Can't find my business on the web, can I be the only one doing this?

[pinc.me]

I worked as a tax attorney for a huge corporation, where executives could take advantage of large corporate deductions for their own benefits. My business does this for the small and midmarket company owner. Almost all of them overpay income taxes unnecessarily. I have a good existing business but paid a high price in time and effort for my knowledge, now need to scale it up.

These programs are so good and so rare that 1. No one believes me, even though I have a masters in tax law from one of the most presigious law schools, and 2. no one knows they are available, so they don't know to go looking for them on the web. I have searched "highly taxed", high income tax, tax solutions, etc. etc. and find only some CPA firms, none doing what I can do.

My "competition" is not really in the same business--they are financial advisors, wealth managers, financial planners, who should do what I do, but they don't; also CPAs and attorneys but I don't replace them, don't do accounting, just enhance the results dramatically.

My target audience pays $200,000 and up per year in US income tax, and has a solely owned or family owned business with not too many decision-makers. How do I test? How do I find them if they don't know who they are or that they could save up to $600,000 per year in taxes, each year? I haven't published website yet, and plan to separate it by profession/business, as in "Highly taxed rap star" or "Highly taxed Tim Ferris". Please assist, comment. Book? Ebook? Kit with contacts? Custom solutions work best, no problem to outsource all, just needs minimal guidance from me and someone (I have) to be nimble as tax laws change. I need no more than 200 clients per year to thrive. Right now I waste MOST of my time educating people who want to understand the details, but can't. I want to get rid of them and just work for those who want to pay their fair share but certainly not tens or hundreds of thousands more than they owe. They have to be quick enough to "get it" that keeping more of what you have already earned is easier than earning that much more.

[kamakiri]

Three things.

1 You mentioned wasting your time educating people. First of all, they don't want an education. I never wanted one from my accountants, and they were smart enough not to waste my time giving me one. I don't pay them to educate me. Keep your goal in focus (it is not education).

2. Read the Millionaire Next Door (http://www.amazon.com/Millionaire-Next-Door-Thomas-Stanley/dp/0671015206). The research methods he uses for targeting millionaires are brilliant, and will give you a hint about how to target your perspective clients. His methods are sound, and the book in general is a great read.

3. Take a look at what Dennis Tubbergen is doing. It is exactly what you are looking at. You can find his site at www.dennistubbergen.com (http://www.dennistubbergen.com/). He is Dan Kennedy's financial advisor and has been in the business of providing high end tax information to the very rich for 30 years. Send him a fax requesting: "Cutting Edge Financial Strategies" at 1-800-521-7856 for more info.

[sierranewrich]

While I don't have any specific advice on how to find your clients or how to proceed I do think you have a good idea and you should go forward with it. I know if I was a person who made a lot of money already, I would want to save money on taxes.

If you get it off the ground and I make it into that income bracket in the future... I'd love to have help in the tax area and I'm sure I'm not the only one out there :). And no, I would not need to know how every little bit works, just have a person who can tell me the basics I need to look out for (aka. save receipts of this and that, don't do this, do do that(a little booklet could do that) and then go and file the head ache paperwork for me when it is needed. I figure if they are well to do, and anything like most people, they don't want to have the head ache of taxes...

Again, if you get it up and running, let me have some contact info as it's likely a service I could use VERY well once I make some money with my muses and ideas :).

Sierra ---

[Sven]

I know what it is like not to be believed, been there for a very long time and still face some of the frustration sometimes.

It seems that no matter what, not being believed is a marketing problem. Do not repeat your message, do not speak louder, change what you say, let others say it in their own words.

Mark McCormack faced the same problem. He knew that he could help professional athletes in dealing with all the stuff around their sport but no one would hire him. Finaly he was able to clear a desk full of fanmail and other letters for one. He worked trough the night and in the morning showed a clear desk to the athlete.

When Mark died he left behind IMG, the biggest agency for athletes, the biggest in sports events and also the biggest modeling agency.

Maybe you need to find a way to do it, not to tell about it?

[nghs22]

Outsourcing would be your best bet. Then you could look over the tax documents to make sure everything is good to go as you would have to sign off on it.

Do you have a site? Do you have references? How much do you typically charge? As a accounting grad finishing up his CPA (with tax work at CPA firm work experience), what do you do that a normal tax accountant would overlook??

