In this week’s podcast, Eric is joined by Charles Corsello and Manny Vetti from TaxCure.com to discuss simple steps to attract more potential clients and key factors to consider when launching a digital marketing campaign.
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Listen to the podcast here
Digital Marketing: How To Find Tax Rep Clients By Tax Rep Network
We have some very special guests. Joining me are Manny Vetti and Charles Corsello. If you don’t know them, you should. These guys are the brains behind TaxCure.com, which is the lead directory site for IRS reps, and people who want to do tax resolution. They’re also the gurus in terms of digital marketing and generating leads. They’ve done this for some of the national companies. They do this now for folks like you and me, but their directory is by far the best developed. I signed up a week ago, and I’ve already got a lead out of it. It’s unbelievable. Guys, thanks for taking the time to sit here and do this. It’s great to have you on.
Thanks for having us.
I remember when Roger Nemeth from Tax Help Software said to me, “You got to meet Charlie and Manny.” I’m like, “Are they IRS people? Who are Charlie and Manny?” He started describing them. “Are those the guys who did all the leads for the big national?” He said, “Yes.”He has mentioned you before. He said, “They have a directory site. You were talking about starting a directory? I’m going to save you the trouble. You need to partner.” That makes sense. So far, it’s been terrific. We’ve rolled it out to our members. We’re now going to let the audience know. Why don’t you give the audience some background? For those who don’t know you, how did you get into this?
How Digital Marketing Transformed Tax Resolution Firms
Around 2007, I was at Google and I decided to leave and start a marketing agency. Manny and I wanted to build a business together. We started to do marketing in different financial services, and we did well at tax resolution. We decided to focus on that. We helped a couple of large national firms get to millions in sales through a variety of different marketing methods, from SEO, Google Ads, paid ads, and different paid ads, depending on the network. We ended up focusing our efforts on trying to bring in clients at a reasonable price.
How did you end up with the national company? You go and you start your own, you start doing this. Did they find you? Did you reach out to them and approach them and say, “We can create traffic for you?”
Before I had worked for Google, I worked for this lead network. This lead network, I was doing business development for, and I saw some of the categories and types of leads they were selling. Anyway, we started to sell leads into that network. One of the buyers found out who went directly to us and said, “Your leads are the best. We would like a direct relationship.” I don’t know how they found us, how they figured it out, maybe talking to some of the leads, maybe the branding that we had on it.
They reached out to us, and we decided to work with them directly. From there, it was history. We were one of the top performers. We outperformed all the other marketing partners, and we helped drive their company to millions in sales. They had a change of ownership. At a certain point, they were acquired by private equity. They found out and reached out to us at that time. That’s how it all started.
To add onto that, we were good at the marketing. We’re like, “Why don’t we start up our own tax resolution company?” We did. We grew it to several million in sales, and we figured we were great at marketing. We could do the SEO and generate the leads. We did grow it to several million in sales, and we became a national tax resolution company. We did learn a lot of things along the way that led us to TaxCure because we realized we hired sales reps. We had the whole system in place. We thought we could do better because we could generate the leads. We’re good at it.
We ended up over-promising and under-delivering still because we were hiring the sales reps, and they wanted to get the deal. The thing is we realized a lot of people want to go direct to the pro, and we figured, what’s best for the taxpayer? They go directly to the pro, know somebody local, know somebody they trust, rather than trying to upsell them. “This person’s located in California. We’re located in New York. We help with all problems. We got attorneys that have experience with California.” Were they the best attorney?
We took on a lot of clients where there were way better professionals. We went back to our roots, and we conceptualized the TaxCure idea. We’re like, “This is what people want.” We figured, let’s build it. We don’t know how we’re going to make money on it, but this is what’s needed in the market. It’s good for the tax pros, and it’s good for the taxpayer because they’re getting somebody local, and the tax pro is getting people that need their unique skills based upon the agencies they help with and their location.
