Generating quality accounting leads tends to be more difficult compared to other niches or fields. Why? There are several good reasons. Accounting is a service that every company needs. This means there is lots of competition, and you are always trying to get leads before other accounting companies.
Many firms compete because many of the same skills and principles in accounting are applicable across all industries. This means it is hard to stand out among your competitors and thus, attract your potential leads to ensure you have a steady influx of prospects.
However, accounting leads don’t have to be a nightmare to generate either. It is possible to work on the right lead generation strategies by compiling them according to what works for your company and setting a roadmap in your marketing plan.
What strategies should you include, and what does it take to get more qualified leads? Here, we will help you by providing details and ensuring you know what strategies you should invest your time and money in. Moreover, expect to have tops about scaling your business.
Creating a firm’s brand identity is the first step to generating leads for an accounting company. There are many reasons why strong branding is important for a company’s success, and we believe it isn’t that necessary to talk about it in detail.
But we do need to mention that perhaps the most important aspect of powerful branding is its ability to build loyalty.
Your leads will increase if your company has a strong logo, message, or visual story, or just all of them.
Remarkable branding is also a great way to attract prospective clients. An accounting firm’s lead generation strategy can be as easy as setting the strategy and then letting the leads come in. This strategy includes strong branding and the things that a targeted customer will remember.
Even if the consumer doesn’t buy your services right away, they will remember your brand and be more likely to recommend you to their family, friends, coworkers, or anyone else who might naturally mention the possibility of looking for accounting services.
Although many components go into creating a successful brand, which makes it to be overwhelming at first, it is a great place for people to begin. A lasting impression will be your best tool.
You Should Be a Specialist
It doesn’t make sense to try to be everything for everyone. Specialization has many powerful benefits, such as being able to generate more leads and being able to close more deals.
Focusing on an industry can help you understand all aspects of their business. This will allow you to have meaningful conversations about how your services can help the industry solve other problems. This is a huge advantage that will result in more leads instead of the opposite, as many believe.
Among specializations we would suggest you consider and help you distinguish your firm include the following:
- Service type specialization.
- Geographical specialization.
- Specialization in a specific role within an organization.
- Specialization in specific types of problems.
Make Your Business Website More Relevant
Websites are designed to generate leads and increase sales. Having a website that is well-designed and works for your brand in this digital age is essential. This means that regardless of who your organization is or what you do, anyone who visits your website on the internet should understand your purpose.
It is essential to have an edge in the accounting industry. Creating leads for accounting firms requires that you understand what your firm has to offer that the rest don’t. This is a difficult task because many accounting firms offer the same services.
To be successful in their competitive industries, many companies offer visitors free content on their sites. There are many benefits to this, but the main point is that offering valuable content for free will build trust between your company and potential leads.
This trust builds a relationship between the company and the customer, which will encourage leads to return to your firm when they have a need for your services.
These contents can be provided in many formats:
- White papers.
- Webinars.
- Videos.
- Download PDF or e-books.
- Blog posts.
It doesn’t matter what it is; it should highlight at least a few key benefits that will help customers choose your company. Tell them specifically how your accounting services will benefit them.
Pay Attention to Your Landing Page
A landing page is one of the best ways you can offer valuable content for free and where leads will usually land regardless of the channel they use to get to your site.
This page is simply the first page customers see after they click on your website. It is a greeting page and, most importantly, a way for customers to enter their information and get deeper into your company’s offerings.
Your landing page might ask for the customer’s name and email address to get a free download explaining why it is beneficial for that customer to work with an accountant or financial advisor. This is a great way to collect email addresses for a newsletter or lead nurturing later.
Your brand will become a trusted authority in the industry over time. This will increase your chances of customers returning to you when they are ready to act.
Investing in Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
A recent study of over 600 accounting firms revealed that SEO was the most effective way to generate online leads. It’s also one of the most cost-effective ways to generate high-quality leads in accounting and ensure your efforts and time don’t go to waste.
It is best to combine it with useful content (also SEO optimized) as well as social media (to share that content). Two main components of SEO are at the top and should always be prioritized:
- On-site Search Engine Optimization: Use keywords and keyword phrases to communicate the content of your site’s contents and their relevance to searchers.
