Generating Leads For Your Cpa Practice - 10 Better Strategies

CPAs come in all sizes and stripes - with some homing in on individual tax returns, others on business leadership such as CFO services, and others still on specialized fields such as medical billing.

One reality ties them all together: no matter how broad-based or niche their firm, they need to obtain clients, or they won't have a business. This hurts not simply you, but your entire community. It doesn't matter how proficient or service-minded an accountant is - without enough new clients to bring in cash and keep the doors open, his business will cease to be.

So, if you're an accountant looking to get established in the field, how do you get leads?

The best way is with good accountant websites.

Today, if you are not online, you will simply not be able to generate enough leads or sell potential clients on the worth of your services.

This won't change in the future, either. With thousands of students studying accounting, coupled with one of the most challenging of economies, finding clients is becoming a very competitive endeavor. Having a website will remain critical.

Here are 10 tips for how to use accounting websites to find accounting clients:

1. Make sure your website looks professional. Technology has change the web. Creating a site is no longer a rarefied craft. Plenty of options exist for you to not only get a web address, but also pick a professional design that's targeted exclusively to the clients you want to attract.

2. It's best to use a contractor to set up your website for you. Your talents lie with numbers, not design. A professional designer can effortlessly make your website look and run just right.

The key to designing accountant websites is to keep visitors on your site once they are there. To that end, your site should be both lovely to look at and chock full of helpful info.

3. Make the best possible use of social media platforms for marketing accountant websites. You can increase your exposure by simply creating profiles on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

The king of social media right now is Facebook. To get started on this popular social sharing platform, simply create a personal profile and then create a "fan" page for your business. Ask your friends and current clients to "like" your page and you're on your way. You can use these sites to send out advertisements about business deals and reminders about tax season.

4. To get more visitors to your site, you need to post plenty of links to other sites (as strange as that sounds). The best way to do this is to add links to your social media profiles. When folks see your website and approve of it, it'll be easy for them to click on your social media link. This will help you get even more traffic. A "like me on Facebook" or "follow me on Twitter" link will expose you to even more potential clients.

5. Your clients who have websites can use a plug - and adding a link to their site gives you a benefit, too (because the more links on your site, the better). When folks see your client list, and maybe even click through to your clients' websites, it acts as that all-important "social proof" that helps you appear trustworthy. This benefits your clients as well because inbound links from reputable accountant websites give them a boost in the search engines.

6. Useful websites for generating leads are online merchant sites such as eBay and Craigslist. These, and other similar sites, have extremely high traffic rates and are designed with classified sections that advertise services.

7. Don't forget about ads in the newspaper that include your web address, which still work well for local clients. Getting people to click on links and visit accountant websites is a lot easier than getting them to drive across town to visit or even just pick up the phone and call. Take a look at your local papers. Chances are they have an online edition that uses banner ads as well as a services or marketplace section. In addition, seek out papers and local publications in surrounding towns that aren't too far for a new client to travel from.

8. Hike it up a notch; look for websites that advertise specifically for accountants. Accountant-Finder.com, for example, is just one of many sites that provide potential clients with a starting place to find you.

9. Don't turn up your nose at lead-gen websites such as adknowledge.com, either. There are plenty out there and they may bring in new business. Use them the right way - as part of your overall marketing efforts - and you could see some nice results.

10. Lastly, make it a point to find the veterans in your field. Ask how they find clients, and then mimic them. There's no point in reinventing the wheel. Find online resources - such as Websites4accountants.com - that can teach you some tricks on how to obtain new clients.

So-called experts who assure you it's a snap to acquire clients and build a successful CPA practice are, sadly, obscuring the truth. However, when you use a well-made accounting website as the starting point, your marketing efforts can be very successful - and well worth the effort.