CPA Accountant

Truth be told, you don’t have to be an award winning copywriter to create effective marketing materials for your CPA practice. I found out a number of years back that even the “pros” use templates to create ads and sales letters that get results.

Before I share my template, it is important to first understand some of the objections that may be going on in the mind of the prospect whenever they see your advertising. You will want to make sure the marketing piece you create overcomes these objections.

These objections could include:

• You don’t understand my problem.
• How do I know you are qualified?
• I don’t believe you.
• I don’t need it right now.
• It won’t work for me.
• What happens if I don’t like it?
• I can’t afford it.

Here is my 12-point template to follow to create effective material pieces:

1) Get attention

If the headline doesn’t catch the prospect’s attention, the rest of the letter will not be read. Here’s an example of a good headline: “Some Small Business Owners Pay A Lot More Tax Than Others; Will You Pay Too Much In 2009?”

2) Identify the problem

After you have gotten the reader’s attention, you need to gain their interest by spelling out their problem. The reader should say to themselves “yeah, that’s exactly how I feel” when he or she reads your sales letter. This technique in the marketing world is called “problem – agitate.”

3) Provide the solution

In this section, you will introduce yourself and your services. You position yourself as the solution to their problem.

4) Present your credentials

This is the time and opportunity to toot your own horn. A few things you may consider to put here are the length of time you have been in this area of expertise, as well as important awards or recognition.

For myself, I talk about my credentials, including the fact that I am author of a book and a list of magazines I have appeared in.

5) Show the benefits

Help your prospects understand what they will gain from your services.

6) Give social proof

Provide testimonials from real clients as evidence that your claims are true.

7) Make your offer

Have a specific offer-more specific than your general services.

8) Give a guarantee

Guarantees help overcome the objection “What if it doesn’t work?”

9) Inject scarcity

Make sure the reader understands this offer isn’t going to be available forever. This helps to encourage them to take action now.

10) Call to action

Tell prospects clearly and specifically what to do in order to take you up on your offer.

11) Give a warning

What will the prospects miss out on if they don’t take action now?

12) Close with a reminder

Sure, twelve steps are a little more work than slapping down your name, address, and phone number in an image ad. But if you are serious about growing your CPA practice, it is important to implement effective CPA marketing techniques.

From hereon, whenever you want to create effective CPA firm marketing materials, follow the 12-point template that I have just shared with you.

Testimonials are one of my favorite low-cost but high-impact tools to grow my CPA practice. Getting testimonials from happy clients is an important thing to do and creates a powerful tool for marketing your accounting firm. They create believability, credibility, and a sense of security for your prospects. They help to break down the natural barriers and distrust that skeptical prospects may have towards you or your CPA practice at the onset. If you watch any infomercial, you will see that they are loaded with testimonials. That’s because they work.

Testimonials are a must have. If you don’t have clients in your accounting practice, meaning you are just starting out, then get them from freebie clients who you’ve helped.

A really important thing about testimonials is that they can be used by potential clients as references if you set it up that way. All of my client testimonials are set up in one easy-to-read document and each testimonial has the person’s name, their company name and the town they are located in. They have to look like and be real people for believability.

There are 2 types of testimonials:

• the warm fuzzy ones
• the ones with specifics

Let me give you an example of each.

EXAMPLES:

The warm and fuzzy one:

”I opened my practice almost two years ago. In the process I knew I needed a good accountant on my side. I had interviewed two others before I met Salim at an ANJC meeting. We set up a meeting the following week at his office. After just a few minutes in his office, I already knew The Omar Group would be the right firm for us. Salim and his team have a lot of experience not only with small businesses, but also specifically with chiropractors. It has been a great experience for me so far. Anytime I have a question (and I have many questions), or concerns they are always there for me. The Omar Group has been filing all my business and personal taxes ever since I opened, and as I grow, they are still able to meet all my needs. Salim has been able to give us great business advise even on topics such as marketing, advertising, and referrals. I am grateful for all they have done for myself and my practice. I highly recommend their services to chiropractors in NJ.”

(Name of doctor)
(Name of business), (Town and State)

A specific one:

”Your Quarterly QuickBooks Health check services by your QuickBooks Doctors are excellent because its helps me keep my finances on track. The recent catch of a mistake my bank made put back $3,107 in my pocket. That alone paid off my fees to you. The financial and tax advice you’ve provided to me as my CPA during the financial stewardship meetings have already proved to be beneficial in saving me money and time.”

(Name of owner)
(Name of business), (Town and State)

It’s not bad to have a few “warm fuzzies,” but notice how much more convincing the specific one is. The second client’s mention of a concrete achievement my firm made for them is more likely to convince prospects that they will receive a similar tangible benefit.

So you want to be on the lookout for great opportunities to receive highly specific testimonials. When you receive a thank-you from the client (in whatever form), seize the opportunity to ask whether you can quote them in your testimonial list.

You can and should also systematically ask satisfied clients for their feedback in writing, using questions that will elicit both how they feel about your practice in general and what specific positive encounters they’ve had with your firm. (You can also ask for specific negative encounters if you want to use the opportunity to enhance your services, but if you do this, be sure to ask about negatives after you ask about positives.)

Testimonials are one of my favorite low-cost but high impact CPA firm marketing tools. They are a must have because they break down the natural barrier and distrust that skeptical prospects may have towards you or your accounting practice at the onset.

The Zero Friction Marketing CPA Blueprint domain was registered in May of 2009. The domain appears to be privately registered. This course came about because the owner accidentely stumbled on a method that allowed him to generate huge amounts of cash with any CPA Network anytime he wanted to. When the owners of one of the CPA Networks saw his account balance was over 100k, he decided to freeze his account.

He did this because he’s never witnessed anyone earn this much cash in such a short period of time so he got suspicious. It seemed like the natural thing do do under the circumstances. The person who froze the owner of this courses account owns a popular CPA Network too, so there seems to be credibility here.

What the Zero Friction Marketing system is going to teach you is how to leverage the CPA Networks to earn extra cash and lots of it. The owner of this course Saj P. says that just about all the courses out there available today will only give you bits and pieces of the entire picture, but won’t give you enough meat and potatoes necessary to really get to the next level. And they do this because they are afraid of competition.

Before Zero Friction Marketing was released, Saj P. was a big Internet Loser that barely scraped by working out of his friends basement. He mentioned that during years of being a Zombie Marketer, he managed to pick up lot of scraps of good information. And eventually they would fit together as a whole. But the people who helped him do this weren’t part of the “Guru Machine” you see everyday.

Zero Friction Marketing was created for action takers only. And even the owner admits that many will buy his course and not make anything with it. Not because they can’t but because so many these days treat Internet Marketing as a social scene. He feels this new system will start an entire new Internet Marketing Trend.

When I first started reviewing Zero Friction Marketing, my original thought was that this course had to do with driving massive amounts of Pay Per Click Traffic via Google Adsense to CPA offers. I was wrong. In fact, this course doesn’t have anything at all to do with Google Adsense, a Website, a Product, a Customer Mailing List nor do you need a massive traffic budget to get going.

When I got to the Zero Friction Marketing website, I noticed about 8 solid video testimonials. Plus a few of the written testimonials were from people I’ve never heard of before, and I write reviews for a living. So I thought that was cool. He also offered a video logging into one of his CPA accounts and showing massive amounts of cash. I can’t really say if this course is for you or not.

But if you’re in a position where you are sick of your financial situation and are ready to take massive action this course can give you the knowledge and the tools to get you on the right track. Personally I only like to review courses that I think have a good chance of helping someone, and I think this is one of them. There’s thousands of courses out there these days and who has time to review junk?