Growing my business

 When I started this business, I did it for sole reason of wanting to help taxpayers get the best possible return they could.

The first five years of business, my client base more than doubled every year. I contribute this to simple word of mouth.

In our sixth year we started doing some advertising with Google ads and using some local means (newspapers, yellow pages),

After two years of spending a lot of money in these venues we determined that word of mouth is the best choice for new clients. We came to this conclusion by asking new clients how they found us.

The end-result after two years was sickening considering the over $10k that had been spent. The first year we only landed one client from our advertising efforts. We stepped it up the second year and we landed four more clients. Two of those five clients we had to fire because they did not pay their fees for our services.

Advice for others

When trying to get the word out about your business spend the time to do some research. Determine the actuality of advertising and the types of advertising that will work or will not work in your type of business.

Advertising I believe is over rated.

As far as advertising goes I believe word of mouth to be the best.

It is my belief advertising is not for everyone or every business. 90% of our new clients are referrals from other clients. The rest of our new clients we land I have determined that 9% come from our web site and the blog that I write. The rest come from our phone book listing. (No we do not have an ad in the phone book/s, just a regular listing)