get visibility from other markets. And again, that expansion strategy of opening different offices even virtually, there's ways to do that.

It's totally possible, but it's it's not a concern to me. Or does it make me want to neglect your backyard even if it's not where you're really wanting to grow? So that's both. Okay, my backyard isn't full of my ideal client. That's fine. Let's still do these things, because these things also are important for traffic that finds you from anywhere.

Let's build a well-built website for the person that finds you in your market or out of your market. All of that is still going to be relevant. Yeah, that makes sense. And I think a lot of people underestimate how many businesses are in your home town and your local area. There's thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of small businesses, medium sized businesses that need your services, that are just in your back right?

Not to mention the industry trend of more individuals and businesses going to local accountants, CPAs and bookkeepers in a way, from bigger conglomerates. So that's a trend, is what you're saying. All of the complication in the last few years coming out of Covid, all the new regulations which are calming down a little bit, there was a time before Covid where especially in the tax preparation world, everyone's like, golly, it's going to be software, it's going to be X, Y and Z.

It's going to be do your taxes on a postcard. It's going to be and it's always been a threat. And what we found is as the government introduced more complicated regulations, I both had, you know, some real, tangible benefit if you made use of them. But some of those softwares or H&R block types, they just, you know, the general market seemed to say, I'm going to go pay a little bit more to get this done at a higher level.

It seems like the exact opposite has happened for what we might have been thinking this industry was headed towards pre-COVID. It's now that most most of not all, but most of the people I work with are like, hey, I want to grow. But actually my biggest problem is production. There's not enough people to hire to help me actually scalable grow.

That's not everyone, but that's a lot of people. And so what I'm saying is, if you do this stuff well, you don't have to work with everyone that finds you, because honestly, you're going to probably have more leads than you know what to do with. That's a lot of our clients. They have more leads than they know what to do with.

We've had help people create waiting lists, paid waiting lists, people just increasing their fees, trying to find that sweet spot of supply and demand, within their pricing and within the market. And they can't find it. You almost, almost can't charge too much when you are positioned as one of the top people on Google, which is, again, hopefully really compelling.

Less clients, higher fees. That is completely real for a lot of our clients. Absolutely. And there's something to be said for that being being the one that's charging almost the most. First of all, if you have a waiting list or if you have a lot of leads coming in, then because you have a limited supply of your time, you could raise your prices.

And that's a great way to, you know, escape what we call the accountant trap. Being a being, being stuck, being the lowest priced person in your market. Yeah, don't do that. And I'm sure you guys preach that a lot and that's good. Keep banging that drum. Because there's a lot of folks in our space that don't believe that either.

They might not. They may or may not believe that getting leads from Google is viable, and they may or may not also believe, possibly equally strongly, that if they raise their fees, they could stay in business, that people would adjust both existing clients and new ones. And the answer is there is a ceiling. I don't know where it is, and it depends on your services, your practice.

It's not a rule, but most of the time it's like, listen, it's pretty safe. You are bringing a lot more value than what you think you should raise your fees. People will stay with you because again, it's about relationships and marketing can help with that. But that's also a product of if you do good work and you're solving problems for people, you are sitting on a goldmine of trust and and again, rapport.

You don't want to leverage it to like, abuse your clients, but like it's also just the reality that you don't have all the time in the world and you want to build a practice that is not something you're dreading, that it's actually a weight around your ankles that you hate. And some of that's like, well, what if you raised your fees, lost a handful of clients, but the rest of them were paying higher, less clients to work with, higher fees.

And anyone new that comes in, you're not competing to race to the bottom. Yes, you must do that. Or actually doing marketing is going to only exacerbate how much you don't like your firm right now, because now you're going to have more clients to deal with potentially, if you, you know, sell them and hire them on, bring them on.

With less time. So don't do that. Marketing should always be predicated with what do you want to do? You don't have to be, you know, completely niched down. But like, you know what really? Like what's your focus? What's your emphasis? Is it a certain category of business? Is it a certain service sector that I really want to do X, Y and z.

And that's only what I want to do. And then you need to get that out of your mind that you can't charge premium rates. It's not everyone. Some people are doing this well, but there's a lot of people that struggle with that. So I'm glad you brought that up. Yeah. And Christian, this has been very helpful. And I think it's going to be helpful to the audience as well because, you know, again, most accountants, bookkeepers, CPAs and road agents, they're great at their at their craft are excellent.

Right. But to but but a lot of them are not happy with the the business they've created because they've created essentially a job that they own instead of a business that caters to their goals and their vision for their life. And this is a great way to to help craft. That's a Christian, somebody listening, they're saying, okay, I, I get what you're saying.

I do believe that I can, or at least I think I can believe that I could get leads and, and craft a business through marketing. Where do they go? Where can they get your help? Yeah. If you want to have a conversation, it's a free consultation. We'll kind of tell you what we're seeing right now on your website, your Google page, your areas of opportunity for growth.

And certainly if you want to ask us to get help to part of that call to you would go to Tax Pro leads.com tax pro leads.com would be the place where you can tell us a little bit more about your business. Tell us kind of what your problems are, what you want to talk about. And then you'll either talk with me or one of my colleagues, and we'll just kind of sit down and give you a free 30 minute, consultation, just to kind of help you see what we're seeing and help paint a roadmap of of where you could go from there.

But yeah. Tax pro leads.com is where I would send you if you want to keep this conversation going. Perfect Christian, thank you so much. We'll put that in our show notes. Tax Pro leads.com. Thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you Adam I really appreciate being with you and all that you guys are doing for our industry in our space.

Thank you. And to everyone listening or watching. Thank you so much for spending the last few minutes with Christian and myself as we discussed how you can escape the accountants trap. Bye for now.