- Off-site Search: Get high-quality and relevant links to your site through articles and engagements outside.
After your website is established, with a landing page that captures the information of your target audience in exchange for valuable content, you can start thinking about how to get people to your site.
The firm’s website must rank highly in search results to attract more accountant leads.
Think about the keywords you enter into Google when you search for a product, service, or just to find out more information on a topic. Next, think about the keywords that your target audience would search for.
Your website should appear on the first page in Google’s search results when a customer searches for these keywords, so you need to do your research properly.
Google provides a beginner’s guide for SEO within its support archives. This can be a great way to start learning about optimizing your website. Here are some key points to consider:
- Make sure your copy is clear and easy to read.
- Make sure you organize the information on your website so that it makes sense.
- Create new content consistently to keep new accounting clients interested and attract new leads.
- Not search engines, but your customers are the ones you write for.
Small businesses are especially affected by local SEO. This means that 80% of potential business for your firm could be lost if it doesn’t rank well in search results and focus on local ones, as accounting is usually done in specific states and cities.
It doesn’t have to be difficult to understand how to improve your website’s SEO rankings. There is so much information available on exactly how to do that. Let’s begin with the two main components of your site that can help improve lead generation for accounting firms and help you have a good start:
- Google My Business for your business to be verified.
This should be your first step if your accounting firm has not been verified with Google My Business. It will be much harder to generate new sales qualified leads if your business listing is not verified and doesn’t appear in Google search results.
Potential customers can connect to your business through Google Search and Maps once Google has verified you. They can also interact with you by looking at photos and relevant promotional materials posted to your listing.
They can then call, message or leave reviews – all from the same source.
Consider how many times you have seen a Google review about a business appearing in the sidebar while searching for something. This is probably second nature, so it makes sense to make sure you can offer this service to your targeted customers when you are trying to generate leads.
- For your local business, create specific content.
When creating search-engine friendly content, it is important to focus not only on broad industry topics but also to produce content specific to your local client base. If your goal is to accounting leads, you should create content that speaks to your local client base.
Is there a local business that has worked with your company before? Is your firm able to provide services that are specific to the needs of local residents?
This will provide them with valuable information before they ever need your services. If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you have a great starting place for local content creation.
Use LinkedIn to Network
LinkedIn is an excellent way to connect with potential clients online and the one you should be using for your accounting firm.
This is the social network for professionals, after all. It’s also a great place for finding leads, with more than 250 million users worldwide.
First, create a compelling personal profile with a great photo and provide enough detailed information about your company.
Once you have all that sorted out, create a company page for the practice. Ask your clients to get in touch with you and start your network. If possible, ask them to recommend your accounting services. These testimonials will appear on your profile for other people to see.
You should also try to get in touch with anyone you have a business relationship with, such as members of your local chambers of commerce group. But avoid contacting people you don’t know. Quality is more important than quantity.
LinkedIn’s ability to keep a current contact list is a huge benefit. You won’t know if someone moves jobs or changes their details until you call and ask.
They will, however, update their LinkedIn profile. If you are connected, you will have the correct information.
Next, you should demonstrate your expertise and knowledge. There are two ways to do this:
1. Add to your profile.
You can update your profile with useful content. You can share information from other sources or create your own.
Just don’t share random content that doesn’t make sense. LinkedIn is filled with mediocre or boring content. Quantity is not the best, just like we mentioned before.
2. Get active in groups.
LinkedIn groups are very powerful because they are filled with people searching for answers. Find groups in areas you are an expert in and make yourself known as a resource for useful information.
Do not try to sell your services. Give detailed advice to people, and they will be more likely to inquire about what you have to offer.
You might be interested in joining local business groups or those that are based on the industries or verticals you want to target.
When you start sharing content and participating in group discussions, you will begin to draw attention to your practice and yourself.
This may generate leads, but subtle updates can help you keep the process moving along.
Create Your Mailing List
Research shows that email is the most effective method of online marketing, which is something most accounting businesses or any company don’t believe. However, email is used among people to send important information and still connect with important services. Hence, it is valuable regardless of how “outdated” it seems.
Start harnessing the enormous power of email by creating a list on a topic that you are an expert in. To do so, your landing page will play another role since you will need those email addresses acquired from their signing and exchange for content.
