Accounting is a recurring-revenue business with a brutally seasonal acquisition window. Both facts should shape the plan, and usually neither does.
A tax client who stays seven years, adds bookkeeping, and refers a business partner is worth many multiples of the first engagement. Firms bidding as though they are buying one return will lose every competitive search to firms that priced correctly.
Work out your average client tenure and annual value before setting a budget. It usually reveals you can afford three to five times the cost per lead you assumed.
For tax-led firms, most of the year’s new clients arrive in a ten-week window — and so does every competitor. Costs rise, capacity constrains, and the temptation is to advertise only then.
The better structure: heavy acquisition through the season, and off-season advertising aimed at the services that do not spike — bookkeeping, advisory, payroll, entity setup. Those produce clients who are already in the door when tax season arrives.
Off-season clicks are also dramatically cheaper, which makes January’s cost per client look worse than it needs to.
Two different businesses. Individual returns are volume, price-sensitive, and increasingly competing with software. Business clients are higher value, stickier, and search differently — they use terms about their situation rather than about tax.
These need separate campaigns and separate pages. Combined, the individual volume swamps the business signal and the account optimizes toward the lower-value half.
Specificity about who you serve. "CPA for construction contractors" outperforms "full-service accounting firm" by a wide margin, because the prospect is trying to establish whether you understand their situation.
Also: a stated price or range for standard work, a clear description of the onboarding process, and evidence of the industries you actually work in. Vagueness reads as expensive.
Separate business and individual campaigns, off-season funding of non-seasonal services, niche-specific landing pages, and geography set wide enough to reflect that this work is increasingly remote-friendly.
Reporting on cost per signed engagement, with retention value stated so budget decisions are made against the right number.
Yes — for bookkeeping, advisory, and payroll. Clicks are far cheaper and those clients convert to tax work automatically.
Do not, on price. Compete on complexity — business returns, multi-state, entity structure, audit exposure.
Substantially. Industry-specific positioning is the strongest conversion lever in this category.
Less than most categories. Much of this work is remote now, which widens your viable market considerably.
Same execution layer, different mechanics. Twelve categories, every channel.
We run Accounting & Financial Services campaigns in every county in the country. A few of the markets we work in:
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