My Traffic Box – The Most Powerful Traffic Generator!

CPAs come in a wide variety of styles – with some homing in on tax work, others on outsourced CFO services, and still others on niche fields such as the equine industry.

No matter their specialty, one thing is true everywhere: just as with all businesses that offer services, CPAs need clients. It doesn’t matter how talented or client-centered a CPA is – without an adequate number of paying clients to bring in cash and keep the place running, his business will cease to be.

So, if you’re an accountant looking to get established in the field, how do you get leads?

It may sound prosaic, but there’s an important truth to running an accounting practice these days. Whether you like it or not effective accountant websites are the key to any successful accounting business.

Today, if you are not online, you will simply not be able to generate enough leads or sell potential clients on the worth of your services.

This won’t change in the future, either. With thousands of students studying accounting, coupled with one of the most challenging of economies, finding clients is becoming a very competitive endeavor. Having a website will remain critical.

Here are 10 tips for how to use accounting websites to find accounting clients:

I. Make sure your website looks professional. These days, it is extremely easy to create a website. There are several choices out there that allow you to obtain a domain name (your URL or web address), as well as easy-to-use software programs that will allow you to tailor your website to target the clients you want.

II. It’s best to use a contractor to set up your website for you. Your talents lie with numbers, not design. A professional designer can effortlessly make your website look and run just right.

The key to designing accountant websites is to keep visitors on your site once they are there. Make it attractive and informative.

III. Don’t overlook the importance of social media sites for getting the word out. You can increase your exposure by simply creating profiles on social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn.

Facebook is the most important of these. Start there. Make a personal profile first, and then mock up a simple “fan” page for your accounting firm. Get your friends to “like” your page, and soon their friends and their friends’ friends will be seeing your business’s name and a link to it.

IV. To get more visitors to your site, you need to post plenty of links to other sites (as strange as that sounds). The best way to do this is to add links to your social media profiles. If someone visits your site and likes what they see, this will be an easy way for them to help you spread the word. A “like me on Facebook” or “follow me on Twitter” link will expose you to even more potential clients.

V. Post links to the websites of your notable clients. People judge you by the clients that have hired you, so brag a little about who trusts your work.

VI. Take advantage of merchant websites that can help you get leads – such as eBay and Craigslist. These, and other similar sites, have extremely high traffic rates and are designed with classified sections that advertise services.

VII. Don’t forget about ads in the newspaper that include your web address, which still work well for local clients. Getting people to click on links and visit accountant websites is a lot easier than getting them to drive accross town to visit or even just pick up the phone and call. Check your local newspapers. You might be able to also get in their online edition, where you could either be listed in their “marketplace” or be featured in a banner ad. Where possible try to concentrate your ads in business and financial sections and include a tag line that will entice business owners to call. Look into websites for publications in surrounding towns that are a reasonable driving distance for potential clients.

VIII. Hike it up a notch; look for websites that advertise specifically for accountants. Accountant-Finder.com, for example, is just one of many sites that provide potential clients with a starting place to find you.

IX. Don’t turn up your nose at lead-gen websites such as adknowledge.com, either. There are plenty out there and they may bring in new business. Use them the right way – as part of your overall marketing efforts – and you could see some nice results.

Do your homework here and ensure that you investigate the site before you join it. Some have fees involved and some are fly-by-night operations. If you want quality clients, use a quality lead generation site.

X. Finally, seek out and listen to experts in your field and take the time to learn from their mistakes and successes. Find online resources – such as Websites4accountants.com – that can teach you some tricks on how to obtain new clients.

Acquiring prospects for your accounting firm is not easy. But when you use a well-made accounting website as the starting point, it can be mightily successful – and more than worth the effort.