Tax season is just beginning, which means tax prep businesses like yours need to start advertising to potential and former clients! But promoting a tax prep business can be tricky, especially since you have to compete with big corporations like TurboTax.
Let’s break down how you can promote your tax prep business in 2022 using a variety of marketing-savvy methods, including tax flyers, PPC ads and more.
Identify your target audience
The first thing you should do is identify your target audience for your upcoming marketing efforts. In a nutshell, your target audience is the people most likely to purchase your product or services. These are the individuals you should spend most of your time marketing to. In contrast, you should not market very heavily toward people who aren’t in your target audience.
You can identify your target audience by:
- Using online tools like Google Analytics
- Finding the demographic information of the people who already purchased your tax prep services, such as their age range, sex, interests, professions, and more
- Creating a “consumer avatar” by pooling the averages of these data points
Why identify your target audience? There are many benefits to doing this, including:
- You can tailor your marketing materials, like your ads or social media posts, to the interests and language of these individuals. As a result, your ads will be more successful and emotionally connecting than more generic, broad ads
- You can discover when you should advertise for the most success
- You’ll learn which marketing channels will be most successful for your target audience. For example, if your target audience is comprised of primarily older people, social media marketing will be less important compared with your target audience is comprised of primarily younger people
If your tax prep business has been in operation for a few years, take a look at your previous customers or clients and figure out their shared attributes. This information is a great place for you to start building up a target audience profile.
Get online and optimize your site
Once you figure out your target audience, build a website if you haven’t already and optimize it for Google search engine results. A website for your tax prep business serves several important purposes:
- Makes your business easily searchable on Google
- Offers more ways for potential clients to contact you
- Serves as a place to showcase testimonials and other authoritative or reputation boosting information
Even if you have a brick-and-mortar store, a website for your business is just as important if you want to advertise effectively and get as many clients as possible for this tax season. Plus, lots of people do their taxes online these days, so having a digital storefront will help you grab those clients as well.
These days, you can use apps like Wix, Squarespace, or WordPress to make a stellar business site from scratch. Many of these website builder apps come with widgets to further customize your store and its functionality, too.
A well-optimized site will include:
- Good keywords scattered throughout website copy like blog posts or product pages
- A smooth and intuitive layout so it’s easy to navigate through
- No broken links that lead visitors to know where
If necessary, hire a web designer and/or graphic designer to create a compelling website that draws people to your business and that brings them to your contact page. Your contact page should be especially well-designed so that potential clients can easily send you a request form or contact you for a consultation.
PPC ads
Now it’s time to start marketing. One of the best ways to promote your tax prep business in 2022 is to use PPC or pay-per-click ads on Google. Pay-per-click ads, as their name suggests, only cost you money each time someone clicks on them.
In brief, you create your ads, then “bid” on certain high-volume keywords related to your tax prep business. Examples include “tax prep business near me”, “help with taxes”, and so on. Depending on how high you bid, your PPC ads will appear at the top of the search engine results for potential clients.
Do a lot of keyword research and figure out what keywords you wish to bid on. Then, each time someone clicks on your ad, you’ll have to pay for the traffic to your website. When used properly, and if you use keywords that relate to your local customers/area, PPC ads can be quite effective and even budget-friendly.
A good PPC ad for the keywords “tax prep help 2022” might look like this:
- “Tax season is here, so get the refund you deserve with [BUSINESS NAME] today! 20% off if you use ‘tax pro’ code at checkout!”
Use social media marketing
Next, be sure to create a few social media profiles and to market heavily on those platforms. These include Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and more.
For example, you should:
- Post regular updates, ads, and announcements on Facebook. Your business’s Facebook wall will be a great place to interact with customers
- Post special offers and announcements on Twitter. You might also occasionally post Twitter polls to gauge your audience’s opinions
- Post ads and organic, authentic video content on Instagram. A quick “1-2-3 steps” guide on how to prep for taxes is a great example of the kinds of bite-sized value you can offer to customers on this platform
Why advertise on social media? Social media marketing allows you to reach many young people, who are frequently active on social media platforms. But your social media profiles also serve as valuable places where your potential clients and customers can contact you for quick questions.
By engaging with prospective and current clients on social media, you’ll show that your business is responsive, that you care about each of your clients, and indicate that you are available for quick tax prep requests. All of this can do wonders for building up the reputation of your brand and improving your connection to your current clients.
Plus, you can place real ads on social media platforms. These ads are just like the banner or pop-up ads you might see across the Internet, except they appear on social media. When someone clicks on one of those ads, they can be redirected to your online site and your contact page.
Make tax season flyers
Not all advertising takes place online, of course. It might sound counterintuitive, but advertising in the real world with tax preparation flyers or posters advertising your business can do wonders for improving your traffic to your retail or online locations alike.
Tax flyers should:
- Include the basic information about your business
- Include contact information
- Be attractive and have an aesthetically pleasing design and layout
- Not the overly crowded or confusing
Once you’ve customized the perfect tax flyers template for your business, you can make lots of copies and start putting them up all around town. This advertising method is especially useful if your business primarily gets clients from people in your local area.
Put up tax prep posters and flyers in areas like coffee shops, on lampposts or traffic light poles, and on the bulletin boards at community centers. You can place the tax prep flyers in areas that relate to your target audience, as well.
For instance, if you primarily handle tax prep for senior citizens, consider putting up flyers at retirement homes or at bingo halls.
Leverage email marketing
Back to digital marketing! It’s a good idea to promote your tax prep business using email marketing platforms and tools. Email marketing involves sending automated emails to both current and prospective clients for the upcoming tax season.
Email marketing is cost-effective, easy to do, and very easy to set up automatically. However, be sure that you only send emails to people who are likely to respond. If you send too many emails in too short a timeframe or to too many people, potential customers might start to compare your tax prep business to a spam organization.
You can get emails for your email marketing by:
- Taking the prior emails of your current or former clients from previous tax seasons
- Asking for emails from those who visit your site or who request information from your tax for business (such as on your contact page)
- Asking for emails in person using business cards
Once you build up a solid email list, use email marketing to:
- Advertise your tax prep business in the weeks and months leading up to the tax deadline
- Remind current or former clients that the tax deadline is approaching and they should contact your business for tax prep assistance!
- Offer special deals or discounts to former or current clients or to new clients who clicked on one of your PPC ads
Consider tax postcards
Lastly, tax postcards can be another effective way to market your tax prep business. As a form of direct mail marketing, your return on investment will usually be between 18% to 20%.
You can gather addresses using the same methods described above, such as by:
- Collecting the addresses of previous clients
- Asking for addresses on your website’s contact form
- Offering discounts or coupons for those who provide their physical addresses
- And more
Like tax prep flyers, your business postcards should be well-designed, aesthetically attractive, and not too complex or crowded with information or graphics. A postcard can be a great way to get the attention of someone who usually filters out all unknown emails automatically. Most people at least glance through the mail they receive, and someone looking for a tax prep business might pull your postcard out of the pile!
Ready to start promotions?
All in all, there are lots of ways to promote your tax or business successfully in 2022 and beyond. For the best results, you may wish to combine multiple of these methods and advertise across several channels simultaneously. By advertising as often and flexibly as possible, you’ll potentially reach many more new clients and have a great business season.
Senior editor at PosterMyWall.
