Accountants - Acquire New Clients in 2020

Want More Clients in 2020? Listen Up.

The beginning of a new year is a great time to reflect on the previous 12 months and how best to prepare for the next.

Is your New Year Resolution to get in shape? Get your business in shape, that is.

Follow this blog post and you will probably get many new clients in 2020!

Where Are You Ranking & What Does It Mean?

Ever wonder how to ensure your website is one of the first that people find when searching for your service?

Google looks at well over 200 different factors when determining how well it will “rank” you in the search engine.

Speaking of ranking, here’s a brake-down of how many searchers will click through to your website, depending on where Google ranks you.

33% of all searchers will only click on businesses in the Snack Pack

Snack Pack

If you’ve ever searched on Google (aka “googled”) a business or brand name, you already know what the Snack Pack is. It’s essentially a coveted spot in the search engine results for 3 businesses. They are shown after the paid Ads on the top and before all the regular (aka “organic”) listings below.

Here’s what it looks like:

In other words, if you are not found in these 3 spots for your city name + service or vise versa (ie. tax accountant Nashville), you are losing ~33% of the local searchers to your competition.

ProTip: when performing a Google search, do so from a clean browser, such as in Incognito Mode.

Giveaway: If you would like to know for sure what your ranking is for any search term, send me a message and I’ll conduct it for you.

Organic Listings

The next 10 listings below the “Snack Pack” are called the “organic” listings or regular listings.

The first 3 of these account for 75% of all searchers only clicking on those businesses’ websites.

Here’s a break-down of all 10 of those organic listings via CTR (click through rate). For example, if you are ranking in the #1 organic spot, over 31% of all searchers will click through to your website alone. Imagine if you ranked here and in the Snack Pack?!

Moving up even 1 position in your ranking increases your Click Through Rate / CTR by 31% on average!

The average website “conversion rate” is 4%. Conversion = new prospect becomes your client, calls or emails you, fills out your form to contact you, etc.

Using our example search term of “tax accountant Nashville”, there are 340 locals each month searching.

If after some digital marketing work, you move up even 1 spot on Google (with that average CTR improvement) and the 4% conversion rate…

You now have an extra 13 – 14 clients!

Now, forget that average CTR. Here are the real CTR improvements, from moving up just 1 spot, depending on where you were.

How To Move Up In The World

Remember those 200+ ranking factors that Google looks at? Here are two of the top factors. If you do nothing else, focus on these.

Google My Business

You’re probably thinking… why do I need to bother with SEO (search engine optimization) or digital marketing if I get my clients through word or mouth or referrals?

When someone refers a prospect to you, it’s almost always just 1 prospect.

When there are ~800 locals searching for tax accountants in a city, you are in the top 3 organic spots and earned a spot in the Snack Pack, that’s 260 prospects finding you and 11 most likely becoming clients.

Okay, if you already have a Google My Business (GMB) page, simply sign-in.

Next, click on Info on the left pane.

Start going through and entering your business info here. (ie. categories, address, hours, phone number, website URL, attributes, description, founding date etc)

Business Category – Go ahead and “Google” your service + city name (ie. tax accountant Nashville). Which category do those 3 businesses in the Snack Pack use? In this example it is: certified public accountant. You are allowed to use 10 categories in total. Be sure to include as many applicable categories as you can. Currently there are 4000 to select from!

Attributes – Select any of these that are applicable. (ie. free wifi, washroom etc)

Products / Services – Fill this section out as complete as possible. Pricing, photos, URLs to service pages etc.

Photos – Google loves to see fresh content on your GMB page. An easy way is to upload new photos once or twice a week. Be sure to keyword optimize the photos file names and edit them include your firm’s address.

Messaging – Download the Google My Business app for your phone, then enable the Messaging feature. This will allow your customers to text you without them knowing your phone number.

Posts – Aim to create 1 Google Post per week and use the appropriate CTA (call to action). Make this attractive and engaging since anyone who Googles your business name will see it.

Reviews

When deciding which restaurant to try out, what do you do? That’s right. You hop onto Google and read the reviews to narrow down that list of eateries.

Did someone recommend a restaurant or hear about it in passing? You will do the same thing, Google the restaurant name and read their reviews.

For virtually every other local service (ie. tax / accounting), they will do the same.

After Googling a certain accountant in Nashville, this appears.

Note: The GMB page on the right shows their 38 reviews (click to read them), their hours, address, photos etc.

Search has changed. In 2019, the way people searched has changed. The first thing they do is look at your GMB page and read your reviews before deciding whether or not to visit your website or call you.

If you have a poor average star rating (less than 4 stars), 50% of searchers will not even consider your services. If your rating is less than 3 stars, 85% will go to your competitor.

<— This increases to 92% of millenials trusting online reviews as much as recommendations from friends and family.

Millenials are the single largest generation today.

95% of Millenials always read reviews of a local business before considering them.

The single greatest driver of clicks to your website is your review rating.

There are literally hundreds of factors which come into play and countless marketing tactics. The most powerful of them all are reviews.

Consider utilizing a Review Management platform to help you increase the amount of and quality of reviews. It’s the best investment for your business nowadays.

More tactics and specific review generation techniques to come!