Stop Renting! Invest in Website Ownership to Build Your Tax Resolution Brand

Last Updated: November 28, 2016

For tax resolution professionals looking to reach more customers online, the logical step is to sign up with a web marketer. It makes perfect sense: You get your own website, directory listings, and general online promotion. It’s everything you need to advertise your tax help services to all the right people.
However, there’s something you may not realize. With many online marketing companies, “your own website” is not what it sounds like. It’s actually a website owned by the marketer, not you. This sets you up for years of renting—essentially borrowing—the website that’s the cornerstone of your Internet visibility. So if that website ever goes away, you can wave goodbye to your web presence.
There’s a better way. With Prospect Genius’s CoreSite™ product, as soon as you purchase your website, you own it. This ownership gives you control, enabling you to invest in your brand long term.

Why is having control of your website so important? And how does it help you down the road? Read on to find out.

Owning vs. Renting

Just like with real estate, there are major benefits to owning versus renting. What they all boil down to, though, is what you end up with at the end of the day. When you rent a house for a year, you pay 12 monthly payments to keep a roof over your head. That’s all you get. At the end of the year, you have nothing to show for the rent you’ve paid, except for maybe not dying of exposure. When you buy a house and pay monthly mortgage payments, you still get a roof over your head. But you also secure the additional benefit of equity in your home. When the mortgage is paid off, you own the property; whereas if you were paying rent for all that time, you’d still have zero equity—and zero ownership—of the home.
With a website owned by your marketing company, you’re renting, paying month in and month out to keep your site up. As soon as you stop paying, they can take your website down, sell it to a competitor, or take any number of other steps that functionally dismantle your entire web presence.
When you own your website, it’s yours to keep. You can pay Prospect Genius to promote it. You can work with another online advertising company for search engine optimization or other web visibility-enhancing strategies. It’s up to you. You own your website, so you make the choice!

Investing in Your Brand

For tax resolution companies, your reputation is everything. Taxpayers who are looking for tax problem help simply won’t work with a tax advisor who isn’t highly regarded and known for honest expertise. That makes sense, as the wrong tax advice can lead a taxpayer to owe thousands more in penalties and interest. However, it also means you have to do everything you can to build and maintain your brand’s reputation.
Not sure how your reputation ties into owning your own website? It’s simple. When you own your website, you’re investing in your brand. You’re promoting your tax help company using a both a business name and a URL you can rely on to be around down the road. You have control over these things because you own your site. With the traditional renting model, you risk losing control of that URL and having to start over from scratch on building your brand name and recognition.
So when it comes to marketing your tax resolution company online, who do you want in control of your website—and thus your entire web presence? If you want to invest in your company’s future, then invest in your brand. Make sure you own your website.
For more information on the benefits of owning your website, or to learn more about Prospect Genius’s CoreSite product, feel free to contact us at your convenience!

Keep Everyone in the Loop About Your Online Marketing Team

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

It’s amazing how much damage one, uninformed person can do.
Whether it’s unnecessarily delaying important work, canceling your online marketing services, or hiring a second SEO company because they weren’t aware you had already hired one, the fallout can be serious.

Why They Must Know About Your Online Marketing Team

When you’re showing a new employee the ropes, don’t leave anything out. That includes your online marketing team.
Whether you’ve hired a new office manager or anyone else who might be answering your company’s phone, make sure they’re aware you work with Prospect Genius. And that goes for any other marketing companies or service providers you may have hired.
If new team members don’t know about us, they may assume we’re just another agency calling and annoying your business—which is a perfectly understandable assumption, given how often you receive these types of phone calls.
But we’ve seen firsthand the kind of damage that can happen when someone on your team isn’t informed about your partnership with us.

Cautionary Tale #1

For example, we recently had a client who became too busy with incoming work and asked his wife to help out with administrative duties.
One day, she was looking over the business’s budget and financial statements and noticed payments to Prospect Genius. Not realizing who we were or what kind of value we provided to our client, she decided to cancel our program to save money. Unfortunately, as a result, the business’s web presence quickly plummeted and they stopped receiving the 200+ calls per month they had become used to. Several months later, when the client discovered what had happened, he signed back up with us. But a lot of time, headache, and business could have been saved if he had let his wife know about Prospect Genius from the get-go.

Cautionary Tale #2

Another time, we had a client who hired a new receptionist to handle the influx of customer calls.
One day, we called with a routine question about our client’s campaign. The receptionist was confused because she didn’t know anything about Prospect Genius. Assuming we were just another advertising agency trying to sell to her employer, she dodged our question and ended the conversation by hanging up on us. Again, this reaction is not unusual or unexpected when you receive a sales call—but this was already a paying client. We just needed to clear up a minor issue with their existing campaign. But because we weren’t able to get the information we needed, we couldn’t move forward with our work.

