Google Ads for accountants: a complete guide to success

Question: how many new leads can your accountancy firm reasonably expect from Google Ads? That depends on how you set up for success.

Google Ads are no doubt one of the most effective, accountable ways of driving high-intent leads for accountants. But as with so much of your working life, success is something of a numbers game. Here’s everything you need to know about creating a revenue-driving Google Ads campaign.

Fancy a 1,400% increase in leads?

Analytical. Detail-orientated. Data-driven. The same skills that make you a great accountant give you a good chance of being able to succeed with Google Ads. But it takes time to get the really transformative returns. And maybe time isn’t a commodity you’re blessed with.

At Adbetter we specialise in managing Google ad campaigns that get BIG results – such as a 1,400% increase in leads and £3.7m new customer revenue for Alesco Investment Property. Ask for a free proposal and we will outline what you can expect within three months of working with us. And with our performance pricing, our fees are tied to the results we deliver.

“Since working with Adbetter, our digital paid media channels have grown to be one of our most consistent generators of high-quality leads. Our lead volumes from paid media channels have increased over 1,400% whilst maintaining a low cost per lead.”

– Matthew Fawl, Director, Alesco Investment Property

An introduction to Google ads for accountants

With Google Ads, you can target people with high conversion intent – getting your business seen at the precise moment people are searching for services that you provide.

Before we get into the nitty gritty, it’s worth noting that as well as search, Google Ads includes the Google Display Network, which gives you the ability to advertise across a vast landscape of websites, mobile apps and more.

However, for this guide we will focus on search. That’s where there are big opportunities for accountancy businesses.

Key benefits of Google Ads for accountants

When you get your ads right, it’s practically an open door to enhanced profits. Here are three reasons why Google Ads is particularly well suited to accountancy businesses.

• It captures intent. You can capture leads at the precise moment they are searching for the expertise that you provide.
• It’s cost effective. You only pay when someone clicks your ad. And why would someone click unless they were interested in your services?
• It’s easy to control your spend. Automate daily, weekly, monthly or maximum budgets per campaign. Every penny is accounted for in the campaign performance data.

Getting set for success

Let’s look at some tips that will help to make sure your Google Ads campaign becomes an effective lead generation machine.

Be prepared to pay

You get exposure in Google Ads by bidding on keywords. And there’s no denying it: keywords related to financial services are expensive compared to most other industries. 

That makes it important to…

Know your numbers

Before you launch a Google Ads campaign, you need to run your numbers. It’s important to know the average lifetime value of your customers, average order value, how long it takes for them to convert and so on.

Only when you know your numbers can you determine how much you are willing to bid to get exposure in Google Ads.  

Planning a campaign for accountants

The Google ads interface is intuitive and easy to use. You are likely to be able to begin getting results with no prior experience – and this guide will help you.

Here are some tips for creating your first campaign.

Create your account

Let’s kick off with the basics. To create Google Ads, you need to set up an account. Head to ads.google.com to sign up. Your account is where you will control billing, admin permissions and, of course, your ad campaigns.

Think about niches and business types

Once your account is up and running, take some time to ruminate on the areas of your business that you want to promote. Niche down and create a list of specialist services that you provide or types of professionals you want to target. For example, the services you offer to a sole trader – and the way you pitch to them – is likely to be very different from the way you work with a large corporation.

Think about your audience – and where they live

Google provides you with powerful profiling tools to zero in on your target audience. Audience variables you can work into your targeting include:

• Marital status
• Homeownership status
• Parental status
• Education background
• Hobbies and interests
• Occupation and income

…and an awful lot more.

These tools can help to make sure your ads are served only to the people who are likely to be interested in your services – keeping your campaign lean, mean and efficient.

You can also feed Google your existing customer data and ask it to serve your ads to people with similar characteristics via the lookalike audience function.

Keyword research – and the need to consider intent

Next it’s time to think about the keywords that you want to target. Put yourself in a prospective client’s shoes and consider what they might search for to find the accountancy services that you want to promote.

Google’s free keyword planner can help you narrow your focus – and will also provide input on the search volume, competition and potential cost for the keywords you are thinking of using for your campaign.

Creating your first campaign

It’s time to get your first campaign out into the world of Google search. From your Google Ads account, click the blue plus sign to start creating your campaign.

Set your campaign objective

The first thing you’ll do is choose a campaign objective. For lead generation – surprise, surprise – we’d recommend the leads objective. Here’s a quick summary of each objective.

• Sales: Focuses on increasing the sales and profitability of your products or services. Bidding strategies are aimed at clicks, assets and ads that prompt purchases.
• Leads: Aims to drive leads for your business by capturing customer information through form submissions.
• Website traffic: Emphasises driving traffic to your website.
• App promotion: Specifically designed for creating a streamlined journey to encourage installs of a mobile app.
• Awareness and consideration: This is aimed at boosting the visibility and recognition of your brand.
• Local store visits and promotions: Designed to drive footfall to bricks-and-mortar locations.

