Digital marketing for accountancy practices
Your buyer is on a statutory calendar. Marketing that ignores those dates arrives after the decision has already been made.
Get your free auditThe diagnosis
Why most accountancy firms are invisible until January
Demand in this sector is not flat, it is shaped by deadlines. The self assessment searches climb from November, peak in the last week of January, and collapse in February. Company year ends, payroll changes at the start of the tax year, and every phase of Making Tax Digital produce the same pattern.
Most practices publish about a deadline in the week it falls. By then the searching is done and the firm has been chosen. Content needs to be indexed and ranking six to eight weeks before the date, which means writing it while nobody is thinking about it.
The second failure is undifferentiated positioning. Practices describe themselves as offering accounts, tax and payroll, which is what every other practice says. What actually converts is being visibly good at something specific: a sector, a business size, or a piece of legislation.
Your work
Service lines that behave differently in search
These are not interchangeable, and treating them as one keyword group wastes budget.
- Self assessment, sharply seasonal and highly price-sensitive
- Year end accounts and corporation tax, driven by company year ends spread across the calendar
- Making Tax Digital, where the searcher is looking for reassurance more than a price
- Payroll and auto-enrolment, an operational purchase with a low tolerance for error
- VAT registration and returns, often triggered by crossing the threshold
- Bookkeeping and management accounts, usually a bundled add-on rather than a first purchase
- Landlord and property tax, a distinct audience that searches differently
- R&D tax relief and specialist reliefs, where credibility signals matter most
The buying journey
From deadline to engagement letter
A date appears on the horizon
Or a letter arrives from HMRC. The search is usually about the obligation, not about accountants.
They look for a plain explanation
Content that explains the obligation without jargon is what earns the visit. This is where most practices could win and mostly do not.
They check the practice is real
Named people, qualifications, professional body membership, and whether the firm has worked with businesses like theirs.
They ask about price
Not necessarily a fixed number, but a shape. Practices that refuse to indicate anything lose to those that do.
Engagement letter
The conversion that counts. Traffic in December means nothing if the engagement letters do not follow.
Straight answers
Common questions
- When should we start on self assessment content?
- It should be live and indexed by early October at the latest. Publishing in January is publishing into a decision that has already been made.
- Should we publish our prices?
- Something. A full price list commoditises you, but refusing to indicate anything loses you enquiries to firms that will. A starting figure or a set of packages is usually the right middle ground.
- Does Google Ads work for accountants?
- For high-intent terms, yes, particularly around deadlines. For broad terms like "accountant" it is expensive and attracts price shoppers. The negative keyword list matters as much as the keyword list.
- We serve clients nationally. Does local SEO still matter?
- It still matters for the town you are actually in, because proximity searches convert well. But it should not be the whole strategy if your client base is not local, and sector pages will do more for you.
- How long before we see results?
- Paid search can produce enquiries in the first fortnight. Organic normally takes three to six months, and longer for competitive terms. The seasonal shape means timing matters as much as duration.
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