Jassen: Alright, back to these special reports that we keep talking about. You call them widgets I call them carrots when I’m talking about them but marketing your CPA business using special reports especially in specific niches. Can you delve more into the specifics about that?

James Orr: Yes and I think I’ve covered it but I will definitely go into it again because it’s really important. We talked before about some of the reasons why you’d want to do it. The idea of advertising your general business and what you do versus a special report that really speaks to the particular person and tells them that you specialize in the industry, you cater to that industry and that you have very specific unique information that you can offer.

Now, as like a behind close doors thing, the seven things that people need to know for saving money on their taxes, they’re probably going to be very similar for regardless of what industry you’re dealing with. I mean, the tax codes and business tax deductions are pretty standardized. I mean it’s not like they say, “Wait, you’re in this business except for some rare exceptions.” You’re in this business you have very different tax code, right?

Jassen: Right. The only exception that are big ones are real estate – there’s some extra stuff and then farming, there’s some different stuff. Those are the two major ones where there are big differences.

James Orr: Okay. So the report that you have “The seven ways to save money on your taxes for electricians,” is going to be the same as “The seven ways to save money on your taxes for plumbers and contractors and specialized sales people.” All these things can be relatively standardized where you might add or subtract one and reword it and re-tweak it but it’s the same stuff. So could go create a series of special reports and use that and you want to name them for that particular niche.

So when you talk about that niche you talk specifically about that niche and you talk because you have a client or you can visualize having a client or you want those types of clients. You talk to them in their language about their business and how you could solve their specific problem. So that’s part of what’s most attractive about using special reports and other type of widgets in order to get people to inquire.

Jassen: So with these special reports, you’ve already talked about using them as an incentive for people to give you their contact information so that then they go on your prospect list and you can market to them repeatedly.

James Orr: Right.

Jassen: When you are using that list off of a specific widget, are you segregating your list based on either the niche industry that they are interested in or on the specific report that they requested? How would you handle that sort of situation?

James Orr: You know, that’s a great question. The answer is you really should. However, most CPA’s or accountants are not going to and it’s fine that you’re not. The reason why you would want to segregate it is if you wanted to do a specific offer to all the electricians or all the contractors on your particular list. However, you’re going to get to the point where you’re going to know some of these people. So some of the ones that become clients or that you’re seeing on a regular basis, you’re going to be able to go and pull out the 10, 20, 30 names that are on there that are all of a specific industry.

You’ll going to be able to do that manually for the most part if you really wanted to. But the correct way to do it is to actually put a little tag in there if you’re building your mailing list. Put down what list they actually subscribe to. What special report they wanted. However, if it’s too burdensome for you to figure that out and you really don’t want to deal with it, it is okay. You have my permission to not do it. Just put everyone on your regular newsletter and contact them all, do your normal sharing to build your credibility to have them like you, to have them trust you. So when they’re ready to do their service they can then upgrade. So you should do it but you don’t have to do it. I guess this is how I would answer it.

Jassen: Okay. There are different types of widget that you can use when we’re doing this. One of the ones you mentioned earlier was audio interviews. So could you talk a little more about marketing your CPA business using interviews?

James Orr: Sure. Just like special reports where you’re having the seven things you need to know about whatever it is or the four things. By the way, the number doesn’t matter, guys. So just make up a number and come up with three really good tips to share with them. I mean, there may really be 11 but you can share with them seven. So just pick the best ones.

Jassen: Right.

James Orr: So the same idea here with audio interviews. You can take a written special report – maybe it’s even something put out by the IRS. IRS has some great resources by the way. You know that, right?

Jassen: Yes. It’s just that everybody is either definitely afraid of the IRS or whatever their feelings are but the IRS really does have a – I don’t know if they call them pounded but they definitely have a good group of writers that their jobs are to take this complex subject that we call the Internal Revenue Code and just do it down to literally an eighth grade reading level so that everybody can understand it. So they actually do put out some really, really good publications.

James Orr: Yes. You go take one of those publications and you either extract 10-20 questions. You should figure about five minutes per question for the most part. But if you’re going to pick out 12 questions or so and then you have – you could either hire someone from your local university who’s in the media department; they’re going to be doing interviews as a career. So you can get them in there, pay them $25 for an hour of their time or an hour and a half of their time and have them do an interview with you where you record the interview and you answer the questions that somebody in that particular industry would have about how to save taxes and the services you offer and how you can help them.

You can have a variety of these different audio interviews for a variety of niches that you can then use to market those audios with. Audios have a very high proceeds value. The idea that you have an audio CD and you have them copied – you can have them copied for like a dollar each in quantities of 50 or so – and 50 of these things made and look really good and when people order them you can have them sent out or you could have them downloaded straight from the Internet, whatever you want to set them up. Use those as audio interviews to go and market information about what you can offer them.

Jassen: Alright, great. This is supposed to be an hour long webinar but it looks like we’re already out the hour mark. [laughter]. We’re about halfway through the outline here. So just to make you aware of that.

James Orr: Okay.