Prospect Genius Will Do the Educating

In most cases, your online marketing team will be happy to send you informational materials to pass along to your new employees.
However, Prospect Genius takes it a step further. Not only will we send a packet of information about our team, but we’ll even get on the phone with your new receptionist or office manager and bring them 100% up to speed. We’ll provide them with a thorough orientation of exactly what we do, and we can even show them specific data about your campaign’s performance.
This way, you know that you’re giving out complete, accurate information about your marketing and that everyone is on the same page.

Give Us a Call—We Can Help!

By keeping all of your team members in the loop and fully informed about your online marketing team, you’ll prevent a lot of aggravation in the short term and a lot of potentially lost business in the long run.
Call or e-mail us today to request an informational pamphlet or personal orientation for your new team member!

Social Media and Your Business

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

You’ve probably heard that social media is the newest, best way to market your business. Social media like Google+, Twitter, and Facebook can all be powerful tools for promoting your company, but the simple truth is that most businesses are going about it all wrong!
Many small business owners forget about the “social” part in social media. It’s important to look at FB and Twitter as a way to interact with your customers, current and prospective, not a way to drown them in offers and sales pitches. Communication is a two-way street, and social media is just another form of communication. So don’t only talk to your customers: ask them for opinions, respond to questions, and provide them with information they are interested in.
To put it simply, social media is just the tech age’s solution for going back to the way things used to be done. Back in the day, if you were looking for an electrician, you just went and asked the neighbors for a recommendation. Social media is changing the way this type of interaction happens, but the content is staying essentially the same. The only thing that’s changing is that instead of asking that neighbor face-to-face, now folks go online and ask a group of “neighbors” on the web instead of in their backyard. So, you see, it’s not as different as it may seem.

Easy Rules for Successful Social Media Campaigns

Participate! Social media isn’t about just creating a Twitter account or Facebook page and then being done. Keep in mind that your customers are constantly asking, “What’s in it for me?” So if you aren’t interacting with them or giving them helpful info, they’re not going to keep on following your brand/company. Remember, if the goal of social media is to be an online “backyard” for chatting with “neighbors,” you need to be out there “talking” through posts! Over time, this enables you to develop a reputation as a knowledgeable and reputable person.
Put Your Expertise to Work. Share what you know about your industry. You are an expert! So if you work as a plumber, share tips on unclogging a toilet or saving on water bills; if you’re an appliance repairman, offer hints on basic maintenance; etc. Drawing on your knowledge to provide info is a great way to build loyalty and brand trust.
Stop Selling and Start Sharing! SELL SELL SELL is not a good approach for your social media sites. Think about it this way: If you had a friend who was always trying to sell you this or that, how long would you stay friends? If you’re always promoting one offer/product or another on your social media sites, you’re just going to come across as a pushy salesman. Instead, consider your social media sites as a place to create brand loyalty and educate your customers. If you do want to put out the news about a sale or product, just make sure that’s not the only content you’re pushing on your social media sites. And remember, social marketing is a long-term strategy, not a magic wand, so don’t get discouraged if you don’t see results after just a few months.
Respond to Unhappy Customers. Make sure you’re responding to negative feedback both promptly and positively. The unhappy customer will appreciate that their complaint has been recognized, but more importantly, you’ll be showing other people that their concerns won’t be ignored. And, even though it may be hard, make sure that you’re responding in a way that shows you understand where the customer is coming from.
Don’t give in to wanting to argue each point with the person who submitted the complaint. Instead, respond positively: When you’re dealing with customer satisfaction issues, about 75% of the point is to show OTHER people who may read your response that you truly care and will strive to resolve the client’s concern (and make sure the situation is not repeated). Handling customer complaints online is NOT about being right: It’s about stopping the complaint from costing you future business prospects!
Patience Is a Virtue. Developing a successful social media campaign is never going to happen overnight. It takes time and dedication. Make sure you’re logging in every day to respond to customers in a prompt manner. When you’re in the process of building your following, try putting up a post a couple of times a week. Once your fan base has grown and you have a feel for what content they appreciate most, feel free to start posting more frequently.
Promote It! Your Facebook/Twitter/Google+ page isn’t going to promote itself. If you’re not giving it a hand, it’s not going to be found. Put a link on your business card or website, add a sign in your store, etc.

How to Get Started

Here at PG, we actually create and optimize FB, Google+, and Twitter pages for all of our clients. But that’s just the start! Our goal is to get you found on those platforms, but to really maximize these resources, YOU need to take the reins. Outsourcing can backfire majorly, so invest a little time in your social media marketing and reap the rewards!

