Minish suggests piggybacking your tax prep business onto existing ad campaigns.

Rent to Own dealers are already starting to fight what Steve Minish, head of business development for eTax Partners, calls the January through March RTO doldrums by adding a tax preparation service to their line-up.

"While it's no secret that a tax prep service can increase bottom line by tens of thousands of dollars during a short period of time, what many don't think about with the holiday season upon us is the importance of marketing to potential tax customers now - two months ahead of the tax season - to get maximum results, The secret to any marketing plan is to advertise and do it early, often, consistently and effectively."

Minish says his system offers RTO dealers value - a "no-risk and easy-to-offer eTax service." He is eager to make sure his customers promote their in-store tax service to their customers well before they might automatically start thinking about it. Most likely your company is already doing some type of advertising. He suggests you piggyback with current advertising.

Minish offers the following ideas:

• Have your sales staff wear buttons and/or ask your walk-in customers if they have filed their taxes.
• Display your banners and indoor marketing materials immediately
• Launch direct mail campaigns to customers with or without coupons.
• Run frequent e-mail campaigns to an existing data base.
• Hand out flyers every time a customer comes in to purchase or make a payment.
• Provide instant refund estimates, available through eTax, on the amount of a customer's refund to capture his interest in merchandise. Remind him to come in to do his taxes before getting his W2s.
• Offer an incentive to employees for selling the tax service, such as giving them a $5 perk for every tax customer they sign up.
• Call existing customers.
• Offer in-store credit or coupons for every customer who brings in a friend who signs up for the tax service.

A look at the numbers (provided by Etax)

eTax requires no investment to start offering tax services, and as the "paid provider" it reduces the dealer's liability to almost nothing. A minimal amount of work goes straight to the bottom line. Also keep in mind that 50% of tax payers receiving a refund will spend the entire amount within 48 hours.

If a store's database has 500 customers and a dealer captures just 10% of them for tax preparation, that dealer will have 50 tax customers that generate $5,000 of additional profit (50 customers x $100 per return). The average refund amount is $3,900, multiplied by those 50 customers is $195,000 of refund money available to spend in a dealer's store. Think of the possibilities of marketing so effectively that a dealer captures 20% and 30% of their customers!

"Once a dealer is established as a tax professional his tax prep business typically will double in year two," says Minish. "It's important to remember that 95% of the dealer's customers are getting their taxes completed by a third party provider. Why not capture that business through an effective and user-friendly program? The way to do that is to have a proper marketing strategy."

For sales and more information, contact Steve Minish at 800-899-ETAX or sminish@cg1etax.com.