To interject here, I think that we noticed from the data that certain people wanted local. You could speculate as to why they wanted local. Sometimes it could be because of some of the bad apples in the industry, as we know. The J.K. Harris, the tax masters, some of these firms that got into big trouble took on more than they could chew. We noticed that there were high-pressure sales reps at most of these different firms. We speculate that there were fears out there as to why they wanted to work locally. They were maybe afraid to get ripped off, or maybe they had a state issue. They felt more comfortable, which we strongly believe in.
It was also very hard to find somebody local. If you type in “Tax attorney,” you’re not getting somebody with that experience. You type in “CPA near me,” do they do resolution? Probably not.
Just because you’re a CPA or attorney doesn’t mean you understand tax resolution or have experience. We noticed a lot of the major firms tried to hire or outsource work to local professionals, and CPAs in certain cities. When someone said to them, “We would like someone locally,” they had someone available. The problem with that model was that the professionals, or the contractors, weren’t getting compensated very well. It wasn’t a sustainable model in my mind, but it was still a need out there.
Just because you are a CPA or attorney does not mean you understand tax resolution. Share on X
We’re serving that need now because when someone goes to TaxCure and they reach out to a professional, they know who they’re connecting with. They know the background of that professional. They know their experience, where they went to school, and their credentials. It’s providing more transparency in an industry that has had some deceptive marketing over the years. We wanted to provide transparency, allow taxpayers to make better decisions, and let them select who they want to work with based on that.
I agree a thousand percent because what I’ll get from our members is, “Eric, what do you do about the national companies?” Honestly, I don’t care. I couldn’t care less. They’re not competition. Here’s why. My big approach to marketing has been blogging, partly because it forces me to think about the subject. For me, it’s simple. As an attorney, to knock out 500 words is nothing. They’re like mini websites. What I find is people will come in, and they’ll have printed out my blog entries. They’ll show up with my blog entries. There’s a distinct picture on my blog versus anything else.
One, I know that’s where the work is coming from. Two, at the end of the day, they like the idea that they can come to see me, drink my coffee, and breathe my air versus the disembodied voice out in Oakland, Colorado, or wherever they are. I have counseled the members, though you need to market and do pay-per-click and everything, you’re competing with those people. I get clients from all over. The truth is my audience is near New Haven, Connecticut. I’m focusing on my local market, and they can’t compete with me.
Folks, at the end of the day, even if they don’t physically come in, they want to know you’re a human being, you’re down on State Street or wherever, and they can go see you before they start giving a credit card to some third party. As you said, some of the ones that imploded, whether they were scams like TaxMasters or J.K. Harris. I think J.K. Harris’ problem is they grew so quickly that they couldn’t manage their inventory. I think John Harris knew his stuff. That’s almost like an MBA program case study. You can go bankrupt by growing too quickly.
I think it’s similar to Roni Deutsch.
Roni Deutsch’s problem is she franchised. With the franchise, she discovered that the franchisees only wanted the money. They could care less about quality. She had this franchise model. I don’t know if you saw her last W-2 from her corporation or last year was $10 million. The franchise fees were all flowing up. The franchisees didn’t give a crap about whether it was a good offer or a bad offer. They just wanted people’s money.
She had these hundred scammers running around, paying her franchise fees, and she couldn’t control it. I don’t know her, but my understanding is she lost control of the professional at the end because it was a franchise model. They drove the thing into the ground, and I don’t know if she was criminally prosecuted, but they threatened her with it.
I’m not sure. I wanted to make a point, you talked about meeting face-to-face. People want to drink your coffee or see you. That also gets into some of the digital marketing methods. Social media can be effective in that regard. In the sense that if you’re doing videos, people see and know who you are, they get to know you. Again, a lot of people prefer to work locally, like you’ve mentioned. I think we’re addressing that point and offering the transparency that’s been lacking in the market for a long period of time.
