UK Landlord Tax:
a lead generation machine

Get found,
convince prospects

An additional problem was the quality of the existing website. A DIY effort, it had performed relatively well for the firm over the years but simply didn’t project authority or inspire confidence in prospective clients.

This went beyond aesthetics – it suppressed conversion rates. Even when people did find the website, too few of them were inspired to follow through with a phone call or email.

Simon is marketing savvy, knew something needed to be done, and was ready to invest.

“Finding a professional, ethical and committed internet marketing company was a bit of a minefield. I can’t begin to tell you the number of Internet marketing companies I have spoken to who were either too inexperienced, lack credibility and knowledge, or were simply just offering a thoughtless, bland approach. PracticeWeb stood out.”

Research, strategy, visual identity

Research

PracticeWeb MD Mike Crook steered this project personally, working closely with Alex Tucker (brand strategy), Mark Jones (lead designer), Ray Newman (head of content) and Becky Prince (project management).

We took a data-driven look at the performance of their existing website and proposed a package of work focused specifically on:

• inbound marketing – content users want and need
• demand generation – making people aware of UKLT
• increasing the perceived value of UK Landlord Tax’s services.

We undertook market research to define the size of the market and help them decide on which specific subset of potential clients to focus.

We also undertook a methodical survey of landlords – how could UK Landlord Tax best grab their attention and speak to their needs?

Strategy

Through this, we identified a core group of target clients and, in particular, fleshed out the concept of the ‘accidental landlord’. These were people who had never had to submit a tax return until they acquired rental property as a result of moving in with a partner, moving away for work, or through inheritance.

This flowed into a programme of brand strategy work led by Alex. This produced a set of buyer personas around which all future marketing activity would revolve. 

Working with the UK Landlord Tax team, Alex shaped a clear brand proposition, brand values and brand promises. What makes UK Landlord Tax different? Why would a prospective client choose it over a competitor? And how can that be expressed in a way Simon and colleagues could embrace?

That formed the starting point for a content strategy programme, starting with a full-day workshop at the UK Landlord Tax office in Wolverhampton, led by Ray. What are the information needs of ideal clients and prospects? What could UK Landlord Tax talk and write about to draw them in and convince them to pick up the phone?

The outputs of this session included a one-year content calendar with enough ideas for more than one post per week and comprehensive documentation on tone of voice – that is, how the brand should be expressed in writing.

Simon told us that in the first two weeks of go-live, UK Landlord Tax received more enquiries than they had in the whole of the previous month.

This increase came without an increase in traffic, demonstrating the power of great design and content to sell services to website visitors. In other words, the same number of people were finding the site, but more of them liked what they saw and read.

In the weeks that followed, the rate of enquiries continued to increase and within a month the firm was receiving around 7-8 enquiries per day – almost more than they could handle.

As a result, they were able to stop their Google Ads campaigns and reduce their marketing costs. 

“We’ve had a higher volume of leads coming through and they are better quality, higher value and require more complex services,” says Simon.