Set your campaign type

Choose a Search campaign – we want your ads appearing in the world’s most famous search engine, rather than the Google Display Network. 

Choose (and exclude) locations

In the digital age, accountancy services are increasingly location agnostic. However, if you prefer doing business in person, then you can set your ads to display to people within a set geographic location. You can also exclude locations where you don’t want people seeing your ads.

Another way to reach your community is with Local Services Ads. These work slightly differently to regular lead generation ads. Firstly you only pay when a potential customer gets in touch through your ad – making them arguably even more accountable than standard search placements. Secondly your ad will be displayed with a ‘Google Guaranteed’ badge that can signal to your potential customers that your service is authentic and reliable. 

Find out more about Local Service Ads here.

Create your ad groups

Remember earlier in this article where we covered the different niches that you want to promote? Your ad groups is where you will segregate these niches. For example, you might have separate ad groups for different accountancy services or different types of client.  

Specify your keywords

Next, list the keywords that you want your ads to show up for.

Some example keywords:

• Accountants for freelancers
• Accountants in [location]
• Fixed fee accountants

Understanding keyword match types

Google lets you define how tightly it matches your keywords. For example, you can set it to display your ad for keywords that are loosely related to yours, or insist that your ad is only served when your exact keywords are searched for.

Here’s a quick explanation of the keyword match types.

• Broad match: Your ad will be displayed for all keywords that are similar to the keywords you specified. This is the default setting.
• Phrase match: Your ads are shown in search queries that contain the exact phrase or a close variation. 
• Exact match: Your ads will only be served when someone searches your exact keywords, with no additional words.

There’s no right or wrong answer here. It all depends on the keywords you have chosen and the search volumes your keywords attract. Exact match allows you to be highly targeted. Whereas broad match can enhance your exposure – although potentially serves your ad to people with less interest in your services.

Be prepared to experiment. See what gets results.

What about negative keywords?

Just as you can define keywords that you want your ad to be shown for, you can define keywords that block your ad from being shown.

Why would you want to do this? Let’s say you have an ad based on the keyword “accountants in Austin”. You’ll want to make sure anyone searching for “accountant jobs in Austin” are excluded from seeing your ad.

Specifying “jobs” as a negative keyword reduces the chances of you paying for a click that won’t create new business. Think carefully about other words you can exclude to weed out the searchers with no intent of becoming your next client.

Where are you sending your leads?

It’s almost time to start crafting the words that people will read when they see your ad. But first, think about where you’re sending your leads.

To start with, you need to provide a URL that your ad will drive traffic to. This should be a unique landing page that’s specific to your ad group. More on that shortly.

You will also be prompted to provide a ‘display path’. This is simply the way you want your landing page URL to be displayed in your ad.

For instance, your destination URL might be something like:

http://www.amazing-accounting.com/campaigns/landing-pages/sole-trader/

But you could style it as:

amazing-accounting.com/sole-trader

Much neater.

Creating compelling headlines and descriptions

Google Ads comprise of one headline and two descriptions.

• 1x headline (30 characters)
• 2x descriptions (90 character each)

One key thing to note is that Google ultimately creates your ads for you. You feed it variations of headlines and descriptions – and it finds the best combinations for driving leads to your business.

You can influence the emphasis Google puts on key headlines or descriptions by using pinned placements: pinning your key copy lines in position one, two, three and so on.

Here are some tips for attention-grabbing ad copy.

Remember your reader

There’s a real person behind every search. Think about what type of business they run, what their ambitions are and what their doubts are about reaching out to an accountant. Think about the problem they are trying to solve and position your services as the answer. And remember: sole traders have different objectives than large corporations. Target accordingly.

There are plenty of scammy-sounding ads out there that claim to help people with their tax liabilities. As a point of comparison, think about how you can show that you are professional, credible and authentic.

Include your keywords in your copy

It’s a good idea to use your campaign keywords in your ad copy. That way when your ad is displayed in the search results, the relevant keywords will be emboldened, helping your ad to stand out.  

Make it measurable

Data can make it easier for people to realise the potential benefits of working with you. So if you have any quantifiable successes that are relevant to your services, include them.

Communicate with clarity

You have milliseconds to grab your reader and get your message across. Be clear. Stay relevant. Write with brevity.

Should you use assets?

Assets are pieces of additional information that can be included in your ad. We’d advise steering clear of additional links to your website. You want your ad to have a singular focus – driving all clicks through to your landing page.

However, you may want to take the option to include your phone number – which people browsing on their smartphone can click straight from the Google search to call you. You may also wish to include the locations of your offices if it’s relevant to the region you’re targeting.

From clicks to clients: optimising your landing pages

When you’re paying for every click, it’s worth thinking carefully about where that click takes your new leads. It needs to work as hard as possible to turn each click into a new enquiry.  

Landing page best practice

As mentioned, you should have a specific landing page that’s highly relevant to each of your ad groups. Here are some quick tips on landing page best practice.

