Websites have been around now for roughly 20 years, and nearly every professional services firm has one. But relatively few firms are leveraging the marketing power of websites as fully as they might.
In many cases, that’s because they haven’t gone beyond thinking of their websites as more than an online brochure. So they don’t post content on them that engages visitors and keeps them coming back for more — and can also boost a site’s SEO.
That’s too bad, because websites are a proven vehicle for content marketing — providing information about topics of interest to clients and potential clients that can help build relationships and pave the way to more or new business. Your goal should be to turn your website into a resource that positions your firm as a thought leader, differentiates it from competitors, and supports your marketing and business development efforts.
How To Select Content
To decide what types of information to post on your website, you first need to determine what your target audience wants to know. You may already have a good idea of that, based on your work with clients and your knowledge of various industries. But if you don’t, you may need to conduct surveys, phone interviews, a focus group or other types of research.
Whatever the subject matter involved, the content you post should be relevant and important to your target audience. Examples include:
- Late-breaking news on tax law changes, new accounting standards, developments in specific industries, and events of interest to your audience
- Case studies of how businesses or individuals like those in your target audience have dealt with various financial or operational challenges, perhaps with your assistance
- Tips on how to minimize taxes and increase profitability
- Solutions to problems typically encountered by your target audience
- Information that educates your audience about compliance requirements, financial planning strategies and ways to achieve their objectives and increase their success
Of course, the content should be well written and produced, accurate, engaging, and informative. If it isn’t, your firm will come across as incompetent, careless, dull and not worth contacting for more information or assistance.
Types Of Content To Post
As an electronic medium, websites allow you to post content in various formats, including video, PDF, text and online seminar presentations. Here are some examples to consider for your site:
Newsletters
Because client newsletters typically contain information that’s relevant, current or important to your target audience, they give you an easy way to post engaging content. So if your firm currently has one or more client newsletters, make sure they are posted in a visible location on your website.
Financial planning guides
Clients and prospects are always interested in learning more about ways to reduce their tax liabilities and achieve their financial goals. Therefore, posting tax and financial planning guides on your website is a good way to provide content that’s relevant and valuable to your target audience.
Seminar presentations
Because they combine images, text and sometimes even audio elements (as in a webinar), seminar presentations are a rich medium for communicating with your target audience via your website. You’ll want to keep your online presentations fairly short and to the point, so viewers don’t get tired of going through them and bail out. Therefore, if all you have is a longer seminar that you developed for, say, a luncheon presentation on tax planning, break it up into smaller pieces and load just a few on your website at a time.
Videos
Whether in the form of a short, one-shot presentation or part of a longer podcast on a subject, a video presentation is a powerful means of engaging visitors, holding their attention and delivering information in a compelling manner. The multimedia nature of video gives your website an extra dimension — one that’s increasingly expected by visitors who frequent the Web and prefer to watch a video than read text.
Your video can be as simple as an excerpt from a videotaped conference presentation or a homemade video of a firm member showing how, for example, a Section 1031 like-kind exchange works. Or it can be a professionally scripted and shot video developed by a video production company. However you produce a video, make sure it’s brief. Attention spans for people on the web are becoming shorter and shorter.
News and client alerts
If your firm posts information about important news, such as changes in tax laws and accounting standards, IRS reporting deadlines, or economic developments that may affect your client base, you’ll position it as coming from a thought leader people will turn to regularly to find out what’s going on and what to do about it. Therefore, you may want to create a section on your home page where you list news items to note — including press releases or press coverage of your firm — with links to more information about them.
Whitepapers, articles, reports and blogs
These types of written content can provide best practice tips, survey findings, tax planning strategies and other information that’s of interest to your target audience and that helps position your firm as a thought leader. Be sure to include articles that members of your firm have had published, as well as the results of any relevant research your firm has conducted.
Where To Post It
To make it easy for visitors to find your content, it’s best to feature it on your home page. One way to do this is to create a highlighted “Resources” section that has links to various types of content on your site — for example, newsletter, tax guide and whitepapers. If your site includes videos, you might want to put an image of the opening scenes for the most important ones on your home page with click-arrows or labels encouraging visitors to view them.
If you have a lot of content for visitors to see, you might also want to create a “Resources” page that contains links to all of it, grouped in categories such as “whitepapers,” “news releases” and “seminar presentations.” In addition, consider putting links to relevant content items on specific pages of your site.
For example, on your tax services pages, put links to articles your partners have authored on tax subjects or to your tax planning guide.
How To Market Your Site
It won’t matter much if the content you have on your site is outstanding if only a few visitors see it. Therefore, you may find it helpful to market your content through social media messages, email, direct mail and other means, such as a post script (P.S.) on your letters and emails inviting recipients to view your tax guide, online newsletter or other content.
To encourage visitors to return, be sure to keep your content fresh. In addition to frequently posting new content, remove any information that’s no longer accurate or relevant. For example, don’t keep on your site an article with outdated tax rates or a seminar presentation by a partner who’s no longer with your firm.
Make It A Priority
With so many other things demanding your attention, it can be difficult to find the time and other resources needed to make your website a traffic-generating resource and content-marketing tool. But the payoff in terms of an enhanced brand image, competitive differentiation, stronger client relationships and, ultimately, more business will be well worth the investment.
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