Now, for this strategy to work when sending your emails, you might want to keep these factors in mind:
- Be specific and aim for quality: 100 people should be super engaged than 1,000 people who just ignore your emails. For it, make sure you are clear in your emails and what you offer to get the right audience interested.
- Create a signup form on your website if necessary: Make sure to display it prominently. There are many mailing lists companies to choose from, but Hubspot, Aweber, and Mailchimp are the most popular.
- Consider putting up a pop-up asking people to signup: Pop-ups aren’t something people love, but they have been proven to work
- Promote your email signup in all of your marketing: Make sure you have a link to signup in everything, from your email signature to LinkedIn profiles. Your list will grow over time.
With this, it is now time to send emails to your list.
It’s actually better to view your list as an audience. These people are real people and not entries in a database. Imagine that you were emailing a client you know well and sending them an email. Your emails will be more effective if you use the same tone and style and are a bit friendly.
Send emails at least once a week. People will forget you if you send fewer emails than this. But don’t abuse the number you can send since some consider it spam or decide to block you in the end.
Use Social Media Marketing
It is hard to overstate the power of social media advertising to attract qualified leads and even the simple fact of having an online presence on any of these platforms. A proof of this? Our previous mention about LinkedIn.
In order to boost your lead generation strategy, combine Facebook Ads with landing pages that are optimized for lead generation. Ads on Facebook are more important than ever, especially with Facebook’s recent algorithm change.
Facebook ads can be used to drive traffic to your website or landing page by running contests.
Instagram ads are a powerful medium as well. You can use images and videos in order to target young entrepreneurs and direct them to your website.
Finally, LinkedIn Sponsored content, in conjunction with LinkedIn Lead Generation Forms, is a quick way to increase lead volume and quality.
Always Ask for Referrals
Referrals are earned when clients receive good service. In return, they will often refer their business to you, but you could also add some incentive like a discount on something similar.
You can get high-quality referrals by identifying your ideal clients and classifying them based on their industry, size, and services such as payroll, tax, bookkeeping, and tax.
Ask for referrals from lawyers, bankers, insurance agents, real estate agents, and other accountants that you know or from satisfied clients you have worked with.
Give your clients business cards to pass on to friends and family. Referral requests should be included in your emails as well to maximize your channels and connections with others.
You can also thank your clients for their business by including them as postscripts.
Pay per Click Is Worth It
PPC ad campaigns are targeted marketing that generates leads. They are often executed through Google AdWords.
Each ad clicked by an advertiser is charged a fee to you by Google. Campaigns focus on keywords that can target specific search queries and generate quality leads, similar to SEO, but this is the paid option.
Tune your bid strategy to target small businesses or individuals accurately and get optimal performance. This will help you increase your competitiveness, decrease cost per acquisition, and maximize ROI.
We know some people consider PPC a waste, but it is quite cost-effective, and you tend to get more results in shorter periods of time.
Answer Questions Using Q/A Platforms
Reddit and Quora are excellent places to get leads because there are always people trying to find answers to their questions, which other companies seem to not care about.
To be considered an expert in your field, you should participate in these discussions and answer as many questions about accounting services as possible.
Reddit, for example, allows users to upvote or downvote your answers. Your goal should be to answer as precisely and accurately as possible. You will be sought out by satisfied viewers and users for any other advice or questions.
Quora is also a useful forum for discussing different topics. In addition, you can add a section to your own website and allow prospects to ask any doubts.
Hire an Accounting Answering Service
Tax season is a busy time. Unknown numbers can be difficult to ignore during busy seasons, and you will have a lot of work to get those leads since there aren’t enough you to deal with calls.
Moreover, this is when strategic partnerships and referrals are most important and active, which means you truly get sales-qualified leads during this season.
To avoid losing deals, hire an answering service if you are unable or unwilling to answer calls. Virtual receptionists can answer the phones, take messages to your office, and direct calls so that you don’t miss a lead call.
Combine Your Efforts
Combining all these strategies and techniques into one continuous campaign will greatly impact lead quality and quantity, also as lead capture and lead scoring.
Each of these tips can improve the quality of your leads but combining them creates a sustainable advantage. This distinguishes your firm from others and sends a strong message to potential clients.
