How do accountants know if their marketing is working? Count enquiries by source, not followers

The short answer

An accountancy firm knows its marketing is working when it can see new enquiries arriving from the things it does, and some of those enquiries becoming clients. You only need a handful of numbers to see that. The most important one is where each new enquiry actually came from.

In practice, that means four habits. Ask every new enquirer how they found you and write it down. Keep a one-page tally each month. Check your Google Business Profile figures alongside it. And give each channel at least three months of steady effort before you judge it. Follower counts and impressions can wait.

Ask every enquirer how they found you

The single most useful number in a firm's marketing is the source of each new enquiry. No tool can tell you this as reliably as the person enquiring, so ask them.

• Ask on the first call or reply."Can I ask how you came across us?" takes five seconds and most people are happy to answer.
• Add it to your contact form.A short "How did you hear about us?" field with a few options and an "other" box catches people who never phone.
• Write the answer down straight away. Put it in a spreadsheet, your practice management system or a notebook. An answer you meant to record but did not is lost.
• Push for the detail."Google" is useful. "I searched for a landlord accountant in Leeds" is much better, because it tells you which page or profile did the work. "A friend" is good. "A friend, and then I read your reviews" is better still.

Keep the record to what you need: the date, the source, the service they asked about, and later whether they became a client. You do not need any other details in the tally.

Keep a one-page monthly tally

Once a month, turn those answers into a single page. It should fit on one screen and take no more than a few minutes to fill in. These are the rows that matter.

• Enquiries by source. How many came from referrals, Google, your website, LinkedIn, Facebook, reviews, networking and anything else you do.
• Enquiries that became clients. Again by source. Some channels bring lots of enquiries that never sign. Others bring few, but almost all of them do.
• Rough cost of what you did. Money spent on adverts, tools or outside help, plus a rough count of the hours partners and staff put in. An estimate is fine.
• One line of notes. What you changed this month, so you can connect a change in the numbers to the thing that caused it.

Compare the tally with what you planned to spend. Our guide to how much an accounting firm should spend on marketing covers setting that budget and reviewing it every quarter, and these monthly rows are what the quarterly review is built on.

Use your Google Business Profile as a free local dashboard

If clients find you locally, your Google Business Profile already counts a lot of what you need, at no cost. Google's help page on Business Profile performance explains what it shows. The figures are only available for verified profiles, and you need to be signed in to the Google Account that manages the profile. To find them, go to your Business Profile, click Performance, choose a time period and click Apply.

For an accountancy firm, these are the figures worth writing down each month.

• Views. How many people viewed your profile on Search and Maps. Google counts unique visitors here, and counts a person only once a day.
• Calls. How many times someone clicked the call button on your profile. That is a tap on the button, not a completed call, so compare it with what your phones actually received.
• Website clicks. How many times people clicked through to your website from the profile.
• Directions. How many people asked for directions to your office. This matters most if clients visit in person.
• Searches.The search terms people used to find your profile. Google updates this at the start of each month and says it can take up to five days to appear. It is a quick way to see whether people find you for your niche or only by your firm's name.

One caution from the same page: these figures include activity from both ordinary search results and Google Ads. If you run adverts, remember that some of the views and calls came through them. Our guide to SEO for accountants covers setting up the profile itself, and our guide to getting more Google reviews covers the part of the profile prospects read most closely.

Why followers and impressions are the wrong scoreboard

Follower counts and impressions are easy to see, which is why people judge their marketing by them. They are the wrong scoreboard for an accountancy firm, for three reasons.

• Most of your future clients will never follow you. A business owner who needs an accountant next spring may read three of your posts, check your reviews and phone you, without ever pressing follow.
• A big audience can be the wrong audience. Other accountants, recruiters and students follow accountancy firms too. A thousand of them is worth less than twenty local business owners.
• Neither number pays fees. Impressions tell you a post was shown. They do not tell you whether anyone who could become a client saw it, or did anything next.

Post figures still have a job: they tell you which topics people respond to, so you can write more of those. If you publish through Pillr, its dashboard shows the impressions and engagement for each post it published, so you can see which posts actually got attention rather than watching the follower total. Use that to choose what to post next. Use enquiries and new clients to judge whether posting is worth it.

Early signs and final results

Marketing numbers come in two kinds, and you need both. Early signs move quickly and tell you whether something is starting to work. Final results move slowly and tell you whether it did.

Early signs (check monthly)

• Views, calls and website clicks on your Google Business Profile.
• Visits to your website's contact page, if your website has analytics set up.
• Replies and messages on your posts from people who could become clients.
• New reviews, and new searches for your niche in the profile's search terms.

Final results (judge quarterly)

• Enquiries, by source.
• New clients signed, by source.
• The fees those clients bring in, compared with what the marketing cost.

Early signs rising while final results stay flat is normal in the first months of a new channel. Early signs flat for months is the warning. Final results are what you decide on.

Give every channel a fair trial

Give each channel at least three months of consistent effort before you judge it. Most of what works for accountants builds slowly. Reviews accumulate, pages take time to appear in search, and people often see several posts from a firm before they get in touch.

• Consistent means consistent. Posting weekly for three weeks, then vanishing for six during the January rush, is not a trial. Judge the channel only on months where the effort actually happened.
• Change one thing at a time. If you start posting, rewrite the website and run adverts in the same month, you will not know which one brought the enquiries.
• Decide the review date up front.Write it in the tally's notes when you start, so the decision happens on a date rather than on a bad day.

Keeping the effort steady is usually the hard part, especially in busy season. That is where a tool helps. Pillr drafts posts from your firm's website for a partner to approve and schedules them, so the three months of steady posting happen even when nobody has time to write.

What the numbers look like when something is broken

The tally is most useful when the numbers do not add up, because the pattern usually points to the fix. These are the common ones.

• Lots of profile views, hardly any calls or website clicks. People are finding you and then choosing someone else. The listing needs work, not the marketing: check your reviews, photos, description, services and opening hours.
• Plenty of website visits, few enquiries. The website is not turning visitors into conversations. Make the phone number and contact form easy to find on every page, and say clearly who you help.
• Enquiries arrive but few become clients. Look at the reply. Slow answers, generic templates or unclear fees lose people at this stage. Our guide to how to get clients as an accountant covers replying fast and making it easy to say yes.
• Good engagement on posts, no enquiries from them.Check who is engaging. If it is mostly other accountants, the posts are written for peers rather than clients. Write about your clients' problems instead.
• Enquiries from the wrong kind of client. Your marketing is working, but it is describing the wrong firm. Say more clearly who you help, and who you do not.
• "Source not given" is your biggest row. The measurement is broken, not the marketing. Go back to asking every enquirer and writing it down.

A 20-minute monthly review

Put a recurring 20 minutes in the diary for the first working week of each month. That is enough for a small firm.

• Fill in last month's enquiries and clients by source from your record.
• Copy in the Google Business Profile views, calls, website clicks and directions.
• Note the rough money and hours spent, and anything you changed.
• Look for one of the broken patterns above, and pick one thing to fix this month.
• Every third month, compare channels on new clients and cost, and decide what to keep.

If you want to see what a steady month of posts for your firm would look like before you start measuring them, paste your website address on the home page and Pillr will draft them. All the plans are on the pricing page.

This guide is general information, not advice on your own circumstances. Check your own professional body's guidance before you publish anything about your services.

Questions accountants ask about measuring marketing