Dominating the Online Marketing Game for Lead Generation
| |About 15 years ago, it was very easy to dominate the internet for lead generation. In fact, it was easy to obtain top placement within Google, Yahoo, Ask and bing.
As more accountants eventually caught on 5-10 years ago, the bar was raised and it became more challenging to stay ahead of the curve. That's when the general public became aware of search engine optimization, pay per click advertising and social media marketing. The ROI was still very attractive but you had to spend more time and money to acquire the same number of leads.
Today, it is harder and harder for a single, generalist website to be placed towards the top of the search engine results pages for all of the services provided in your accounting practice. And if you operate in multiple geographic markets, it is even harder to be towards the top because your message to the search engines is more complex and watered down. Or said another way, it becomes hard to trick the search engine algorithms.
As more accounting firms have integrated blogs, social media, pay per click advertising, retargeting advertising and reputation management, it becomes more competitive to dominate the online lead generation game.
So what is the solution?
While there is no single solution, many savvy accounting firms have deployed a multiple website strategy to obtain dominate search engine placement for a limited set of keywords. That's right, one website will focus on your main website with general search terms (e.g., Houston CPA Firm) and another website will be focused on your niche (e.g., law firm accounting, transportation accounting, real estate accounting, etc.).
Secondarily, the multiple website approach enables you to tailor your message to the prospect and talk out of both sides of your mouth to create that aha moment for the prospect. In other words, some small business owners are searching by location and others are searching for a type of accountant (e.g., bookkeeper, enrolled agent, CPA Firm) and others are looking for a specialist (e.g., cpa for doctors, non-profit accounting for churches, QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor, etc.). In the example to the left, the website has the example same branding but it totally dedicated to church accounting.
To illustrate my point, here is an example of an Indianapolis CPA Firm using four websites to accelerate their lead generation from the internet and put their best foot forward in each case.
Generalist website - Indianapolis CPA Firm - This is the main website for location based (downtown Indianapolis CPA) keyword searches in Google, Bing and Yahoo.
Church CPA Accounting Firm - This website seeks to attract churches, clergy and non-profits who want a specifialist.
Outsourced CFO Controllership - This website targets businesses that would like to outsourced accounting and controller related services.
Restaurant Accounting - This website targets restaurants, bars, catering and food service providers.
From a marketers perspective, each website is relatively inexpensive and pulls in far more business than the annual cost. In fact, each website should make you money. Therefore, running a business with just one website is like playing golf with just one golf club. Realistically, who plays golf with just one golf club. Nobody.
The solution is simple, you need to identify the segments of your accounting practice that you want to grow and then develop a website to focused against that industry or type of service.