What is digital marketing for accountants? The channels, how to choose and a 90-day plan

The short answer

Digital marketing for accountants is the work a firm does online so that the right people find it, trust it and remember it. It has five parts: a website, search, social media, email and paid adverts. A small firm does not need to do all five. It needs a website that says clearly what it does, and two channels it can keep going every month, including January.

Which two depends on how the firm wins work now. A firm that people search for by service and town should start with search. A firm that grows by referral should start with social media and email, because those keep it in front of people who already know it. A firm that needs enquiries this month should add a small paid search campaign.

This guide explains what each channel is for, how to choose between them, and what to do in the first 90 days. Each channel has its own detailed guide, linked from its section.

What digital marketing means for a firm

Digital marketing means any marketing that reaches people through a screen. You will also see it called online marketing for accountants or internet marketing for accountants. They are the same thing. It sits beside the offline ways a firm wins work, such as referrals, networking and local sponsorship, and it does not replace them.

For an accountancy firm the online channels do three different jobs, and it helps to know which job you are paying for.

• Being found. Someone who needs an accountant searches for one. Search results and paid search adverts put the firm in front of that person.
• Being checked. Someone who has been given your name looks you up before they call. The website, the Google Business Profile, the reviews and the social media pages are what they see.
• Being remembered. Clients, past enquirers and local business owners do not need you today. Social media posts and emails keep the firm in mind until they do, or until a friend asks them to recommend someone.

A firm that wins most of its new clients by recommendation gets more from the second and third jobs than from the first. That is worth remembering when an agency offers to "get you to the top of Google".

For the full list of ways to win work, online and offline, see our guide to how accountants get clients.

The website: where every channel leads

Get the website right first, because every other channel sends people to it. A search result, a post, an email and an advert all end with a visitor on a page of your site, deciding in a few seconds whether to get in touch. If the page does not answer their questions, the money and time spent bringing them there is wasted.

A small firm's website needs to do five things.

• Say who you help and where, at the top."Accountants for contractors and small limited companies in Leeds" does this. "A modern, proactive practice" does not.
• Give each service its own page. A person looking for help with a rental property should land on a page about landlords, not on a list of twelve services.
• Show the people. Names, photographs and qualifications. A prospect is choosing someone to trust with their finances.
• Make contact easy. A phone number, an email address and a short form on every page, answered within one working day.
• Work on a phone. Open your own site on a mobile and try to find the phone number. Many of your visitors will be doing the same.

Search: people who are already looking

Search engine optimisation, or SEO, is the work of making the firm appear when someone searches for what it does. It is the only free channel that reaches strangers at the moment they want an accountant. It is also slow.

For a local firm the first job is the Google Business Profile, the panel that appears in Google Maps and beside local results. Google says local results are based on relevance, distance and prominence, and that there is no way to request or pay for a better local ranking. So the work is to complete the profile accurately and collect genuine reviews. The second job is the website: a page for each service, and plain answers to the questions clients ask.

Expect to wait. Google's SEO Starter Guide says some changes might take effect in a few hours and others could take several months.

Best for: firms that serve a town or a named kind of client, and can wait a few months for the result. The step-by-step version is in our guide to SEO for accountants.

Social media: people who know you

Social media keeps the firm in front of people who already know it, and reassures people who look it up. It rarely wins a client from a single post. Its value is that clients, referrers and local business owners see the firm's name each week, attached to something useful.

Pick one platform to start. LinkedIn suits firms whose clients are companies and their directors. Facebook suits firms that serve local sole traders, landlords and personal tax clients. Two or three posts a week on fixed days is enough, as long as it continues through busy season.

Best for: firms that grow by referral. Platform choice, a posting plan and what the professional bodies say about posts are covered in our guide to social media marketing for accountants.

Email: clients and past enquirers

Email reaches the people most likely to buy from you again or recommend you: your own clients and the people who have enquired before. A short monthly email with one deadline, one explanation and one offer of help is enough. It costs little to send and is easy to neglect.

Email is also the channel with the strictest rules. The ICO's guidance on the electronic mail marketing rules says that to send unsolicited marketing emails to individual subscribers you must have their consent or be able to meet all the requirements of a soft opt-in. It says you can send them to corporate subscribers without either. A client list usually holds both kinds, so check which rule applies before you send to everyone.

Best for: any firm with a client list, for extra services and referrals more than for new names. Who counts as an individual subscriber, how the soft opt-in works and what to send are in our guide to email marketing for accountants.

Paid adverts: reach you can switch on

Paid adverts are the one channel that can bring an enquiry this week. They are also the one that stops the day you stop paying. Use them when the firm has capacity to fill, a clear service to sell and a page for the advert to open.

Search adverts are the usual place to start, because the person has typed what they need. Google's guide to Google Ads says you pay only when someone interacts with your ad, and that you decide how much you want to spend. Adverts on LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram reach people by who they are, not by what they searched for, so they suit a specific offer to a specific group.

Best for: firms that need enquiries soon and can measure what each one cost. The channels, the wording and the rules are in our guide to how to advertise accounting services.

How to choose your channels

Choose by how the firm wins work today, how soon it needs more, and how many hours it can give each month. Two channels done every month beat five done for a fortnight. Find the description below that fits the firm best.

• Most new clients come by recommendation. Start with one social platform and a monthly email. Both make it more likely that the people who know you mention you, and that the person they mention you to likes what they find.
• You serve one town or district. Start with the Google Business Profile and reviews, then add Facebook or LinkedIn. Local search is where a stranger nearby will look.
• You serve one kind of client across the country. Start with service pages and written answers for that kind of client, and LinkedIn. Contractors, dentists or e-commerce sellers search for an accountant who knows their trade.
• You are new and have room for clients now. Add a small paid search campaign to the above. It buys enquiries while the slower channels build.
• You are full and want better clients, not more. Skip adverts. Use email and social media to tell existing clients about the services you would like to do more of.