Let’s talk about digital marketing because, in all honesty, it is not something I’ve done. You guys have spoken with our group. I couldn’t help the accountants that wanted to do that, it’s not in my wheelhouse. I was a blogging, go-public-speak. Way back then, we would write articles, which I do not recommend, by the way. It’s a lot of work for how many people to read the article? I don’t know. If you can, walk us through, what does digital marketing look like? I suppose for anybody but in this space. You hear about Google Ads and Facebook Ads. What is involved with that? What should people be considering? If I’m listening to this, I’m like, “You know what, Charlie and Manny, this sounds awesome.”
I think from your overall marketing strategy, you want to have a multi-pronged approach. From the digital marketing side, you want to look at things such as Google Business Profile, for example. It is free. Google has localized a lot more results. You want to make sure that your profile is up to date, and filled out completely. I did a webinar on this, but it can be an effective method to bring in clients, and that’s different from Google.com. Google Business Profile is going to show you that local pack at the top when you’re doing a search, for example, tax attorney, you’ll see it. The three companies show up. There’s no cost for that, but you want to have it filled out. You want to have it complete.
How Reviews Impact Tax Business Growth
Getting reviews is very important in the digital age. Reviews on multiple platforms are also extremely important, which also impacts your Google Business Profile ranking. We also have reviews on TaxCure as well that show the stars and the results. Getting those reviews and that reinforcement, I can’t even tell you. When I see the leads come in on TaxCure, I’ll see somebody up on top in a certain hot area, and then there’s somebody under them or 2 or 3 spots down. The people with the reviews always get the deals, get the leads. It drives stuff. It has a big impact, especially on ranking in Google Business Profile, and it does make a big impact overall. That’s another thing to invest in locally.
The multi-pronged approach, I would say, definitely Google Business Profile. Google.com is more for your website. You want to have a website. You talked about putting out a blog post, putting out unique, good content related to your industry is going to help you get traffic and clients over time. It takes a lot longer to build that content and build that site, but it’s part of that multi-pronged approach. I would tell you TaxCure is another spoke on the wheel that you would want to focus on because we do get some traffic, and it can be another way for you to get a few clients.
You could do advertising, and we have a lot of experience with Google Ads, Microsoft Advertising, or Bing. Facebook, we’ve done a lot. Facebook, over the years, could be a good platform for remarketing, meaning someone who has visited your website before, and you’re retargeting them, showing them ads after they’ve visited your website. I would tell you that it’s difficult if they haven’t visited, to target them. We’ve had challenges over the years with that. If you’re a CPA and you’re doing different services, and tax resolution isn’t your only thing, then Facebook could be effective. The quality of the leads generally isn’t going to be as good as what we see from Bing and Google Ads.
Since Google has localized a lot of their results, make sure your Google Business profile is up-to-date and filled out completely. Share on X
Do you guys know NiceJob? If not, I got to put you in touch with them, NiceJob.com. I got put on to them, and I worked out a deal with them. For instance, I took a bunch of my clients and loaded them up, and they got a message, “Would you review Eric Green, Greenness Box, Eric Green Tax Rep, whichever company it is?” A whole bunch of people say, “I’ll give you that review.” They walk out of the office and go get their iced coffee, it’s out of sight, out of mind.
We went from 75 five-star reviews to 150 in three hours. If they don’t do anything, a week later, they get a reminder. It’s like a drip campaign. Kevin, who you’ve met, and who is one of my heads of marketing for Tax Rep, literally texts me, “How did we get 55 five-star reviews in three days?” I said, “Let me tell you about NiceJob.” I got to introduce you guys. The people on TaxCure should hook up with them. It’s pretty cheap. It’s an amazing service.
A lot of people need to work that into their routine. Getting reviews and digital marketing go hand in hand. You can’t just say, “I’m going to do it one month,” and then you don’t do it. It needs to be a consistent process. Also, Google doesn’t like to see you get 50 reviews in one month and then none after that. It hurts you. You need to show them consistency over time.
You want to show consistency, and you’re going to build that into your business process. Also, it’s a way to catch anything that maybe you’re doing wrong or something you can improve in your operation.
