challenge:
With over 670,000 income tax professionals in the United States, there are a lot of choices when you’re looking for someone to help. Who’s in my area? Who provides the specific services I need? How do I know I’m seeing all of my options and not missing the person or team who might be a perfect fit?

Enter TaxBuzz, a nationwide directory of tax professionals, powered by CountingWorks PRO.

solution:
While there’s a lot of benefit to taxpayers who are now able to easily search for a tax professional to help them out, there’s a lot of added benefit to the tax professionals (Pros) as well, whether they opt to enhance their TaxBuzz presence or not. With an unclaimed and unpaid listing, the tax professional gets their publicly available information made findable in a centralized, user-friendly search tool. Beyond that, listing enhancements include “microsite” features like a contact form and appointment request form, along with a list of services, specialties, and professional associations.

In creating TaxBuzz, step one was developing a process to import the IRS’s list of those 670,000 tax professionals. Our team then created logic to be able to search that database, based on location and required services. On top of that, Pros who cannot find themselves in our listings can request to be added.

We were looking to create an easier way for independent tax and accounting pros to find clients. Currently, they are battling hundreds of thousands of other pros on organic search results and expensive PPC campaigns. I trusted the team at wisnet to help us build a marketplace that has matched over 100,000 taxpayers and business owners with our five-star-rated network of top CPAs, EAs, and tax professionals.

– LEE REAMS II – FOUNDER & CEO, COUNTINGWORKS PRO

scope of work:
User-friendly design and functionality were at the top of the list. So naturally, the search page uses geolocation to auto-fill your zip code, but you can customize that to search anywhere in the country as well. The search produces a list of Pros in your selected area, ranked by several factors that help give you the best possible matches. These matches display on the search page and are also emailed to you for future reference. You can be sure to find the cream of the crop, because listings can include reviews and awards such as “TaxBuzz Certified Professional” and “TaxBuzz Top 100.”

Of course, TaxBuzz needs to serve the tax professionals as well. The Pros in your search results are contacted by our system via SMS and email to alert them to a possible lead, allowing them to follow up if they would like to work with you.

TaxBuzz also has a blog page, a Marketplace where Pros can create a custom microsite to advertise an event, a discount, or a special service, and city pages that show you the best Pros in over 3,000 U.S. cities.

business impact:

134,000 searches

11,000 claimed listings

2,000 users converting to paid PRO customers * of the 11,000 claimed listings

Constantly growing monthly recurring revenue


None of that matters unless the system gets used. And does it ever get used!

The TaxBuzz system leverages several tie-ins with Google, which is necessary in order to get impactful exposure. These include:

  • geolocation,
  • mapping,
  • embedded microdata that helps surface TaxBuzz listings in Google searches
  • the Knowledge Graph (that right sidebar on a Google search results page), including the “Reviews from the web” area.

TaxBuzz is also a gateway into CountingWorks PRO’s expanded line of products, including customized websites and a portal for Pros to conduct client communication, send newsletters, manage lead generation, automate social media posts, and perform electronic signing of documents.