An employer hired forty people in 2025. Nobody checked if the credit was ever filed.

WOTC lives in one narrow window: the 28 days after someone starts work. A firm that waits on a CPA introduction misses that window by definition, because the CPA only calls about the employer they already have on file, usually at tax time, long after the hire happened. Payroll consultants have the same blind spot.

The employer that ran a hiring wave in 2025, the one with a new onboarding system or a staffing surge nobody screened, never got that call. This is a credit tied to the hire date, not remaining pandemic-wage work. New hires are not eligible today, because the credit lapsed for people who begin work after December 31, 2025. That distinction matters once, stated plainly, and then the page should stop repeating it.

The CPA Only Sends the Employer They Already Have

Retail, hospitality, and staffing firms already screen new hires for background checks, I-9 verification, and drug tests. WOTC eligibility screening should ride along with all of that at onboarding. It usually does not, because the room that could catch it is split three ways: the employer, an HR or onboarding owner, and a CPA or WOTC vendor who only sees the return once a year.

Payroll consultants see the hiring flow but rarely own the form. A CPA sees the tax return but rarely sees the new hire in real time. Nobody in that room automatically wires screening into the first day of work, and the certification deadline passes 28 days after the start date.

Correspondence Reaches the Employer With 2025 Hires Still to Claim

An employer that hired at volume in 2025 does not need a lecture on what WOTC is. They need to hear that a firm exists which can tell them whether their certified 2025 hires were fully claimed on the return, and which will have screening running at hire if Congress renews the credit.

Direct mail and email correspondence, addressed to the HR director or the owner running the hiring push, name the specific situation: a multi-location employer with 2025 hiring volume, a staffing firm with a full year of placements, a payroll system migration that may have left certifications unclaimed. That correspondence reaches the employer while the return years that can still be amended are open.

For the Employer Already Asking the Question, the Visibility Program Runs Alongside It

Some employers are already asking. A CPA mentions WOTC at a planning meeting and the controller goes looking that afternoon. A new hire's paperwork triggers a question nobody can answer, and someone types work opportunity tax credit or WOTC screening into Google that same day.

For that slice, a Google ad tuned to the specific query reaches them faster than a letter ever could. The Visibility Program runs paid search for that moment, alongside the correspondence program, while LinkedIn ads reach the CPAs and payroll consultants who refer this work, with paid placements and real thought leadership rather than a connection-request script.

What a Buyer Actually Searches

The exact phrasing varies by industry: WOTC for staffing, WOTC for restaurants, WOTC screening software, work opportunity tax credit consultant. The trigger behind the search is almost always one of three things: a past hiring wave whose credits may not have been claimed, a new payroll or onboarding system that surfaced the gap, or a CPA who asked the question out loud in a meeting the employer cannot stop thinking about. Correspondence and paid search should both speak to whichever of the three actually applies, not a single generic tax-credit pitch.

Volume Is the Filter

The per-hire credit amount only matters at volume. A staffing firm, a restaurant group, or a multi-location retailer hiring every week can turn WOTC into a real line item. A professional services firm hiring two people a year almost never can, and a campaign that pretends otherwise wastes the spend on a lead that was never going to close. Target group categories are set by statute; naming them here is not a promise that every hire qualifies, and the campaign should never imply otherwise.

The employers worth reaching are the ones with an onboarding machine already running, because that is the only place hire-time screening can actually live. The same math never works for a boutique consultancy adding two employees a year, no matter how well the campaign is written.

Objections We Hear

Payroll already does this. Some payroll platforms offer WOTC as a checkbox and still do not reliably catch the hire. The employer searching "payroll says they do WOTC and we are not seeing it" already knows this.

We do not hire target groups. Then WOTC may not be the right file, and the campaign should not pretend every hire is a credit.

We will catch it at year end. The deadline is 28 calendar days after the start date, not year end, and that is exactly how the screening window gets missed. The employer who has already lived through that is the one who searches.

Is this the same thing as ERC? No. ERC is remaining pandemic-wage work; WOTC is a credit tied to the hire date, and the two run as separate practices for a reason. Confusing them in one pitch is how a firm starts sounding like a leftover COVID mill.

Who This Is Actually For

Firms that actually screen and file WOTC at volume, for staffing firms, restaurant groups, and multi-location retailers hiring on a weekly cadence. The file worth the spend is an employer already hiring at a scale where the per-hire credit adds up to something real. A firm that positions itself as a specialist overlay on an existing payroll or onboarding stack, rather than a rip-and-replace, is the stronger pitch to that buyer.

This is a poor fit for a firm chasing occasional hirers, or one that wants to reconstruct eligibility at year end instead of screening at hire.

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How This Is Billed

Most of this practice runs as retainer or revenue share, the two outbound models: correspondence to employers with volume hiring, billed either as a fixed monthly fee or as a share of the credits the program originates. Where a meaningful share of your buyers are already searching after a CPA raised the question, the Visibility Program runs alongside either model: ad spend paid directly to the platforms, with ROI Wire billed on a retainer that scales with that spend.

Full mechanics are on revenue share, retainer, and the Visibility Program.

What Is Not Included

ROI Wire does not perform the screening or file the credit forms. We put the firm in front of the employer whose hiring already created the opportunity. The firm does the work.

Why We Are Not Generalists

A generalist marketing agency will not take the time to learn that WOTC is decided in the 28 days after a start date. The practice is specialized, the file count per employer is small until volume kicks in, and understanding that distinction bores an agency chasing broad traffic.

We run a tighter campaign built around the employers where volume makes the math work. Correspondence and ads can be live inside a week once approved; the website and directory presence that make a click or a letter convert take longer, because that is the trust layer a hiring manager needs before handing a specialist their onboarding process.

Program pages

Visibility Program

The full model: what you pay, what we bill, and who this actually fits.

Paid search

The mechanics behind the click: keywords, spend, and a retainer that scales with it.

Online profile development

What a buyer checks after the click and before the call: directories, bios, and reputation.