For a niche product like professional tax software, Mike Steele of UltimateTax believed his potential clients had to see his face, shake his hand, and get to know him.
But after spending thousands of dollars traveling across the country and bringing home measly returns, he knew UltimateTax needed something different.
Here is their story.
“We had a budget set for these tradeshows. I would travel to New York, Chicago, Orlando; I would travel all over the country and spend tens of thousands of dollars just to mingle with my market.”
We all know travel is expensive.
But aside from the airline tickets, Mike also had to spend on accommodation, food, and trade show fees. Not to mention printing a new board for their trade show booth every year.
All in all, Mike was spending well over $50,000 a year on these tradeshow trips.
And the worst part?
The returns were ghastly.
Yes, Mike would get a few leads at the tradeshows. He’d talk to like-minded people about software and hand out some flyers.
Yes, he would get conversions. These were, after all, tradeshows for tax preparers.
However, these returns were far too little.
“In 2018, we made around 3 or 4 sales from tradeshows. We spent thousands of dollars, and that’s all we got from it. It was then that I started asking myself, ‘why are we spending so much on this?”
Come 2019, Mike decided to start giving SEO more attention and started putting more money into it.
If there was one keyword that he wanted UltimateTax to rank for, it was “professional tax software.”
UltimateTax is a professional tax software company. So ranking for that keyword would bring home the bacon.
The only problem was, that keyword has intense competition. To win it, UltimateTax needed the help of The Gallas Company.
So we took on the challenge. We worked tirelessly to create a page that would depose UltimateTax’s competition and take the top spot.
And after pouring so much effort into it, UltimateTax eventually won “professional tax software.”
The results were dramatic.
Everyone that searched for professional tax software ended up at UltimateTax’s website.
This brought a flood of new leads and a flood of new sales.
For the first time, UltimateTax was generating so many leads without having to fly across the country!
It was so effective, they were getting fresh leads even during the offseason!
But the real test came when the coronavirus arrived in the United States.
Trade shows were canceled, and tax preparation businesses were in a tough, tough spot.
But UltimateTax?
Business was booming.
SEO kept them busy all throughout the year.
From a business perspective, they were not worried about the pandemic at all.
“We would NOT have been doing this great without SEO. With the lockdowns in place, 2020 would’ve been devastating if our only source of leads were tradeshows and postcards.”