Getting negative reviews is not even a terrible thing. How you respond and show that you’re a real person is so important. People love going to the negative reviews and reading them. If they see you have a good response and you made it right, you might have closed that deal from that negative review as well.
When we finally set up our Google Business listing, which I hadn’t done, why would I? Anyway, so I do that, I get 3 or 5-star reviews. I get a 1-star with no comment, and it’s somebody we don’t know. We run through our database and everything. I’m now talking to NiceJob, and I said, “What do you do?” He said, “You have to respond.” Anyway, we’re at 4.1. That’s our rating because of this thing. I responded, “We’re sorry you’ve had an issue. We have no record of you dealing with Tax Rep, being a member, or doing anything with us. Please contact us so we can fix whatever it is.”
A week or two later, we went to five stars. It’s like Google reviewed it and was like, “That’s nonsense.” It has never hurt us. You’re right. If I go and look at the negatives, first of all, what are they complaining about? Sometimes people complain about foolish things. “The product is great, but I didn’t like the packaging.” Think about Amazon when you go look at stuff. The point is you do go look at the reviews. So do I. So do your potential clients. With NiceJob, I can set it up so it will automatically post to social media and my website if I get a five-star. You can’t prevent people from giving you lower ones, but you can have it automatically posted. You’re right, you have to respond to the negatives.
To get back, to those people tuning in, the very simple things to do first in terms of marketing, people are always emailing me, “What do I need for a budget? What do you think about the size of buses?” Let’s do the simple things. Your listing. Your website, does it load? Is it mobile-optimized? It should be these days. Does it load quickly? Do people have to burn calories figuring out what you do? If they do, bad. If not, good. Do you have a way of capturing the leads? Do you have something that you’re giving them, some content, so that they’ll opt-in, so now you know who they are? Do you own existing clients? If you do tax returns, do they know you do this? Do the simple things first.
Once we’ve done that, the next thing is to go to TaxCure.com and grab a free listing. I do want to talk about your premium listing, which is unbelievable. It took me about a half hour, it’s very detailed. The directory, the listing. I think I’ve got a lead the next day. For the audience, it’s TaxCure.com, you can go check it out. By state, you can list your specialties, whatever. Federal and state, by the way, tax issues. What is the difference between the basic and the premium listing?
Understanding The Difference Between Free And Pro Listings
The premium listing gets you promoted a little bit more. It’s very similar to what you see with Google Ads, where you can have an ad above the natural search results or the organic search results. It promotes the premium member above the natural search results, and it’ll say ad. It’s the closest to my search, obviously, but it will say ad and show them. It gets you more impressions, and with more impressions, or more times your profile is shown, you get more clicks and, more inquiries. Besides that point, you also get access to some marketing content.
For example, we’ve done a webinar on Google Business Profiles. I show you how I took two Michigan tax attorneys to rank nationwide by improving their profile over time. They rank in their locale very well now for tax attorneys. Clients get access to that recorded content. Anytime we do a webinar, we have videos there on best practices. For example, how to approach a digital marketing lead, you want to call, you want to text, you want to email. You need to make sure that your form allows you, and that they’ve given you permission to text them. We go over best practices, not only from Google Business Profile and other topics on how to attract more clients and generic topics but even on specifics. I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit more about the big difference between the basic and the premium.
Also, there are a lot of people who are hesitant. On the free member, they could click to message you, and they don’t see your contact information. On the free, you get a message that you’ve got to log in and get the information. You also have a call button so somebody could call you because a lot of people are hesitant these days to put their information into an online lead form because they get on a spam list, this and that. We don’t do any of that with any of the emails that come through.
The thing is, we do see that people favor calling as well. We get a byline that you end up standing out. I did an analysis on pro members versus free members, and we’ve increased. The average pro member gets 1,600% more inquiries than the free member based on the promotion and whatever. Mainly, it’s local people that are reaching out, but you also do expand, and you can choose ten tax agencies that you have experience with versus five tax agencies. That gives you the availability to show up in many more search results.
