Pay-per-click advertising (PPC) is an effective, budget-friendly and highly customisable means of attracting new, high-quality prospects to your website. Yet it appears to be woefully underutilised by the accounting sector, perhaps due to a lack of comprehension regarding how best to apply it. This article dispenses with jargon and delivers a comprehensive field guide on PPC for accountants, enabling you to reach customers already looking for a local accountancy solution.
Recent figures have shown that, despite the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic on business, the UK’s accounting industry saw its biggest turnover in history from 2020-21. In the wake of lifted lockdown measures, we may presume this trend to have continued. Paired with a report from the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW) which found 3 out of 4 businesses use an external accountant, it’s clear that there is space for accounting freelancers and firms alike to expand their operations.
Doing so, of course, is not always easy. Reaching new customers who are in need of your services can be hard in a digital age cluttered with competition. Thankfully, PPC advertising allows accountants to cut through the noise, direct to the web browsers most likely to engage with their services. Let’s take a closer look.
Contents
- What is pay-per-click advertising?
- The major benefits of PPC for accountants
- Which form should your PPC accountancy ads take?
- 5 key tips for maximising your accountancy PPC potential
- Recapping PPC for accountants
What is pay-per-click advertising?
PPC advertising places adverts linked to your accountancy services in front of potential customers surfing the web. These adverts appear at the top of search engine results pages (SERPs) for specific keywords and search terms relevant to your practice, thus resulting in a higher average return on ad-spend (ROAS) compared to other marketing strategies. What’s more, PPC works well for SME accountancy firms and freelancers because PPC costs can be strictly controlled.
Below, we break down accountants’ PPC into its constituent parts.
Keywords and search terms
As the core element of PPC, keywords are the tools you use to reach your target audience. Following research into the most commonly searched-for terms in your accounting niche or local market, you select a range of the most relevant keywords and bid on them.
A search term is the phrase a user enters into their chosen web browser when browsing the internet. E.g., “The best accountants for sole traders in York”.
A keyword is the word(s) you bid on when managing your PPC ads (with longtail keywords comprising several words). A keyword may be caught by multiple different search terms. E.g., “best accountants” or “accountants for sole traders” or “accountants in York”.
In PPC advertising, your bid states how much you’d be willing to pay, per click, to tie your advert to a specific keyword. The more popular the keyword, the more you’ll likely have to bid; the more niche, the less. You only pay for your ad when you win the bid and only each time your ad is clicked on.
As an example, if you ran an accountancy firm in Leeds, you might bid on such search terms as:
- “Accountants in Leeds”
- “Affordable accountants in Leeds”
- “Accountancy firms in Yorkshire”
- “Best accountants in Leeds”
- “Best accountants in Yorkshire”
- “Accountants for small businesses”
- “Accountants for small businesses in Leeds”
- “Accountants for freelancers”
Keywords like these would have the best chance of attracting prospects who are specifically searching for services you can offer.
Negative keywords
Another intuitive feature of PPC advertising for accountancy firms is the ability to filter out so-called ‘negative keywords’. These are keywords which you do not want your advertisement linked to, generally because they are irrelevant and/or don’t lead to quality conversion rates.
Longtail keywords
Oftentimes keywords may be just 1-3 words long. For example, you could bid on the keyword “accounting”, though due to the immense popularity of such a term it would be costly to do so. Equally, a search term as broad as “accounting” is unlikely to yield positive ROAS; it’s simply not specific enough to the services you offer.
Instead, one free and simple way of improving ROAS on your accountants PPC is to utilise ‘longtail keywords.’ These are phrases comprising 4 or more words, which tend to have lower traffic and be much more specific – e.g. “accountants for sole trader tax return in Yorkshire” – and thus yield higher ROAS. They cost less to bid on and reach a more tailor-made audience.
Location-specific keywords
We won’t spend too long here – you’ve already seen examples of location-specific keywords with our Leeds accountancy firm analogy. Essentially, if your accounting business is location specific – i.e. you prefer in-person meetings, or offer accounting to local bricks-and-mortar businesses – then it’s no good reaching an overseas audience with your PPC ads. Rather, be sure to include your location in the keywords you bid for, in order to draw a local clientele.
Bid management
There are a plethora of PPC bid management models you can choose from, each with its own advantages and drawbacks. The good thing about this is that whatever your marketing goals, your budget, or the resources available to commit to managing your bids, there is a model which will accommodate you.
Our blog on PPC bid management lays out these models and their unique applications in detail. For now, it’s worth mentioning only the basics:
- You must set your marketing budget, as well as clear goals for the PPC campaign
- You then allocate this budget across your pool of chosen keywords and search terms, individually choosing maximum bids per keyword
- You select a PPC bid management model to automatically control and adjust your bids based on your budget and campaign goals
- Finally, you observe the impact your PPC accounting campaign is having, adjust your bids/keywords accordingly, and repeat the process
Budgeting for PPC
We’ve also written a blog on how to budget for PPC, so be sure to check that out for a full explanation. Essentially, there are no hard and fast rules for how to budget for PPC, nor how to calculate what that budget should be. Depending on what you want to gain from a PPC campaign, you’ll want to devote a larger or smaller portion of your overall marketing budget.