The Myth of Speedy Ranking

Last Updated: February 15, 2024

At Prospect Genius, we work with hundreds of local business owners, and we’re often surprised to learn about the misconceptions and misunderstandings they have about online advertising. One of the most common we come across is the idea that Internet marketing should be fast. Because we hear about this false impression all the time, we thought it might be helpful to clear up some of the confusion!
Speedy Ranking Is a Myth!
With PPC (pay per click) online advertising it is possible to buy your way to the top quickly. However, unless you’re doing a PPC campaign, it simply isn’t realistic to expect that ANY online marketing company can get your business’s website into the number one slot on Google overnight. That’s because one of major factors Google—and all the other search engines—use when determining the value/relevancy of a website is how long it’s been on the web (with relevant content). This policy helps the search engines avoid useless SPAM sites (thousands of which pop up every day and soon disappear) and focus on quality sites instead. Unfortunately, this also means that it takes time for new, quality sites to achieve high rankings.
Real World Parallels
Opening a new store and starting a new website or SEO campaign have a lot in common. When you’re opening a brick-and-mortar enterprise, you first need to get the location set up and then you need to get the word out to people about your new shop. Just like you need to make a little noise with a grand opening and/or advertising campaign to spread the word when you open a new store, you need to launch your website with a little fanfare so Google (and potential customers) know about it. You need to bring attention to yourself so the search engines will hear about your site and deem it worthy of inclusion in their results. And just like you can’t pull off the launch of a new store overnight, the online equivalent—starting a new website or SEO program—can’t work that fast either.
That’s because every day thousands of new sites burst onto the scene and millions of sites alter their content. Google then has to visit each and every one of these sites to find out what’s new and relevant. Even though Google has almost unimaginable resources dedicated to this, it still takes time for them to locate each and every site out there.

Campaign Hopping Spells Doom
If you’re one of those business owners who sets a 90-day limit for results when it comes to SEO and/or lead generation, you might actually be sabotaging your chances for a strong online presence! That’s because while arbitrary 90-day windows may work fine when testing out a new Yellow Pages or print ad, they can be a major impediment to the success of an Internet marketing program. The difference is that while media like Yellow Pages and print ads already have an established distribution channel that they simply include you in, with advertising online the distribution channel has to be developed along with the ad. The benefits of this system are myriad, but it does take some time to develop.
Ultimately, this means that by giving up on an SEO campaign before a proper test can be completed, you’re probably wasting lots of time and money. So unless a company tells you that three months is long enough to execute their lead generation campaign (in which case, you need to start asking some serious questions), you need to allow plenty of time for the company to implement their strategy (usually between three and six months). By sticking with an SEO company for a longer period of time, you enable them to make the minor adjustments required to ensure your lead generation campaign gets off the ground running.
The Naked Truth
In short, this means if you’re hopping from one SEO company to another every 90 days, your lack of results probably has more to do with your impatience than any inherent shortcomings in their lead generation programs.
That’s because when you leave after 90 days, each company only has enough time to execute its standard tactics that work for most businesses. If your company has a unique location, product, business model, or other distinctive features that don’t shoehorn neatly into their boilerplate, you’re depriving the SEO company of the time they need to make the necessary adjustments to get you the best results. By the end of the year, you’ve probably spent more money on four different lead generation companies than you would have by sticking with just one company for 6-12 months and seeing if they could get you the results you deserve.
But remember, it never pays off to stay with an advertising company that is unresponsive, waves away your concerns, or simply doesn’t produce the desired outcomes over time. If you’ve been with an SEO company for more than 90 days, and you aren’t seeing results, it’s time to start asking questions. If they aren’t offering to make changes to your site, distribution channels, or other parts of your campaign, that’s probably not a good sign. Statements like, “Just keep waiting,” that aren’t supported by information like feedback about changes, new directions, or other strategies to boost your performance are also warning signs. And if you hear, “It worked for everyone else,” that’s definitely a red flag. You need to stay with your lead generation company long enough for them to implement a productive SEO campaign, but if they’re not working to make changes or giving you feedback, that’s the time to jump ship and find a more reputable company.
Before working with any online advertising company, we strongly advise you to do a simple Google search. A little research can help you avoid getting started with a bad egg in the first place and help make sure that you aren’t wasting your hard-earned money on ineffective or fraudulent companies. Just Google the name of the business along with the word “scam” or “complaints” and see what you get. The results invariably will be somewhat skewed due to the fact that most happy customers don’t take time to comment on the Internet, but a fast search can help you get a sense of how a company performs for their customers and whether they’re worth your time. Just be sure that you give them enough of your time to really get the SEO campaign rolling before you decide whether or not they’re a company you want to keep working with into the future!

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