Making use of Crowdsourcing to Prospect with Accounting Websites

09/30/2011 17:28

Crowdsourcing is an Internet marketer's idiom that's getting increasingly conventional recently and it's a construct you can utilize to optimize accounting websites, lure traffic to it, and develop your online visibility to boost your firm. Before we start let's examine the fundamentals. Once we have a practical understanding of of the concept we will be able to move on and look at taking advantage of the concept in relation to promoting accounting websites.

In point of fact, the construct that is "crowdsourcing" is an extention of the principle that you can exploit the public--both current clients and the folks that frequent your website--to deepen your knowledge of client needs and position your accounting business as a good solution. There's no one right way to do this. Crowdsourcing is a broad term and uses lots of different online tools including forums, blogs, wikis, and even direct email.

So how does this help you sign prospects? You can use these strategies in conjunction with good accounting websites to better understand your market. It can be used in both business-to-customer and business-to-business marketing strategies, and its fundamental tenet is that there is a great wealth of information to be had for free, if you know how to tap into it.

Working through a theoretical example may help you further understand crowdsourcing principles and see how they can be used to optimize accounting websites. Suppose that you link a blog to your existing website as a means to generate updated and relevant content that closely relates to the terms Internet users and potential customers are looking for. These days lot of marketers are dismissing blogs as last years news, and this is a big mistake. We're going to open your blog up to comments and use these commments to find new insights into their needs while at the same time shapiing the conversation with your blog posts.

For example, if you write a blog posting about little-known tax loopholes that private individuals can use to reduce their tax burdens and allow readers to comment, you may find that the information you posted has struck a chord with visitors to your blog site. By responding to your blog your clients are literally tellling you what they care about! Now you can use this information to add pages to your website, send out email alerts, and otherwise incorporate this new information in your overall marketing message. Crowdsourcing is like using knowledge gained from reader feedback as a kind of free advertising; understand what your readers want and need, then position your firm as the answer.

Crowdsourcing isn't just useful for shaping your marketing strategy. User feedback can also help you shape your practices services, better meet your clients needs, and thereby improve client retention. Now all of this does take a little labor and initiative. You need to take some time to kickoff each discourse and monitor the outcomes but if this can inform you about fears your clients are worrying about it's worth every second. This is a project you should be able to learn to do by yourself, but (in particular if you are a novice to digital promotion) it may be beneficial to get some help. It's your choice, of course, but there are loads of professionals around who would be more than happy to assist you with pretty much anything from strategic counsel to post writing.