General

Owens Tax Advisors Ltd goes live!

The new Owens Tax Advisors Ltd website is now up and running. It uses our WebStandard package with news and articles, a firm blog and an integrated page-translation option.

Bizco goes live!

Your Firm Online NZ is excited to announce the launch of Bizco, our latest custom designed website using the WebStandard package. We wish Merv Joe and his team the best of luck with all their online marketing endeavours!

Your Firm Online picks up MYOB sites

Your Firm Online has picked up a dozen MYOB websites over the last month. MYOB recently announced that they are moving out of their Web Connect system, and several of their clients approached us to update their websites. The websites will be rolled out progressively during the next few weeks, finishing in time before the Christmas holidays.

Your Firm Online Loyalty Program

During the last six months, we’ve been very fortunate to receive many referrals from firms who were very pleased with our work. Some referred us fellow accountants; others recommended us to their own clients. Each referral has been a great recognition of our team’s efforts throughout the past year – and now it’s our turn to say “thank you!”

We are excited to introduce a new Your Firm Online Loyalty Program, which will reward you for referring business to us and helping us grow. The Loyalty Program works on two levels, so both the firm referring and the firm to whom we’ve been referred will be rewarded. Gifts include either a US$50.00 or US$75.00 Amazon gift-card.

To find out more or send through a referral, see Refer Us.

Website Customisation

We recently introduced a new web package to allow firms greater customisation options: CustomWeb. CustomWeb is specifically developed for those firms who have a bigger budget for their website or have specific things they require. Website customisation allows us to accommodate any needs you might have that fall outside of our WebStandard, WebPlus or WebPremium packages.

Some key features include:

• Manage your own content
• A custom firm website premium design to match your firm’s image
• Choice of two or three column website
• Icon or image based internal navigation
• Premium content and online forms
• Ongoing search engine marketing
• A comprehensive and secure firm email system

Marketing in a down economy

In a slow economy, a firm needs to modify its marketing and client development activities to deal with the new realities. When business slows down, accountants may tend to hide in their offices, ignore the outside world, and hope that business will improve. However, consider this an opportune time to put some extra effort into your marketing and client development activities. Here are a few things to consider in these tough times.

Adding value. Show your existing clients that you really care about their business by adding value wherever possible. When things are slow, clients look for greater value from all of their service providers. Do not give them a reason to find a new accounting firm because you are reluctant to bend a bit on your fees or services.

Repackage your services. Look at your service offerings and see how they could be changed or repackaged to make them more attractive in this situation.
Upgrade or develop a website. If your firm has a website, spend time thinking about how it can be made more effective and take steps to upgrade it. If you don’t have a website, set one up and be sure to add your website address to your letterhead and business cards.

Renew your marketing efforts. Marketing during difficult economic times is always tough. But cutting back on your marketing efforts is the opposite of what you should be doing. When things are slow, use the time to review and re-energize your marketing efforts. While the suggestions above may require some creative thought, effort and money, they will help ensure the future growth of your firm.
Keep in touch with former clients. Send your clients something of value such as a report, survey results, an article of interest or other information, and then follow up to discuss it.

Attend to your prospect list. A down economy is no time to forget about your prospective clients. Just don’t spend a lot of time trying to sell and persuade. Instead, spend most of your time providing information — hands-on material that your prospects can really use. These types of activities will keep your name in front of the prospect and also help communicate the value that you offer.

Broadcast Your Message. When business is slow, you need to get your name, your message, and your ideas out there for prospects and clients to see and hear. Send out a newsletter, or give a talk at a conference at least twice a year. This will spread your name around and generate new leads shortly.

Welcome

I would like to welcome you to our new website. Over the last ten months there has been a significant investment by us to improve and fine tune our website offering. We have focused a great deal of attention in looking at ways in which we can deliver a comprehensive website offering to accounting firms and at the same time trying to serve the market in which we set out to serve five years ago – the small to mid-size accounting firm.

I am sure you agree when you review our site that accounting firms now have options that have never been provided before. Our new offering includes a new range of design choices for firms, greater emphasis on website optimisation, a comprehensive website analytics package, an upgraded client document storage system, and a new website marketing offering.

With the team at Your Firm Online and Practice Advantage I plan to lift the bar even further and you will see some extensions to these products over the next six months. Our plan is to upgrade or extend each of our products at least every six months, and our next update will be with our email marketing system. The upgrade to that system will occur within the next month.

In addition, our firm marketing resource centre will be avaiable shortly. Our online library will provide accounting firms with a range of marketing tools that they can use to promote their firm. We have over 500 pages of material, from checklists, information sheets, scripts and promotional material that will be progressively uploaded and made available.

I welcome your input and feedback and look forward to speaking with your personally about some of our new developments.

Nic Gadaleta