You want to show consistency and build it into your business process. This way, you can catch anything you are doing wrong and improve your operation. Share on X
TaxCure Pro is for people looking to add another $10,000 to $30,000 in revenue a year. We also focus a lot on SEO on our own site to target random topics, anything around tax problems or tax solutions. We have pros that make suggestions based upon, “In this state, this problem comes up a lot.” I’m like, “Let me see how we could target that.” I’ll make a unique piece of content, figure out what people are searching to get there, and then generate it.
We’ll end up generating more prospects for those people, and we focus on the pro members, what their specialties are, and how we can grow more prospects for them. That’s our go-to initially. It’s like, “Where are we going to focus our marketing efforts most?” We look to the pro members first. Everybody seems to do well. Free members still get leads. Pro members get that extra promotion, and we do our best to make them stand out have an awesome return on spend, and get the clients that fit their unique skills.
It’s like a turkey solution. Google ads, it’s complex. A lot of management. That’s why we do offer that as a service, and we’ve done that for years, but we also have twelve years of data on what works because we’ve been doing it for a long time. This texture, we didn’t want to make it very complex. We want to make it so that somebody can get leads, and then if somebody wants to pay, they can get even more inquiries and get promoted even more.
For the audience, on Tuesday the 29th, you guys are joining me on a webinar on digital marketing. I know we’re covering the surface now, but we’ll get into that. Also, for the Tax Rep members, there is a discount for that premium. The premium is only $1.99 a month. One lead a year, you’ll triple your money. There is a discount for Tax Rep members. You can go check that out in the Tax Rep members area. If you’re not a Tax Rep member yet, what’s wrong with you? Anyway, jump in there and join us. With the wave of work that we see coming from the IRS, and they’re ramping up slowly, I wish they’d ramp up a little faster.
I should have Nikki Johnson, who’s the Director of Campus Collections, joining me in September on a show to update us. In June, she was saying that in September, they’re going to start sending out the enforcement notices, but in waves. It is because the fear is, I think she told me, they can go levy 4 million people now. They’ve already had their final notice, COVID, the shutdown, everything. They can turn on the system and levy them now. They don’t want to do that because what happens? The phones will get jammed, the advocate will get overrun. They’re going to start sending them out in waves. I think, though we’re busy, we’re going to get a lot busier.
For those folks tuning in, go grab your TaxCure listing now, or at least grab your free one. Seriously, what we’re already seeing, the premium more than pays for itself. I would upgrade to the premium. Tax Rep members, go use the discount code. Get your Google listing done. For those folks, Charlie and Manny, “This is great. I have a practice. I want to accelerate this thing.” Do you guys work? Do you guys consult? For instance, if I want to hire you to help me, help my practice to dominate my area, is that something you guys do?
We do. Some people use us for coaching, where they want to do some of the work, and we’ll provide direction as to what they should be working on. We also do Google Ads management, so that can help accelerate and bring in more clients for you. It takes a little time to get set up, but when done appropriately, you’ll have a nice flow every month of leads coming from your Google Ads campaign. We also do SEO, which takes a little bit more time. We sometimes have to help structure and restructure the site. We will set you up on a path and provide you with topics and content so you can constantly grow your site. It takes time, but it becomes a reliable source of traffic and prospects.
Final Thoughts And Upcoming Webinars
For everyone, a couple of things. In the description, I’ll put TaxCure.com, I’ll put a link for next Tuesday’s webinar so you can join us. Also, you can reach out to Charlie and Manny if you want to get them in to consult on everything from your directory listing to SEO on your website, structuring your own Google Ads campaign, and all of that stuff. We’ve got probably the two best guys in this space available to you. By all means, if this is something you want to ramp your game up, you got the right guys. Thank you. We’re going to be doing more with TaxCure. Hopefully, we’re going to be doing a webinar in another few weeks. Thank you for taking the time. I appreciate it. Next Tuesday, I think it’s going to be a lot of fun.
Thank you. I look forward to joining.
Thanks. Eric.
Thank you
