Advice | Advertise in Fort Myers and Southwest Florida

Why Tax Preparation Professionals In SWFL Must Advertise

Written by Larry Julius | Nov 11, 2019 8:04:34 PM

By April 15th next year, 428,000 residents of Southwest Florida will file a tax return.  More than 53% of these returns will be completed by the taxpayers themselves, either by hand or with the help of an online provider like Turbotax.

Every season, SWFL small business owners who specialize in tax preparation services lose customers to the do-it-yourself options.  This year, 199,855 local consumers will spend $38,500,000 with professionals. But, based on the average cost of services, more than $44,100,000 will stay in the wallets of the DIY crowd.

To clawback this enormous amount of money from the DIY market, SWFL tax services will need to advertise the valuable benefits of using a professional.

The best advertising option for professional tax professionals is on Fort Myers radio stations. Here's why.

According to Nielsen, when it comes to driving sales, the most potent media element of an advertising campaign is reach. This is the number of different people exposed to the marketer's message.

Each week, Fort Myers radio reaches 90.8% of local consumers that will use a professional to prepare their tax returns. This is significantly more than are reached by local TV, newspaper, social media, or streaming audio services like Pandora and Spotify.

Advertising to this target audience is important for tax professionals to preserve the current market size by limiting defections to online solutions.

The most lucrative opportunity, however, is for professionals to advertise to consumers who plan to do their own taxes. Once again, radio has, by far, the largest reach among this target audience.

Most SWFL small business owners who provide tax preparation services, generally, cannot afford to use multiple media to reach target consumers. Advertising on Fort Myers radio, though, will reach almost the entire user base of all other media.

To affect the upcoming tax filing season, SWFL tax professionals will need to start advertising soon. According to the National Retail Federation, 28.5% of taxpayers plan to submit their returns by mid-February.  Another 30.1% will be submitted during the last two weeks of February. Just over 27% will be submitted by the end of March. The final 14% will be submitted in April.

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