Your Accounting Website- Promote Your Company with Google Places

There's an unfortunate but commonly held misunderstanding about the proper way to sell with your accounting website over the internet. It's absolutely conventional to want to make cash swiftly and concentrate on hasty conversions. The reality is, however, that selling on the internet is a long-term scheme. There are a selection of shortcuts. I'm going to teach you one in a just a second. In the long run, however, the really high-quality clients, that will one day become the keystone of your business, are not going to be fast conversions.

Very few business owners are in the market for a new a new accounting practice at any given time. As a rule people are happy with their accountants. They already have a bond of trust, even friendship. Avoid the hard sell. High pressure tactics will likely alienate your prospects.

What's the best strategy, then, for luring new clients into the firm?

Well, the truth is that despite all the new technologies the best strategy for finding new clients hasn't really changed much.

Good old fashioned networking is now and probably always will be the key to your firm's success. The more networking you do the more high-quality clients you'll attract to your practice. Your website, if it was properly designed, is a powerful long term networking tool.

There's a downside to networking, of course. It's time consuming and labor intensive. You'll often need to work prospects for months or years before they finally sign with you.

This article is not intended to offer a substitute for networking. I can't stress this enough. There are, however, other ways to lure new clients to your firm by properly dangling you accounting website in front of your prospects.

If you know where to look and how to attract their attention, there are some fast conversions to be had out there.

The web gives you a huge advantage. For the first time small business owners have an opportunity to really take advantage of what industrialists call the "economics of scale". Economics of scale dictates that no matter how happy most business owners are with their accountants, if you can contact enough of them you'll eventually find one that's ready to find a new one. Even if 99% of business owners are satisfied with their accountants, if you contact a thousand of them with a soft sell you'll likely land 10 new clients. The Internet is fast becoming a kind of community center not unlike the an old fashioned town well.

The old cliche of "Location, Location, Location" is alive and well, but your geological location isn't nearly as pertinent as your location in the search engines. Take time to make sure your accounting website is appropriately represented in Google and Bing.

Kenny Marshall is a consultant and former Officer of CPA Site Solutions, one of the United States' largest website companies oriented solely to accounting website design.