Writing An Effective Marketing Plan - Part III

Published under Marketing

(Part III of a IV part series on Writing Your Business and Marketing Plan)

“The fact is, everyone is in sales. Whatever area you work in, you do have clients and you do need to sell.” –Jay Abraham

No matter how good you are at tax preparation, how well you do what you do you still have to focus your energy on marketing; if you don’t do any marketing, you’ll have no one to prepare any taxes for. So what do you do? You create a marketing plan to go along with your business plan.

Oh boy, you’re thinking, the Business Plan was enough to overwhelm me. But because you’re writing the marketing plan in conjunction with your business plan, you’ve already done some of the necessary work for this portion. In fact, determining your marketing strategy will probably require the most effort. But let’s review the information from your business plan that will help you with the marketing portion of your plan:

  • Description of products/services

  • Market analysis

  • 3 to 5-year financial plan (which should have allowed for a marketing budget)

In your business plan, you’ve already connected your services to a target market, analyzed your competition and their marketing strategies, and defined a marketing budget. Here are the first two elements of an effective marketing plan:

Marketing Goals and Objectives
First you need to determine what you hope to accomplish through your marketing efforts. It’s important to be as specific as possible because once you state your goals you can use them later as a measure of success. Once you have created the road map you wish to follow with your business plan, you need to create your “game plan” on how you are going to get from milestone to milestone. When you do this you will often find that there are things that you may have not considered before but are essential to achieving your ultimate goal. The focus of your business actions will become more clear, and your everyday activities that you undertake will then have a purpose.

Clarify each Marketing Objective, that’s a key concern in writing your goals and objectives: are they measurable, meaning, can you determine later whether or not you’ve achieved them? For example, saying you want to be more successful is not necessarily something you can measure later on. But saying you want 10 new clients by the end of the year is measurable. And be realistic. Setting unrealistic goals will only discourage you as you move forward. This may require you to do more research; what are some realistic expectations for growth in a successful tax preparation practice?

Pricing of Products/Services
This will also require a little research on your competition. Do you have competitors in your market? What are your competitors charging for similar products and services? How may they be “packaging” the services that they do? Knowing these things will give you an edge once you sit down with that potential client. It will also give you the a competitive advantage in your marketing efforts.

Again, be specific. If offering various services (tax preparation, tax planning, filing tax forms, consultation, etc.) create a pricing sheet that lists each product and service and how you plan to charge for it. With this in place you can better project future sales and possibly better estimate how many clients you need to become self-sufficient and more importantly, profitable.

UAC Can Help You Develop a Marketing Plan
Universal Accounting Center understands that marketing may not one of your strengths and has designed a DVD intended to help those of us who are marketing-challenged. For just $9.95 you can learn effective marketing strategies for your tax practice. You’re less than $10.00 away from learning which marketing strategies to include in your marketing plan. Order today!

Come back next week to go over the final two portions of your marketing plan, including helpful writing tips:

  • Key Marketing Strategies

  • Implementation of Your Marketing Plan

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