Tax Consultant Burkhard Küpper

When we met Mr. Küpper in December 2017, he was managing partner of the tax consulting firm Albers & Küpper mbH based in Hilden near Düsseldorf. A small law firm with 30 employees specializing in the printing industry, shoe retail, insurance and interior designers.

Even at this stage, Mr. Küpper attaches great importance to active advice when advising his clients, which does not only focus on passively preparing annual financial statements and handling bookkeeping.

The focus is on comprehensive business advice, which, among other things, also focuses on structural and tax optimization.

When it comes to digitization, the law firm had two faces at the time:

Internally, they are already in an excellent position: For client support, they use specially developed software that automatically digitally records and archives documents. The system also enables consultants and clients to access all documents anytime and anywhere.

The firm's digital public image, on the other hand, is simply no longer up to date. The website appears old-fashioned and backward — two attributes that do not necessarily contribute to linking the topic of taxes with positive associations in the eyes of potential clients.

The design and in particular the page navigation also stood in stark contrast to the unwritten laws of web design. This is fatal because users quickly leave a website if they don't immediately find what they're looking for.

And every user who leaves the site early means potentially a lost client for the law firm and, as a result, lost revenue! The outdated website therefore costs Mr. Küpper cash...

A time-consuming and low-income client acquisition that is characterized by chance

In addition to the digital public image, however, there was also and above all”under the hood“Some catching up to do.

Specifically, it involves acquiring new clients, which did not follow a clear system at the time and was heavily influenced by coincidences. However, for a company that wants to grow, a certain amount of predictability in acquiring new customers is essential for survival.

Particularly due to the low level of automation, the acquisition of new clients is often associated with significant time (and therefore financial) investments for Mr. Küpper. Unfortunately, the quantity and quality of these were also far from the hoped-for goals.

Overall, the cost-benefit ratio in acquiring clients was significantly in trouble.

Before we worked together, Mr. Küpper had already made initial attempts to automate manual client acquisition to a certain extent via Internet portals, among other things. The resounding success, more specifically the”Aha experience“However, it did not happen.

For years, Burkhard Küpper had to visit exhibition stands, hand out business cards, shake countless hands and passively wait for recommendations in order to attract new clients to his tax firm.

Now he has completely different problems:

Every day, more than 100 entrepreneurs, self-employed people and freelancers hope that their application for a client with “Küpper & Kollegen” will be accepted.

For Mr. Küpper, one thing is certain: Despite the imposed ban on admission for new clients, he definitely wants to meet the high demand in order to continue to help as many people as possible save taxes. The only question is: How?

The solution seems obvious...

He must help entrepreneurs, self-employed people and freelancers to take tax savings into their own hands. Especially when you consider that most tax advisors simply don't have the time in their day-to-day business to develop a tailor-made tax saving strategy for each client.

The idea is quickly created to create a seminar that provides participants with the necessary knowledge to reduce their tax burden independently. They can then put this knowledge into practice themselves — possibly in collaboration with their tax advisor. Whether seminar participants would like to be accompanied by their previous tax advisor or by the law firm “Küpper & Kollegen” is of course up to them.

The final decision to offer a seminar is based on three fundamental findings:

• Insight 1: Classic tax consulting tasks, such as preparing annual financial statements, can in principle be carried out by any tax advisor. By far the greatest value for clients lies in active advice, which shows strategies and methods to reduce their own tax burden.
• Insight 2: Despite more locations, more employees and improved structures, Mr. Küpper will still not be able to personally serve every single entrepreneur who wants to save taxes as a client in his law firm.
• Insight 3: You don't have to be a tax advisor to put tax optimizations into practice. It is generally not necessary to study tax literature in detail. All necessary documents as well as sample contracts and templates will be made available to participants as part of the seminar.

The establishment of the continuing education brand “Steuern Nein Danke”, under which the seminar will initially be launched, opens up completely new opportunities for Mr. Küpper to realize his vision of helping as many entrepreneurs as possible to reduce their tax burden.

His expertise, from which only selected clients have benefited so far, is poured into a final product through “taxes no thanks”, which can be sold in much larger “quantities” - and decoupled from a real client base. In marketing jargon, this is also referred to as “productization of service.”

The seminar, which is to be marketed under the name “Steuern Nein Danke”, not only enables Mr. Küpper to reach more people, but also to raise the quality of his service to a new level at the same time.

As part of the seminar, all important information is conveyed in a compressed form so that the entrepreneur “only” has to work through the individual points, as with a checklist.

This form of (indirect) advice is ultimately much more effective than individual support within the framework of a traditional client base. Especially when you remember once again that reducing the tax burden for entrepreneurs represents by far the greatest value of tax advice.

Videos as the key to success

After the decision has been made to organize a seminar, we at marketer UX put our heads together to develop a tailor-made sales strategy. It quickly becomes clear that there are worlds between acquiring new clients and selling seminar tickets...

Traditional tax advice is a tangible service that requires little explanation - the client usually knows exactly what to expect. It is therefore sufficient to be displayed with optimized text ads for the right keywords to attract qualified leads (e.g. via Google Ads).

The situation is completely different for a seminar for which participants have to spend a four-digit amount. Because a seminar is a rather “vague” product that is difficult for potential participants to grasp at first. Especially since this is a completely new concept that has not yet existed in this form in the area of tax advice.

