The most desirable initial contact with potential leads for most small firms are solid CPA websites. Their most important function is that they they must give a professional picture about you. Your online presence provides you with around the clock marketing for your practice. Still, your online content needs to always be new, and this requires consistent effort. You want your clients to find your practice in the search engines. This means your website needs to be ranked highly enough that your firm is visible.
This is hard work, and one strategy is to hire an intern that will help you manage your web marketing programs. New webmasters and students are a strong labor pool. They generally welcome the opportunity to create web marketing programs. Some tips are below to help practices work with an intern to support marketing efforts and manage CPA websites.
Fundamental Experience
You actually don’t need an intern with a lot of accounting expertise for this position. Instead the most desirable candidates will already have some experience with online marketing. This includes both search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) experience. It isn’t terribly difficult to increase your rankings, but it takes diligence and hard work. You want a steady stream of fresh content. It’s a big challlenge keeping superior CPA websites fresh and interesting. Ask your candidates for samples of their writing. The best candidates will have articles written about accounting and the field of financial management, but marketing and writing skills are MUCH more important. You obviuosly don’t have to spend time teaching them the fundamentals of your business, but you’ll have much more luck teaching a writer to sell accounting services than you will trying to turn an accouniting student into a writer.
As a CPA, you understand the importance of a professional and dependable image for not only your prospects, but for your current clients as well. Your intern does not directly work with your clients. However, their work represents you and your practice directly. It is a good idea to review their work carefully. Because they will be representing you online, you want to make sure the quality of their work is sufficient.
Considerations for Your Team
Even though the intern role may be a temporary one, it is a good idea to treat your intern as if they are a permanent employee. You want to think about how compatible they will be with your permanent staff. They will all be working together. You want to be sure there is seamless communication between the intern and your staff, so that the site content they produce can properly reflect your firm’s image.
Campaign Performance
Because search engine programs can take several months to produce real, visible results, it is a good idea to let the intern make suggestions on SEO and SEM programs. They can make valuable contributions for your CPA website. It is a good idea to consider their input. Interns can make substantial contributions to your practice’s bottom line, so it is a good idea to keep all options open.
After the initial prospecting programs run their course, you may want to continue working with your student past the original scope of the project. The field of accounting is highly competitive. College interns and new web developers can contribute greatly to your website’s success.