9 out of 10 Accounting Firms Let Visitors Leave Their Site

1. Is Your Website Focusing Too Much on Branding and Not Enough on Lead Generation?

I’m sitting here and writing this blog post in a state of disbelief…. and that’s not just because just outside my office window I happened to notice there’s a herd of about 8 deer happily munching away on the zillions of dollars of landscaping we put in over the years.

Nope. My disbelief comes from a statistic I read in CPA Trendline’s 2012 Survey Report citing their finding that 70% of CPA are going to increase their resource allocation toward lead generation. Now that’s the kind of statistic that really warms the cockles of an inbound marketer’s heart!

So using the 10 bellwether CPA firms that I look at to see marketing trends, I expected to see firms moving away from just using their website as an online brochure to turning their site into a critical part of a lead generation machine. The key: were these firms posting offers for content on their site (i.e. a whitepaper or an eBook, etc.), using a landing page for capturing the lead?

What Happened After They Invested Thousands and Thousands if $$ Into Their Website?

After all, or so I thought, these firms had invested thousands and thousands of dollar into their websites, and for the most part, they were very pretty. (Some, not so pretty.)

I could tell that a few had invested in SEO. Just about every single one had some kind of content on their site, like archived e-newsletters. And most were seeing thousands of unique visitors come to their site each month.

But…

9 out of 10 did not have a landing page tied to an offer for content! They spent all of that time, energy, resources and thought leadership, and then let that visitor leak right off of their site with getting a lead.

What a shame.

Re-engineer Your Website for Lead Generation

All of that investment these firms made into their website should be producing ROI. I would bet one herd of 8 deer, delivered right to your backyard that your firm’s managing partner would love to see more leads from the website, and less anecdote on how effective it is as a branding tool.

Today more than ever before, having the tools, techniques and technology for converting website visitors into leads and sales must play a critical role in accounting firm marketing efforts.

Outbound lead generation like cold-calling, snail mailing, traditional advertising, traditional mailers, and telemarketing just isn’t as effective in an age of mobile, social media, and optimized websites.

It’s likely that your website is much too focused on branding, and not enough on lead generation. Here are 6 ways to re-engineer your website from online brochure to a lead generation dynamo:

1. Optimize the site (SEO) to get found first
2. Install an inbound marketing program and inbound marketing infrastructure
3. Put thought leadership at the center of your lead generation campaigns and create offers (whitepapers, webinars, etc.)based on the hot topics, issues and pains of your prospects 
4. Write and publish clever and compelling landing pages to motivate the site visitor to fill out a form to redeem the offer
5. Place call to action buttons linked to landing pages on strategically relevant pages on the site
6. Install analytic software for lead acquisition and tracking - always measure results

Consider this: if 90% of firms aren’t doing onsite lead generation, doesn’t that represent a fantastic opportunity for your firm? Isn’t it time for your website to really payoff the investment you’ve made?

Time for Damien the Wonder Dog to Earn a Treat

It’s time for Damien to earn his keep by chasing the deer away from the gourmet landscaping feast they’ve been enjoying at our expense. I’ll open up the patio door, he’ll launch like a rocket, make some noise, and off the herd will run.

I’m pretty sure that he has absolutely no interest in actually catching a deer, but he sure does enjoy messing with their heads. It’s a pretty good ROI – he gets a cookie, we save a bush.