Is owning your own business living up to your expectations? Like many accountants, you may have understood the demand for accountants better than the process of carving out your piece of the market. You’re great with numbers, but what about social media marketing, advertising, web design, and business management? With online tax preparation, you can’t even count on geographical bias driving customers to your door.

So, how do you get new customers? How do you make your current client base loyal to you? And how do you handle growth in your book of business moving forward?

You can use several strategies to stand out among your competitors and get more clients. Here are some ideas you might implement in 2024:

Referral Programs

Your number one advertising tool is a happy customer. Word of mouth provides you with hot leads (people looking for your services). You’re much more likely to sell your services to someone who has heard how great you are and is calling your office. These are golden prospects, and your business would do well to cultivate this precious resource. Here are some ways to do this:

• Keep your existing book of business happy by exceeding their expectations. Under-promise and over-deliver. The trick is to make the under-promise as good as your competitors’ initial offer. Then, when you over-deliver, your clients understand how much better you are than your competition.
• Offer incentives to people who make referrals. The incentive depends on your client base. If you work with lower-middle-class households, that’s great. You have a huge potential pool of clients to choose from. A gas card may be incentive enough to increase your referral rates. If, on the other hand, your clients are business owners, you could offer extra services they might find valuable as a thank-you for the referral.
• Make your first meeting a memorable one. You have one chance to make a first impression. Give them a great experience they’ll remember, and they’ll come back to you next year.

Social Media Marketing

Don’t be intimidated by social media marketing. Yes, there is a lot of competition. Yes, it’s a lot to take in. Remember, you don’t have to learn it all at once. Social media marketing can pay off big with the right pitch and product, but most often, it’s a slow but steady increase in customers. These tips will help you boost that steady increase:

• Have an appealing website. Often, your website is the first impression you make on a client. Make sure your site reflects your professionalism, of course. You also want it to reflect your personality, what sets you apart from your competitors. Are you casual with your clients to set them at ease? Do your clients prefer luxury and exclusivity? Provide content tailored to your clients.
• Choose one social media site where your perfect client will likely hang out. Do a little research on the site. The platform works with an algorithm that puts relevant content in front of people whose search patterns indicate they’re interested. However, the algorithm also ranks content based on their favorite criteria: Short posts, long posts, videos, written media, or infographics.
  Find out what the site wants and get really good at that one thing. Refrain from scattering your approach over multiple sites; you have to tailor your content to each one, which can be overwhelming and time-consuming.

Consider Hiring a Professional or Organization

If you have all you can do servicing your clients, that’s reasonable. Consider hiring someone to handle the business’s social media and website content for organic growth. Don’t expect it to pay for itself immediately. It can take a year or more to rise in the ranks, so you’re immediately visible when people use certain search key terms. Once you’ve built up credibility with the search engines, this avenue of advertising can really pay off, but you need to take the long view.

Loyalty Incentives

Once you get them through the door, you want all of your clients to remain loyal to your office. Keeping an existing client is much easier than getting new ones through advertising. Here are some ways to maintain loyalty:

• Experience: Every experience with your office should be exceptional. Clients need to feel like they’re more than just a number with you. Treat them like friends rather than clients. Offer them water or coffee. Keep notes in your file about things you’ve discussed and refer to them at your next meeting (kids’ names, client financial goals, etc.) And use professional tax software that offers a streamlined tax prep process and intuitive interface for smoother appointments.
• Options: If your office offers options that make tax time easier for your client, you’ll gain a loyal customer. Bank products for tax professionals integrated into your tax prep software, for example, give customers flexible payment options and early access to their money.

Though advertising may seem complicated, there are many things you can do to increase your customer traffic. Just take one project at a time, be patient with yourself on the learning curve, and hire extra help for part or all of any processes that take too much time away from your clients.

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