I just got off the phone with a kind sales person with officialaccountants.com, and I want to talk a little bit about whether or not I would recommend using officialaccountants.com if you are a CPA firm, bookkeeping company, or an outsourced accountant.
Services like these make a pretty compelling offer - and they talk a lot about the amount of leads they can bring in. But can they actually deliver?
Officialaccountants.com is a third-party aggregator. There are a few other companies like this you've probably heard of including:
• Houzz
These services run massive amounts of advertising and invest in SEO in order to make their own website rank really high on search engines and generate traffic. Then, they allow you to have a profile which would show reviews, photos, and other information about your business.
I've already written reviews of Angie’s List and Home Advisor. As I said in those reviews, I do not recommend relying heavily on third-party aggregators, particularly third-party aggregators that charge a large monthly fee.
I do not recommend relying heavily on third-party aggregators.
The sales person I just talk to said that officialaccountants.com costs $299/month. For this price, they will include you in their geo-targeted advertising campaigns.
They make it sound appealing. After all, a couple great leads would make the price worthwhile, right?
But here's why I don’t recommend using third-party aggregators like Official Accountants and why I feel it necessary to provide an insider review of officialaccountants.com
Ultimately, my opinion of officialaccountants.com boils down to 5 reasons why I would not recommend this service or any other major third-party aggregator on the market today.
Don’t waste your relational equity with your customers to build up a review profile on a third-party aggregator like angi.com or officialaccountants.com.
It’s hard enough to create a consistent flow of reviews for your business, and there’s no reason to help some other website rank in search rather than your own company assets. Think about it: getting a single review from a client is hard enough, and it can feel awkward to even ask! But if you list on sites like this, you have to ask your client to leave multiple reviews in different places. Or worse, you have to split up your reviews between the various platforms.
There are other platforms more important for this where you will want to get reviews.
The two that I recommend building up reviews on are:
• Google My Business
Both Facebook reviews and Google reviews will be something your company has to own for a long time, and you need to realize how search engines handle things. Search engines always preference reviews on their own platform, giving them more weight in SEO. Secondarily, they will turn to major, reputable social media channels such as Facebook.
These third party programs are like renting a hotel room, it’s only good while you’re a paying guest - and then you get the boot.
The moment you stop paying for advertising with a third-party aggregator, you lose all of its benefits.
Imagine you’ve built up your reviews and relied on a system like this for a couple of years and then you came to the realization that you wanted to handle your own advertising.
When you cancel, all of the effort and money you’ve put into it is wasted, as it becomes completely useless after you cancel.
Invest in your own platforms such as:
• Your website
• Google My Business
• Bing Places
• YouTube Channel
Folks that use third-party aggregators generally pit professionals against each other in order to get the best price. They'll scroll through a website like officialaccountants.com and gather 10, 15, or even 20 bids on the same exact project. These sites make it very easy to do this. Oftentimes, they're even intentional about it. Just take a look at that prominent "Request Information" button on each listing.
It's great for getting a quick lead - not so great for getting one that's any good if they've requested info from 5 or 10 other accountants.
Most businesses I talk with love customers that value personalized, high caliber service rather than focusing on price.
I have met very few professionals that love the leads they get from a third-party aggregator because they’re generally the type of person who wants to gather a bunch of bids and will place extra importance on price.
I have met very few professionals that love the leads they get from a third-party aggregator because they’re generally the type of person who wants to gather a bunch of bids and will place extra importance on price.
You should watch the videos I made with my dad about the seven sensitivities of value, but I’ll fill you in on the basics real quick.
Your business is far more valuable than the upfront price, and there’s tons of evidence to show that.
Whether it’s the massive amounts of taxes you save your clients, the giant increase in productivity, or the prevention of cataclysmic business risk, you are almost always a 5X return on investment.
Generally speaking, folks that use a Google My Business profile, click on a localized Google ad, or check out your business in other means will be more sensitive to the levers of value that are not up front price.
On officialaccountants.com? Your name is one on a long list. You'll be viewed more so as a commodity than as a valuable service provider.
These folks take your monthly advertising dollars and use it against you.
There’s no reason why you can’t do a targeted Google Ad that grows your business. You can also invest in your local search engine optimization, content, and marketing rather than throwing money at a third-party aggregator.
For every dollar you give them, you’re simply equipping them to steal traffic away from your Google My Business profile and website, which is really silly.
Think about it. Would you fund your competitors Google Ads?
In a way, when you work with Official Accountants, your monthly fee is doing exactly that. You're funding the machine that promotes hundreds of your competitors as well as yourself. Instead, you could run an ad that promotes only your own business.
If you work with a firm like us, we can set you up with ads that actually drive traffic to your own website, create a remarketing funnel, and build momentum much easier and over a much longer time period.
If you actually take the time to grow your profile on a third-party aggregator like officialaccountants.com, you’ll find that your profile on their website will start to appear higher and higher in the organic search results on both Google search and Bing search.
While there’s value to having profiles with social proof throughout the internet, there’s no reason to grow another profile higher than what your website and your Google My Business would be. Think about it. Do you want your leads searching for your own business name landing on your site or your profile on a site like this?
Don't trust your sales process into the hands of a list aggregator - especially when they can refer your would-be client to another one of their paid listings.
Don't trust your sales process into the hands of a list aggregator - especially when they can refer your would-be client to another one of their paid listings.
Don’t help these sites climb in organic rankings: use your time and effort to invest in your own website, YouTube channel, Google My Business profile, and Bing Places profile.
You can have much more success running your own advertising and it will create a better lead that's more interested in your value proposition. You'll have a much more consistent base of leads over the years.
For these five reasons, I do not recommend using a service like officialaccountants.com
Accountant Websites & Marketing by Feedbackwrench - Better than CPA Site Solutions or Get Net Set
rob@feedbackwrench.com
952-200-8073
Lakeville, Minnesota
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