There is also the hurdle of finding the right mindset: For most entrepreneurs, taxes are an absolute painful issue that is often suppressed. It is seen as a necessary evil that should simply be done - but please by someone who has a clue about it. After all, as a managing director, you have significantly more important things to do...

And now the entrepreneur should suddenly take care of his tax matters himself in a seminar?

In order to resolve these and similar concerns and doubts, video ads in which Mr. Küpper himself talks about the seminar should form the heart of the campaign.

It is important that Mr. Küpper appears in front of the camera himself authentically and unfalsified, as the potential participants can get a very good picture of Mr. Küpper as soon as they look at the ad: How does he speak? How does it occur? How does he package the content? Do I feel addressed by him? Is the chemistry right? Are we on the same wavelength?

All of these are very important aspects that potential participants (unconsciously) consider when making their purchase decision.

First, we play the videos via Facebook. However, what we had already suspected is happening: Due to the restrictive Facebook advertising guidelines, we have had to deal with blocking our advertising accounts time and again right from the start. Since these suspensions are disrupting the campaign, we react a short time later and shift our focus to the YouTube video platform.

In addition to video ads - especially in remarketing - we also display classic paid (text) ads on other platforms (including Google Ads, Google Display Ads and Linkedin Ads)

My name is Küpper, Burkhard Küpper

When designing video ads, we focus on a healthy mix of content delivery, value-added communication and entertaining elements right from the start.

In particular, the entertaining elements, which are discreetly interspersed here and there, are important to us, as the topic of taxes is a pain issue for most people that is fundamentally negative. We also want to prevent users from switching off when they see that it's about taxes.

When developing the video scripts, however, we meticulously ensure that Mr. Küpper's entire appearance is not too casual overall in order to substantiate the seriousness of the topic... After all, for many entrepreneurs, this is about potential savings in the five or even six-figure range - per financial year!

We are more interested in showing potential seminar participants that the seminar is expressly not a dry event, in which Mr. Küpper cites legal texts dead seriously and with a raised index finger...

An important element that helps to take the weight out of the issue is, for example, the recurring greeting from Mr. Küpper, which is based on the well-known Bond quote: “My name is Küpper, Burkhard Küpper.”

When developing the videos, we also benefit from the professional experience that Mr. Küpper has gained in politics - especially when it comes to speaking openly in front of the camera.

Can a Rolex be deducted from tax?

In order to further increase our reach in a targeted manner and to generate attention even beyond the limits of our pre-defined target group, we are publishing a video ad with the title: “Can you deduct a Rolex from tax?”.

The title of the video is extremely tempting and also entices people to click away when it comes to taxes.

Shortly after publication, the video went viral and reached more than 2.1 million people within a few days. The video made such waves that even some tax officials felt compelled to revise the relevant legal texts in order to make the procedure mentioned in the video impossible.

3.3 million euros in turnover in 6 months

Successful online marketing meant that tickets for the first events were completely sold out. The seminar series has therefore proved to be a complete success!

As a result of the corona measures, on-site events already planned in spring 2020 had to be canceled. In order to still give participants the opportunity to attend the seminar, we quickly developed an online course that participants could complete from home.

The first event after the Covid lockdown took place in October 2021 in the sold-out event room of the Maritim Hotel in Düsseldorf. More than 300 participants came to find out how you can effectively reduce your tax burden in Germany.

The coming years have also already been planned with many more on-site seminars throughout Germany.

Behind us is a fast-paced rollercoaster ride, which was extremely exciting and instructive both for Mr. Küpper and for ourselves and exceeded the expectations of everyone involved.

In just four years, Burkhard Küpper has developed from owner of a small tax consulting firm with 30 employees to managing director of a major law firm known throughout Germany with more than 10 locations and over 160 employees.

An overview of the milestones:

1. We create for”Küpper & colleagues“From scratch, a new website with a conversion-optimized system of landing pages, which allows interested parties to be converted into clients in a targeted manner. In addition, we are developing a digital acquisition system that automatically generates high-quality client inquiries (“leads”). To do this, we primarily use Google Ads. Through continuous optimizations and adjustments, we can scale the campaign to a dizzying level within a few months, at which pro Day 100 queries generated become. The firm's capacities are exhausted, Mr. Küpper is suspending the admission of new clients...

2nd In order to meet the consistently high demand, we are launching the continuing education brand “Steuern Nein Danke”. The first product to be launched under this brand is a seminar where entrepreneurs, self-employed people and freelancers learn how to effectively reduce their tax burden. With this seminar, we are creating a completely new type of tax advice that does not focus passively on providing standard services, but on actively transferring knowledge. With the help of innovative video ads in which Mr. Küpper himself speaks into the camera, we reach millions of people and can achieve such a turnover of 3.3 million euros achieve.

3rd Mr. Küpper has set himself the goal of helping as many entrepreneurs as possible to save taxes. In order to achieve this goal and further increase our reach, we decide to publish a book in spring 2021. On over 300 pages, it is explained step by step which basic methods and strategies entrepreneurs can use to save taxes. At the end of 2021, we will launch the book both via our own online shop and via Amazon, Thalia, Hugendubel & Co. In just a few weeks, the book was able to sell more than Sell 10,000 times and to Amazon bestsellers ascend.

We are proud to continue to support Mr. Küpper in realizing his vision in the future. Because what we've achieved so far was just the beginning... We still have a lot of plans together!