You can ultimately set as big or little a budget as you like; the bigger question is whether you want to stick strictly to that budget, or allow dynamic leeway which might achieve an even higher clickthrough rate in exchange for a looser budget ceiling.
The major benefits of PPC for accountants
It’s worth recapping some of the true benefits of PPC for accountants before we continue.
- You can reach large audiences of high-quality prospects with minimal effort
- PPC is fast, with your ads potentially appearing on Google SERPs the same day you set your bids; as such, ROAS can come quickly
- PPC drives traffic to your website, in turn generating leads for your accountancy practice
- Detailed reporting on your PPC campaign allows you to fine tune it in ways impossible with more traditional marketing methods (such as billboard advertising)
- Achieving quality results from PPC is possible even on relatively tiny budgets, whilst budget control is fairly simple
- Unlike other physical and digital marketing strategies where you pay upfront, you’re only charge for PPC advertising when someone actively engages with your ad
Which form should your PPC accountancy ads take?
The kind of PPC ads you choose to run will depend on your budget, your business, and the intention of your campaign. We’ll run through three of the most common types of PPC ads for professional accountants.
Search (text-based) ads
Text adverts are what they say on the tin – they display advertising text at the top of a Google search, with a link to a relevant web page of yours. They are comparatively inexpensive, offering no-frills advertising with tight word limits, and as such are a fantastic entry point for the accountant new to PPC.
Display advertising
Display adverts appear on websites across the Google Display Network. Offering a more dynamic range of imagery and audio content, they’re a good way of showcasing your firm’s style and branding. This option would probably be preferable for the small-medium accountancy firm, versus the sole trader or micro enterprise.
Video advertisements
At the more expensive end of the PPC budget scale, video might be a great option for your PPC campaigns. Quick to engage with, easy and enjoyable to watch, videos are the order of the day – especially among younger generations. Video ads pitched as part of a PPC campaign can appear before YouTube or social media videos as part of a prospect’s SERPs.
Video works well when there is a great story to tell. With finance at the forefront of people’s minds, showing the benefits of your services via video could be truly inspiring. For example, a service like retirement planning could benefit from a memorable video advert.
Google Performance Max
If you are interested in running a variety of ad types and don’t have any limits on which channels they appear, Google Performance Max is a brilliant asset to your PPC toolbox. Particularly as it allows you to access all Google Ads channels via a single campaign. Simply provide your assets, copy, conversion objectives, audience segments and signals, and Google’s AI capabilities will build a bridge between your ads and the right audiences. With its automation, Pmax will discover the perfect combination of assets for each channel, making light work of finding new audiences and driving performance.
5 key tips for maximising your accountancy PPC potential
Making a success of online marketing can be a tricky process – here are five core principles, direct from the ‘hive mind,’ for making the most ‘honey’ from your PPC campaign.
Tip #1 – Keep it relevant
Effective online advertising is all about relevance. If people need help with “payroll,” or “audit services,” chances are this will be what they are searching for. The keywords in your PPC campaigns should reflect this.
Tip #2 – Keep it local
For many smaller accountancy firms, the best prospects tend to be the most local. If this is the case for you, it should give you an idea of keywords to be prioritising – such as the name of your town. By using location targeting through Google, you can specify where your bids are highest. So, when searchers use “near me,” you can ensure you’re showing up where you need to.
Tip #3 – Keep it timely
By running the right campaigns and ads at the right time, judged with the help of a trusted partner, you can capitalise on what potential clients need. For example, towards the end of the year, ensure that self-assessment services are being advertised. Early in the year, VAT returns will probably be on many searchers’ minds.
Tip #4 – Support your PPC marketing with effective SEO
It’s important to remember that conversions aren’t guaranteed with PPC advertising. Though the ads have a good chance of driving potential clients toward your website, the content of that site must be compelling and accessible enough to clinch the customer. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) best practices can be a huge help when preparing your site for new visitors.
Tip #5 – Team-up with a PPC management provider
Researching relevant keywords, determining your PPC budget, setting and monitoring bids, choosing a bid management model and optimising your campaign based on report feedback can be a heck of a lot for individual accountants and SME accountancy firms to manage. Without a dedicated team managing your PPC ads for you, you could end up spending unwisely, or failing to make the most from your money.
WebHummel is a small and dedicated digital marketing agency of ‘busy bees,’ with expertise in SEO, social media marketing, and PPC management. As a trusted Google Partner, we can offer a range of tailor-made PPC services designed to keep you on budget whilst maximising the impact of your bids.
If you prefer to handle all of your marketing in-house, however, there are also some free and paid courses out there to help you gain the requisite skills for effective PPC. Below we’ve listed a few we think could be worth checking out:
- The Complete Google Ads Masterclass – Skillshare
- Google Ads Search Certification – Google
- Google Ads Essential Training – LinkedIn Learning
- Designing Effective Google Ads Campaigns – HubSpot
Recapping PPC for accountants
UK accountancy firms and freelance sole traders could be expanding their client portfolios considerably with one simple marketing trick: PPC advertising. Designed to put you directly in front of prospects searching for help with their accounts, PPC is kind on the wallet and impactful on lead generation. Take the first step toward improving your turnover and brand awareness with PPC for accountants today, and discover what a dedicated Google Partner could do for you.
