When it comes to marketing your tax business, or any business, you have probably heard terms like target demographic tossed around. Targeting a specific demographic is a good practice for your tax business, analyzing common characteristics of your clients in order to develop an effective marketing strategy can yield amazing results. What if I told you that you can take it a step further? By analyzing the common characteristics of your largest clients you can develop a new marketing strategy that yields a significantly higher return on investment. This additional narrowing of target demographic is called an Ideal Client Profile (ICP) and it’s a marketing tool used by some of the top marketing firms and experts in the industry today.
Defining Characteristics
In order to create an ICP you will need to understand and list key characteristics your ideal client possesses. Let’s start by defining four main categories; demographic, geographic, Mindset, and Behavior.
Demographic:
The demographic of your ideal client usually consists of factors such as; age, education level, and income. If your tax office specializes in business returns then your ideal client’s demographic information would instead be characteristics such as the company size or industry it’s in.
Mindset:
Why are your clients interested in your services in the first place? What internal values, interests, lifestyle, and attitude defines your top customers? Think back to the numerous interactions you’ve had with your clients in order to create a sort of psychological profile to better understand their wants and needs.
Geographic:
Is your ideal client down the road, living in the nearest city, or on the other side of the country? In the tax industry the majority of your clients come from your local area but in some cases a tax office could be handling returns from all around the country. If this describes your tax office then defining a specific area would significantly aid your marketing efforts.
Behavior:
How do your clients prefer to communicate with your tax office? Is communication even a high priority for them? How your most lucrative clients interact with your tax business gives you good insight into their behavior patterns allowing you to better serve them but these behavioral patterns can also aid in discovering new clients who fit your tax business. What accounts do they follow online, what is their purchase history, how loyal are they to specific businesses and brands?
Putting it All Together
You know what to look for, now what?
#1 Study Your Clients
The clients who are the most consistent, spend the most, and who get the greatest value out of your services are the ones you want to gather data from when creating your ideal client profile. Use the above categories as a guide to determine the demographic, geographic, mindset, and behavior of your ICP.
#2 The Buyer Persona
Time to get creative. Now that you have the information you need for your ideal client profile it’s time to create your own buyer persona. A buyer persona is a fictional client you create that contains all the data found in your ICP. Your buyer persona can be used to test marketing material and develop new marketing strategies based around your ICP.
#3 Market Research
Time to do some research! You now have the tools in place, time to dig deep into marketing trends and industry reports to uncover how your ideal customer is acting in the current economic climate.
#4 Validation
Now is the time for action. Field test what you’ve made. Be sure to measure and track your results, include a goal for your new marketing strategy and adjust when necessary. Sometimes you will need to adjust your strategy or rethink assumptions you made when creating your ICP but the data and experience you will receive will be priceless.
You don’t need to be a marketing professional to grow your tax business. With the right data and resources you can streamline your marketing efforts to grow your tax business like never before!
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Ready to create your own Ideal Client Profile? Along with this article we’ve included a PDF that makes creating your ICP a breeze! Fill out the form below to download our Ideal Client Profile Guide, this takes the guesswork out of creating your ICP and is just another way we can show our deduction to the success of tax professionals everywhere.
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