After passing a local franchise here in Independence, Missouri numerous times, I wanted to inquire about your strategy to acquire new clients.
On a daily basis you have one of your employees dressed up like the Statue of Liberty or Uncle Sam, waving to passing cars from the side of the road. No matter the weather or time of day, you continually shove these people to the side of the road, even running a flood light out to them in the evening.
Here are a two things I don’t believe people say, when seeing your employees streetside.
- “Honey, look at that large foam Statue of Liberty waiving at us, that reminds me, we should do our taxes. Quick, let’s pull over…Of course this is legit honey…it’s the STATUE OF LIBERTY! Who else would you trust with your money?
- “Hmmmm, I’m looking for a trustworthy place to do my taxes this year, oh and yes, the 6′ 1″, rail thin, bug eyed, smoking Uncle Sam screams reliable. Where do I sign?”
I simply ask that you seriously consider bringing Lady Liberty and Uncle Sam home, for good. Please, no more road side waving, flood light shining, inhumane treatment for your employees.
These two American icons deserve better.
Thank you for your time.
Sincerely,
-Danny Burns
This Life Journey 
http://www.libertytax.com Danny all great suggestions for our company! We get a lot of people like yourself that asks us why do we put a person in uniform out on the side of the road. As there are many reasons for this I will try to give you the easiest reason.In any retail store location the business spends thousands of dollars on marketing every year. Most of that marketing is to generate a phone call and/or a face to face meeting. If the client looks in the phone book in Kansas City for example and sees that we have a location at 6419 State Ave can they find the location easily? Is the adress visible is the signage enough to get their attention? Too many businesses depend on their one little sign on top of their building and think that is enough for people to know where they are. We do not!! We believe that the more attention you can draw to your store front the more people know where your store is. A great example is you! You would not have wrote this Blog without my wavers, thanks by the way! So you see my waver on the side of the road makes every marketing dollar I spend more effective. Better Results all around. And also remember this we did not go in to our closet and make this technique up. Think of Ronald McDonald, the Cow at Chick-Fil-A, the Banana at Planet Smoothie, etc. We just happen to be the leaders in this technique. We have seen dozens of companies follow in our foot steps.All of that said, if you would ever like to try our services please feel free to email me at marketing@libtax.com and I will personally send you a FREE GIFT CERTIFICATE! As you will find with our company we make taxes fun!!Danny HewittVP of Guerrilla MarketingAKA Lady Liberty
I’m sorry but how are taxes fun?
I like the people they hire for this job. By me it is an awesome homeless guy.
Lets look at the facts shall we..FACT! Liberty Tax Service is to cheap to actually use normal advertising. (if it didn’t work no one would do it.) FACT! Liberty Tax Service runs a free return program every year and the offices do not share a data base so you could get a free return simple by going to a differant office evry year. (If your desperate enough.) FACT! The people in the costumes make Liberty Tax Service look stupid. ( How many returns does your top office in say Iowa do Mr. Hewitt? Not many.)
In 1994 AOL bought out the number one internet service provider Compuserve. They gained an absorbent amount of market share from one single technique, free trials! Did people like you and I take advantage of AOL and use the disks on several computers? Do people take advantage of our free returns? Ofcourse they do! Despite that we have grown by more tax return every year since 2000 than both our competitors combined H&R and Jackson Hewitt. I will explain to you some basics of why “traditional marketing” doesn’t work as well in today’s society. Why companies are losing market share because all they know how to do is buy tv, radio and newspaper ads and they don’t think outside the box. 50 years ago there were only 3 tv stations 3 radio stations and no phone books luck if they had a newspaper today there are hundreds of tv stations, radio stations. Every town has several papers, business journals and phone books. Is it easier to get noticed with 3 stations or 300? Pretty simple answer. You see “traditional marketing” is not the way to get more customers anymore. I recommend a couple books for you to read and study companies as we do across the world. Jay Conrad Levinson wrote a book in the 80s titled “Guerrilla Marketing” Seth Godin has written several phenomenal books try the “Purple Cow” it is an easy read and gives you real lessons.Liberty Tax Service has over 3,000 locations in just 11 years. We are the fastest growing tax company ever in history. We have over 1,500 franchisees and there are less than 12 companies in the Universe that have that many franchisees. We did it in 10 years! Our wavers get us attention!! When you are ready to wave I will come to your town and wave with you!! I travel the world waving from Oregon to California to New York City, Atlanta, Orlando, Las Vegas, Dallas and many more!!Respectfully Danny HewittVP of Guerrilla Marketing http://www.libertytax.com AKA Lady Liberty
You ask about Iowa, In Iowa Liberty franchisees are closing their door as fast as possible, and trying to avoid bankruptcy. Nationwide Liberty’s offices are expected to do 1000 returns by the fourth year, probably less than 150 of Liberty’s 3000-4000 offices, which were opened ever did 1000 returns. I suggest you invest your money in the Iowa river boat casino slot machines, the payback is better then Liberty’s.