This could work well though. I'm in touch with many many people like you describe that I could inform of your services if you'd like to potentially partner up.

PM if interested.

[pinc.me]

Thank you for the thoughtful feedback. Really, thank you.
1. My current "best" clients are like you, they don't want the details. But many started, like you, with their mind going from "tax" to "CPA" in that the first words are "my CPA". I am not a CPA. You would really think a squirt gun is great if you had never seen a supersoaker. Unlike those two products, I don't have that kind of instant visibility, but the difference in effect is that order of magnitude. You clearly have an appreciation of that difference based on your point 3. How do you know? How did you learn about this? Do you talk to colleagues about it? Have there been times when it has been more on your mind than others? Is it seasonal? Is it when you have received a sudden increase in income? Many clients I have talked with will come back in a year or two years and sign on fully. I check in every 6 months or so. Don't want to ditch them too early because this is a slow load business in my experience. I just want to speed it up, if possible.
2. I have read it--great book--I am more interested in where they go on the web--and I think that is likely about passions and hobbies...my idea is to target businesses I like, as in jewellers, tractor dealers, baseball players, etc. I am trying to figure out how to test this, and am new to the adword stuff.
3. What a coincidence! one of the companies I work with is APS, which is one of Dennis' companies--so yes, they do some of the tax planning, quite sophisticated, yes, through advisors like myself. Interestingly I had a conversation with an APS insider recently about how hard it is for them to find financial advisors who can understand the tax planning. So, how to get it out to clients? Hmmm. How did you learn about him and the tax planning part? Surely you can't find www.dennistubbergen.com by googling tax savings for the rich? APS is a wholesale company, to my knowledge, so accessible through people like me, or Dennis in his capacity as advisor, but not directly by the public. So, its marketing is traditional, no four hour plan here, just big network of contracted advisors each of whom is free to pick and choose what to do and how to focus. I so appreciate your taking the time to respond.

[pinc.me]

Thanks so much for the support and suggestions. pinc.me@gmail.com website will be at www.pinc.me, have a lot of other domains to feed it too.

[TimW]

I don't know that you can say that the "millionaire next door" has a typical set of websites that they might go to. I am not trying to be flippant, but think about it: If you were a millionaire (well, tens-of-millionaire since a million doesn't get you much these days), would your "surfing" habits suddenly change? Would your interests, hobbies and passions that you describe be different?

I would posit the answer to be "no" for the majority of us.

Even though I can't afford certain things, I nevertheless visit websites about them, because those items are interests to me. Were I a multi-millionaire, the only difference is that now I can actually make a purchase.

Might I add some interests? Certainly...right now there might be items that I don't even consider because I cannot afford them. But a sudden increase in wealth doesn't equate to me suddenly having an interest in yachting. It might...but I doubt it.

Since individual millionaires/wealthy people have different interests, I would say that looking at hobbies, interests, passions that require money would be a logical step. Yachting, Bentley Collectors, fine art galleries, rare book collectors, etc., for example. Heck, there might even be a website for jewel encrusted John Deere Tractors owned by baseball players. Yahtzee!

Willie Horton was asked why he robbed banks..."That's where the money is..."

'They' always say "follow the money". In the world of investigations, it's usually that the starting point is the END, and they work backwards to find the beginning.

So, find where the money is....John Deere Tractor Collectors' Asssocation, say...then work to find the individuals. Going the other way will be an exercise in frustration because you'll follow a bunch of folks who have interest, but no money.

[pinc.me]

Since individual millionaires/wealthy people have different interests, I would say that looking at hobbies, interests, passions that require money would be a logical step. Yachting, Bentley Collectors, fine art galleries, rare book collectors, etc., for example. Heck, there might even be a website for jewel encrusted John Deere Tractors owned by baseball players. Yahtzee!
.


Your comments are much appreciated, and yes, those were my thoughts too. I don't want to target just particular interests of the "wealthy" because, well, boats bore me, but I do like some antiques, jewelry, baseball and tractors (plus all the great attachments) and one of my staff is into poker, so that is a natural way for me to go. Being comfortable with clients does include not having to "fake" an interest in their interests, and I have plenty of interests among myself and my small staff to serve microniche markets with genuine commeraderie as a fringe benefit.