The same reasoning applies to digital marketing for accounting firms with several partners. The difference is who does the work: a larger firm can name one person to own each channel, where a sole practitioner has to choose fewer.

One topic, used four times

The channels share their material, so adding a second one costs less than the first. A firm that writes one useful explanation a month can use it in four places. Take a question clients ask every autumn: what records a landlord needs to keep.

• Website. A page that answers the question properly. This is the version that can appear in search results for months afterwards.
• Social media. Two short posts: one with the three records landlords most often lack, one with the date they are needed by. Each links to the page.
• Email. A paragraph in the monthly email to clients who have rental income, with the same link.
• Advert.If you want more landlord clients, the same page is where a search advert for "accountant for landlords" should open.

One hour of a partner's knowledge has been used four times. Firms that treat each channel as a separate job run out of time by the second month.

A 90-day plan

Spend the first month on foundations, the second on a routine, and the third on measuring and adjusting. This plan assumes a small firm with three or four hours a month to give and little or no budget.

Days 1 to 30: foundations

• Rewrite the top of the home page so it says who you help and where.
• Check each main service has its own page, and write the two that are missing.
• Complete the Google Business Profile and ask five happy clients for a review.
• Choose one social platform and finish the firm's page on it.
• Start asking every enquirer how they found you, and write the answers down.

Days 31 to 60: a routine

• Write a month of posts in one sitting, two or three a week, and schedule them.
• Send the first monthly email to clients, once you have checked who you may email.
• Publish one page that answers a question clients ask, and use it in both.
• Name one partner who approves everything before it goes out.

Days 61 to 90: measure and adjust

• Count the enquiries and where each came from.
• Note which posts and which email brought replies, and plan more on those topics.
• If you need work sooner, test a small paid search campaign for one service.
• Decide what to keep, what to drop and who does it next quarter.

Do not judge the whole effort at day 90. Adverts will have shown what they can do. Search, social media and email will only just have started.

The rules apply online too

Everything a firm publishes online is covered by the same rules as a printed advert: the UK advertising code, and the code of your professional body. Nothing about a website, a post or an email is exempt because it feels informal.

• The advertising code. The Advertising Standards Authority lists what its remit covers. The list includes claims made on a company's website, a company's own social media content where it is directly connected to its products or services, paid-for search listings and commercial emails.
• Your professional body. ICAEW's marketing helpsheetsays advertising material should be legal, decent, honest, truthful and clear. It says firms shall not make exaggerated claims for services offered, qualifications possessed or experience gained, and must not disparage or discredit others in their promotional material. ACCA, AAT and ICB members should read their own body's code, which this article does not summarise.
• Outsourcing. The same ICAEW helpsheet says firms are entitled to outsource their marketing work to agencies and specialists, but remain responsible for any marketing or publicity carried out on their behalf.
• Email.The ICO's rules on who you may email are a separate matter from the advertising code. See the email section above.

In practice this means three habits. Make only claims you could prove. Say nothing about other firms. Never mention a client, or use a testimonial, without their agreement. This is a summary of published guidance, not a ruling on your own material, so ask your professional body if a claim is in doubt.

What to measure

Measure enquiries and where they came from. Every channel offers its own numbers, such as visits, followers, opens and clicks, and none of them is the result. The result is a person who got in touch and became a client.

• Ask every enquirer how they found you. Write it down in one place. After a quarter this list is the most useful marketing report the firm has.
• Count enquiries by channel each month.Search, social media, email, adverts, referral. Expect "a friend recommended you and then I looked you up" to be common, and count it for both.
• Work out the cost of each new client. For adverts, divide the spend by the clients won. For the other channels, count the hours.
• Compare it with the fee. A channel is working when a client costs clearly less to win than they pay in their first year.

Eight marketing ideas for accountants

These marketing ideas for accountants each take under an hour and cost nothing. Pick two this month.

• Add a review link to your email signature. Clients who are pleased with the firm will use it if it is in front of them.
• Turn the question you answered most this week into a post. If three clients asked, others are wondering.
• Write a deadline calendar for the year. Put it on the website and draw on it for posts and emails all year.
• Add "how did you hear about us?" to the enquiry form. It is the cheapest measurement there is.
• Ask each partner to complete their LinkedIn profile. Prospects look up the person as well as the firm.
• Email clients about a service they do not use. Many clients do not know everything the firm offers.
• Reply to every review. A short thank you shows the next reader that someone at the firm is paying attention.
• Search for your own firm on a phone. Check that the name, address, phone number and opening hours are right wherever they appear.

Do it yourself, hire an agency or use a tool

Do yourself the parts that need the firm's knowledge, and get help with the parts that need time or a skill you lack. No agency knows what your clients ask about. No partner has a spare day a month in January.

• Keep in the firm: deciding who you want as clients, what the firm says about itself, the answers to client questions, and approval of everything published.
• Worth paying a specialist for: building or rebuilding the website, and setting up and running paid adverts. Both need skills that take longer to learn than they are worth to a small firm.
• Worth giving to a tool: the repeated work, such as drafting and scheduling posts. This is the part firms stop doing when they get busy.

Pillr is a tool built for accountancy firmsthat does the social media part. It reads your website, drafts a month of posts in the firm's voice, and schedules them to LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram once a partner has approved each one. It does not build websites, run adverts or do your SEO. It keeps one channel going every week so the partners can spend their marketing hours on the rest.

Paste your firm's URL on the home page to see the posts Pillr drafts from your own website, or look at plans and pricing first.

Questions accountants ask