Procrastinating
tax filers are the target of a Liberty Tax Service promotion. The Virginia Beach, Va.-based company is offering 24-hour service through midnight April 15.
Liberty's "Up All Night" Slumber
Party began April 13 at 7 a.m. The company is best-known for its curbside costumed employees, known as "Liberty wavers," who jump up and down to attract consumers. Those employees are featured in a
video that the company has up on its You Tube page promoting the late-night hours.
The company has been getting the word out about the promotion via news releases and by circulating flyers to
businesses, says Liberty Tax Marketing/PR Director Nina Cunningham. "We have encouraged our offices to power up their visibility, and display signs," Cunningham tells Marketing Daily. "Our
Liberty wavers may have the signs with '1 Day to File,' or 'Open 24 hours.'"
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Staying open for the last days of the tax season is helpful to customers and could help foster future loyalty, says
Liberty CMO Martha O'Gorman. "Many people have difficulty finding a preparer who can do their return in the final days, which is stressful," she tells Marketing Daily. "Our goal is to be
accessible to as many people as possible right up to the filing deadline. There are over 20 million people who are yet to file. We want to be the tax preparer of choice and being open extended hours
helps us to create that reputation."
Liberty Tax Service is the fastest-growing retail tax preparation company in the industry's history. Founded in 1997 by CEO John T. Hewitt, the company has
prepared over 7 million individual income tax returns. With 41 years of tax industry experience, Hewitt stands as the most experienced CEO in the tax preparation business, having also founded Jackson
Hewitt Tax Service.
Tax companies have very unique marketing challenges compared to traditional organizations. In Liberty Tax's situation, the company has two peaks of marketing activity: the
first in July to enlist consumers to enroll in tax school so that they can have the staff necessary when tax season arrives, and the second from January to April -- tax season.
Add to that the
fact that Liberty is a franchise-based operation, meaning that each of its 1,700 franchisees conducts its own local marketing efforts, and it could be a recipe for disaster, including inconsistent
messaging and long approval times for collateral review. With 200-300 pieces coming to corporate a day for approval, that needed to change.
These are all issues that Liberty sought to battle a
year ago when it started using technology to streamline the process. Through its use of the Ad Builder application from Saepio, the organization is able to compartmentalize multiple preapproved pieces
of templates that franchisees can choose from to make a campaign with a local feel. The result is very fast ads with minimal time needed for approvals.