It communicates clearly that you are more valuable than the other “me too” companies that flood the market.
Also, the effective lead generation strategy you will build with all these together will help you avoid having to hire lead generation services and a company in the future.
The Local Lead Generation Process for Your Accounting Business
All right! So, everything is about building properties and generating leads. But how does the process actually take place? Are there other steps I need to know?
The steps I mention below are what students from our local lead generation program follow to generate leads for businesses like yourself. So I’ll help you see what we do. And how if you join our program, you can simply generate leads for your own business (unless you want to start a side hustle and build a laptop lifestyle business).
Essentially, our lead generation can be divided into four steps:
The first is prospecting. You need to take the time to do market research on a niche (industry) and determine how many phone-driven businesses are there.
Keep in mind that this is local research as you need to know how many companies need leads. For example, you may search for “plumbing services Youngstown OH.”
You will find dozens or even hundreds of businesses trying to get themselves in front of the customers by ranking on Map Listings, organic results, and even Ad.
The second step, building. When you find a niche (plumbing, tree services, a software company, real estate…), you will need to start building your digital properties. You don’t need to be an expert in HTML or coding. It can be easy with the right tools.
The third step is now taking time to rank your lead gen website. With the site done, you need to work on SEO strategies and start dominating those Google search results. If you’re new to SEO, it stands for Search Engine Optimization.
To keep it simple, it consists of the entire process of growing a company’s visibility on search engines like Google and generating organic traffic. And remember this, local lead generation is part of the strategies.
Moving on to step four, once you rank the site, you will start getting your ROI and profits. You only need to rent it out to a local business interested in the leads the site generates. You can offer a couple of free leads to their move on with the actual pay per lead.
To review steps 1-4 above, I described it to a normal student who is building a lead gen business to help local service providers generate more calls. But replace the student with you as the business owner. And replace sending the leads to a business to simply siphoning the leads to your personal business.
By the way, fun fact, about 20% of our students in our local lead gen program are actually business owners who went through the program. And they use the skillsets we teach to generate leads for their own business.
An Example of Lead Generation: Home Advisor
You must be thinking, “if lead generation sounds so good so far, how come I haven’t seen any company?” That’s the thing; there are many out there. You just don’t know they are dedicated to it.
HomeAdvisor is one of the best examples you can find on the Internet as it is a top lead generation company that has spent millions building its brand but also earned even more zeros for this same reason.
They started small as everyone else but invested in building their brand awareness to make people who are looking for home services go to their website and find what they need. They are over 75% of people’s first choice when they need those services.
If you don’t get HomeAdvisor that much or need a refresh, users need to submit their information to request a service and get a professional or expert who can provide it.
HomeAdvisor’s job is to share your information, which makes you a lead, with local companies so they can contact you and offer the service you’re requesting. For sharing this lead information, HomeAdvisor gets paid by the companies. This happens for every single lead they send to multiple businesses.
Business owners who don’t have marketing skills or don’t even know how to have any online presence will always rely on those pages to list their services. They will save time and effort, but companies like HomeAdvisor can make them spend lots of money as leads aren’t exclusive (one lead is sent to multiple companies after all).
Using Facebook Ads aka Paid Ad Platforms: Do They Generate Leads?
They DO generate leads. If not, no one would use them.
However, you need to remember two facts:
- Paid ads or platforms can be expensive.
- They don’t generate “natural” leads.
Whenever someone sees or clicks in one of those ads, over 80% of them did it by accident or are trying to close/report it.
Why? Because they aren’t looking for those services. At least not at the moment.
What those ads do instead is interrupt their time on the platforms. Users aren’t there to find companies or businesses unless they are searching for a specific company’s user, and for that, there’s a search bar. This is why it is hard to convert them to actual customers who will show interest in the companies’ services. Also, you’re limited by a budget.
When using lead generation, everything is organic. You aren’t forcing others to pay attention to your business but rather being there when they need you. This is why Google’s organic traffic will always beat paid ads, and the reason companies continue investing in it, which is a lot cheaper as well.
What Is Local SEO?
Don’t worry… I didn’t get it at first either. Following the short explanation, local SEO focuses on scaling businesses’ visibility on search engines. However, this is only for those who serve their communities face-to-face.