• Design and copywriting. Your landing page should feel like a continuation of the ad your visitor clicked. It must be optimised for mobile and include a compelling proposition above the fold.
• Create a closed journey. Single-mindedness is a strength when it comes to landing pages. Limit navigation options and stay focused on one clear call to action.
• Gather data. The main aim of a landing page is to gather data on your lead for future marketing. Create a form that allows you to start the conversation. (You can create a fully branded, multi-step lead generation form in seconds with Nerchr – the platform we built for managing our own campaigns. Perfect for pre-qualifying your leads and prioritising follow ups. Find out more here.)
• Remember your GDPR obligations. For your forms that means having a tick box that gets people to actively opt in to your comms. Be clear about who will be contacting your lead and how they will be contacted. You must also provide a link to your privacy policy.
• Utilise social proof and trust signals. Testimonials from previous clients can go a long way to helping build faith in your credibility. If applicable, utilise trust signals such as industry accreditations, qualifications or awards.

Create a lead magnet

To repeat: the main objective of your landing page is to gather data on your leads. You can incentivise form completion with some sort of giveaway. That could be a guide to your accountancy services. A free consultation. Or perhaps a calculator that enables your leads to see how much money you could save them.

Screen your audience

It’s usually better to have a small number of leads with high conversion intent than a bunch of leads who are never going to become customers. And even though you’ve already paid for the click, you can use Nerchr to design your lead generation form in a way that screens out people who are unlikely to convert.

For example, let’s say you only want to attract potential clients with a large turnover. By setting – let’s say – £250,000 as the minimum annual turnover option in your form, you can weed out smaller businesses that you may not want to work with.

Obviously this increases your cost per lead (you’ve already paid for the person to click through to your landing page). But it can leave you with a highly targeted group of leads to follow up with. And over time Nerchr learns which type of leads are most likely to become customers and optimises your audience targeting to find more of them. Same ad spend, better leads.

Set your campaign budget

The last step in creating your Google ads for accountants campaign is to set a budget. And you have plenty of freedom to experiment. You can set daily or weekly budgets, create rules around the time of day or annual seasonality and change your settings anytime within a matter of clicks.

Here are the main bidding strategies to be aware of.

• Maximise clicks: Google will aim to bring you the most clicks possible for your daily budget.
• Maximise conversions: Google will aim to get the most conversions possible for your daily budget.
• Target CPA (cost per acquisition): Like the above, but Google tries to get as many conversions as possible within CPA parameters that you set.

Performance tracking and optimisation for accountancy ads

It’s no overstatement. Your ability to monitor – and draw insight from – your performance data can be the difference between success and failure. You must be prepared to scrutinise what’s working – and what isn’t – so you can iterate your campaigns to drive performance over time.

Set up conversion tracking

You need to tell Google what represents conversion for your campaign. Under “Tools and Settings,” go to “Conversions” to create a new conversion action.

This will often be measured when a visitor fills out a contact form or signs up on your website, but you can also measure telephone calls.

UPDATE: The arrival of journey-aware bidding has made it easier to optimise your Google ad campaigns based on the conversion events that matter most to your business. We’ve written an explainer below. One to bookmark if you’re serious about getting results with Google Ads.

>> Journey-aware bidding: optimise Google Ads for actual revenue, not just leads

Always monitor your metrics

Your ads dashboard will provide lots of data on how your ads are performing. Too many businesses only give it cursory attention. But this data holds the intel that will help you crack the code of campaign performance.

Is there something you are saying in your messaging that is encouraging clicks? Is one location dramatically outperforming another? Is one type of accountancy service getting more attention?  

When you know what’s getting results, you can double down on those tactics – creating more ad variants based on what’s working and ditching the stuff that isn’t. Test, repeat, test, repeat.

Review your campaign search terms

Regularly review the search terms that trigger your ads to show up. This insight helps you refine your keyword and negative keyword selections so that your ads only appear for the most relevant queries.

Nurture your leads

Acquiring a fresh lead is one thing. Turning that lead into a new client is quite another. Make sure you have a lead nurturing process in place – whether that’s via email, phone calls or retargeting efforts on other PPC channels.

Let us drive results for you

Congratulations. You’ve made it to the end of a weighty article. As you can see, there’s plenty to consider when it comes to creating successful, revenue-boosting Google ads for accountants. It takes time and tenacity to get results.

At Adbetter we can help you skip to the bit where your ads are driving business revenue. It’s what we do for our clients every day. Ask us for a free proposal and we will lay out what you can expect within three months of working with us. There’s no obligation. If you choose to walk away after that the choice is yours – and you lose nothing.

Rather manage your own campaigns? No problem. Grab a 30-day trial of Nerchr and try out the platform we built to be the nerve centre of PPC revenue generation, orchestrating over £10 million in ad spend. It gets results. You will too.

• Adbetter: officially an award-winning PPC agency

You should also read:

• 15 tips on lead generation for professional services
• Getting results from Google display ads for lead generation
• The no-fluff guide to Facebook ads for lead generation