Here is what I want to do: Use PPC to put, for example: "(Decoy collectors): if you paid more than $300,000 in tax last year, was it more than you owed?" Or, "Shorebird collectors, would you pay $50,000 to save $500,000 in taxes in 2009?" The seach terms I would use might be shore bird decoy, or decoy auction. My question: does this make the searcher angry, like not answering their question? I guess the test will tell us that...

Finally, another weird issue for us in using the web: we want to stay somewhat small and confidential--its not nice to tell the whole world that you want to save someone more in taxes than they might make in 20 years, and, although what we do is absolutely within the law, it is NOT a good idea to invite IRS scrutiny, because a clean audit is still an audit.

When I look at the numbers our business already generates, very few hits still works really well, even if my search terms show up very small numbers, since our "product/service" price is so high. We have no web presence yet, and it seems to me that 50 clients a year would be manageable for us. I am excited to test this. Love your idea about collectible cars, thank you. Any additional comments/criticisms sincerely appreciated.

[Sven]

It seems that word of mouth is a better "option" rather than advertising. The PPc examples sound a bit like a get rich quick scheme and might attract everybody but the right customers...

Have you read the purple cow by Seth Godin?

[TimW]

If I understand, do you mean that if I am doing a search on "X" (in this case duck decoys) your ad for "would you like to save $XXX..." etc?

If that understanding is correct then I would most likely ignore your ad, at best, or consider it spam and fly-by-night scam artists and never do business with you.

Granted, I dislike Internet shenanigans like this a lot more than friends, only because I sort of understand what's going on, and because I worked for a business-to-business manufacturer's directory and paid a lot of attention to search result relevancy.

If someone isn't looking for the information, your ad is more likely to get ignored than not because it's not relevant for the person's search.

Put the shoe on the other foot: If you were searching on tax savings plans, and an ad for duck decoys came up, would you look? Would you consider it a wasted ad?

[pinc.me]

TimW, that was my concern, exactly what you describe, looking for duck decoys and here is something totally unrelated popping up. My thinking: I KNOW that most people won't bother to click, which I thought was actually good for me. Also I am not misrepresenting what I do, just advertising to those few duck decoy collectors who might be thinking "taxes" that day. Since my business is a little like dentistry, not many people like to go there, but they know they should, I am unlikely to be a search "topic" and most of those who are my target audience don't know they need me. They just go to a CPA and complain to their friends that "he isn't helping me." They don't know how to access people like me, or even that we exist. I am NOT taxes for the masses, but for the few who pay a lot. I am in stealth mode basically, so I am trying to find a way to reach those I could and would LIKE to help, those whose businesses I already understand. I AM my own target audience, and I think that when I was looking for help, I couldn't find it, but would have clicked had the right ad shown up while I was elsewhere on the net. Does that make any sense? Thanks for the frank input!

[DaveinHackensack]

I want to start a Logo design/Advertising small business.I very good at drawing.I have been drawing since age 11 and have taken many ocurses

I want to make logos desgin for small business,teams,company and organzation
Can this work and become a success if plan correctly?
_____________________________________

I hadn't thought much about logo design until I hired a designer for the two web-based businesses I'm having developed, but now I am more attuned to logos and I've noticed that a lot of businesses have pretty lame ones. You may be interested in checking out the website of the designer I'm using, as -- in addition to posting examples of his work -- he also offers a few case studies explaining the rationale behind a few of his logo designs. Here's (http://www.six17.net/casestudies.php) the link to his case studies.

Good luck.

[CRFBusiness]

The work you do sounds like what family offices do for millionaires and billionaires. Have you ever considered doing targeted advertising for people doing searches for family offices?

[DaveinHackensack]

Prince & Associates (http://www.russalanprince.com/affiliations.html). For some reason, due to a job I used to have, I am on the subscription list of Private Wealth Magazine. Prince and Grove are columnists for the magazine.

[brucefenton]

you mentioned that clients dont trust you despire your credentials

credentials have little to do with it

for building trust look at

Values Based Selling by Bill Bachrach - its specifically for financial advisers, which is about as close as you can get to your thing -- he also has excellent books, tapes etc

- you mentioned search terms -- the key is that your potential clients might not be looking under those terms

which is hard when someone doesn't even know a product or service exists-- they wont Google it

look at partnering with other providers: independent wealth managers, financial planners, attorneys who dont compete -- use the data you get from live meetings to tune your automated web strategy