What does this mean?
Experts and professionals like painters, plumbers, and dentists (but not only them) offer their services to their local customers. Why? Because they can’t deliver them unless they are located in the same area of their customers.
To make sure those businesses get more leads, you need to rank them locally by claiming the business listing on Google to place them on Map Listings. Local SEO also involves online reviews, citation management, and how you manage your entire online presence in the local area.
If you are going to bet on lead gen, you need to adapt yourself to today’s world: The Internet.
Keep in mind that although traditional channels and methods like billboards, warm calls, and pamphlets still work, they aren’t part of your tools. Whenever someone needs a service, they go to Google and search for it.
“Dentist in Miami” or “plumbing services in Orlando,” etc. And you can keep coming up with services or professionals people need and look for. Thus, you need to make sure you’re using Google to get the companies in front of their clients.
Users will always click on the first search results (those near the top), and many of them will be either Ad links (people paid to place their websites there), Map Listing, and then you get websites. Almost all of them are your goal and where you should always aim to place yourself.
Can My Accounting Business Utilize a Local Lead Generation Strategy?
If you want customers, you better know you need it. Following the previous explanation, lead gen is all about placing businesses in front of their customers, choosing them over their competitors.
Put it simply – it’s all about closing deals and having clients for those companies to make money. The main difference with the usual methods companies use for this is how lead generation approaches different channels to get them in the right place of the market to get customers.
Those channels are all focused on the Internet as most people are searching for products but also services across the net. The issue is that the Internet is way too broad, and businesses don’t know how to place themselves. They usually try, but they get one common result: losing money and time.
How Powerful Are Organic Accounting Leads from Google?
For companies looking for customers, it’s everything. For you? Pretty much the same. When you build a business with digital properties, you get to make thousands of dollars a month.
This isn’t a “get started today and get rich tomorrow” thing, but it is HIGHLY scalable, and ROI + positive results are guaranteed. Learning a fairly decent and very needed set of skills to create your digital properties and start ranking them on Google is required.
I have invested in several online businesses over the years, and if there’s something uncertain, whether you will get your ROI or not, even more than the actual profit.
However, this business moved my earnings from five figures a year to a month in ONLY passive income while sitting comfortably at home.
On my laptop. Anywhere. Anytime.
You can look at one of the first sites I built back in 2016, and it continues making me over $1.000+ every month. The best part is that I don’t need to touch it or the rest I’ve built over the years, just like this digital property.
What Makes Lead Generation SO Alluring?
Here it goes: you can work from home.
The main issue with regular business opportunities is how much you need to invest in staff, equipment, or rent to have a place to sell your products or offer your services.
We all know the hassles of traditional businesses that involve regular expenses, which are extremely high. Can you afford it? I don’t think so, and even if you can, is it worth it? Now, it isn’t only about the money. You also need to put in a lot of work, and it isn’t only during the first couple of months or years. Usually, it is as long as you continue running it.
You can save yourself those headaches and bone-breaking tasks and expenses with lead gen since it is more about generating leads with digital channels—mainly websites.
Websites can be VERY cheap to build, and with many tools online, you get to do it in a couple of hours instead of days. Any virtual or digital business is scalable and won’t need constant maintenance.
So, let’s summarize this:
- You save money in regular expenses with traditional and most online businesses as what you need is yourself and digital properties (websites).
- You can bet on passive income.
- There’s no need to hire more people to get started.
- You can generate leads in multiple industries, which allows you to work on any niche you want.
How Can I Get Started in the Local Lead Generation Program?
Anyone can start and learn. That’s the beauty of this business model. I knew nothing about SEO, Map Listing, and everything I’ve mentioned so far. It is all about learning the skills, gaining experience, and deciding to take the step.
Remember that this business model will never get old as business owners are always looking for leads. They need to do business and scale their companies. Why not do the same while helping others and still making money?
You can start with this local lead generation course highly recommended for anyone wanting to grow in the business. It is a close training that will take you through each step and make sure you are able to get your ROI, profits and take control of your life.
You will be added to an incredible lead generation family ready to help you 24/7 when asking questions on the group. Anyone is welcome who’s willing to put in the work. Click here to watch the lead gen webinar.