Accountant PPC Agency

What is PPC Management for Accounting Firms?

Accountant paid ads management consists of creating and optimizing paid advertisement campaigns for accounting firms. That is an incredibly simple explanation though, so let's dive a little deeper.

To provide expert PPC ads management, a paid advertising agency for accountants often starts by getting to know you. This information helps determine the next steps, since the way you'd approach paid advertising for a localized accounting firm is much different from how you'd handle it for nationwide accountant ecommerce site.

For example, local accounting firms are often only interested in contact form submissions or phone calls. To accomplish this, PPC advertising can boost traffic to a landing page or sales funnel that is optimized. We recommend Google Local Service Ads or Facebook Lead Forms if those pages/funnels don't exist or need to be reworked.

In contrast, ecommerce-focused accounting firms are most likely to be interested in online sales. Using paid ads, you can drive traffic to a page optimized for products or categories. You might even want to include Google Shopping Campaigns in some cases. Our sales funnels have also helped us to sell subscriptions, products, and services.

The next step in accountant PPC ads management is understanding the metrics that will be used to optimize and scale. For some accounting firms, that means looking to platforms like Google Analytics. However, there are other options out there too, like Wicked Reports, Triple Whale, or Northbeam.

To be successful with paid advertising, your accounting firm should utilize multiple advertising strategies and marketing tools. Pay-per-click campaigns for accountants should include tactics like:

• Promote your digital assets (websites, sales funnels, etc.) via search engines, social channels, and third parties.
• Make your accounting firm more profitable by acquiring qualified leads or selling online.
• Integrate third-party attribution tools to better understand ad attribution.
• Present social proof through case studies, white papers, and video testimonials.
• Engage users in story creation, email collection, and user generated content.
• Test ad creatives across various ad placements and between different media formats.

Types of Paid Ads for Accounting Firms

For accounting firms, there are many ways to run PPC advertising. Let's discuss some of the most common paid advertising being run for accounting firms.

1.) Local Ads

You can use nearly any advertising platform to run local ads for your accounting firm. Depending on the nature of your nearby accounting firm, you may find better success in one platform versus another. To find out which option works best for you, you should try all of the options available. Now let's discuss some local advertising options.

Google is going to offer two options.

As a first step, you can run traditional Google Adwords, possibly using their newer Performance Max campaign type. The Google algorithm finds the best combination of headlines, images, videos, and service locations to bring you local area customers using this type of dynamic ad campaign. Performance Max campaigns are used frequently by accounting, legal, dental, and medical professionals. Even local stores use this campaign type.

The second option from Google, if you are in a qualifying business industry, is to check out their Local Service Ads. The Google Local Service Ads offers a pay-per-lead model, which means you get charged a flat fee for each lead the platform provides you. We often use Google Local Service Ads for home services contractors, like plumbers, electricians, roofers, and heating installers.

You can also use Facebook Ads to target people in your local area. The process is a little simpler since it just requires setting up a campaign with ad sets with geographic restrictions to ZIP codes in the target area. Localized Facebook Ads are often used by accounting firms of all types.

2.) Social Media Advertising

Almost all online ads you see on social networks qualify as social media marketing.

Maintaining fresh ad creatives is key to social ads. The performance of your campaign will gradually decline if you do not rotate your ad creatives every couple of weeks. For higher spending ad campaigns, you might need to look at weekly ad creative changes.

The best part of social media ads is you can target audiences that have never thought of your product or service, or perhaps just aren't thinking about it now. When running search advertising, that is quite the opposite since your ads are only going to show when someone is actively looking for what your accounting firm offers.

That benefit can also be a curse though, since conversion rates are often lower when people aren't closer in the revenue funnel of making an immediate purchase.

3.) Search Engine Marketing

You'll want to invest in search ads if you know people are searching online for the products you offer.

Some people refer to this as accountant Search Engine Marketing, or SEM. There are different ways to explain search ads (not to be confused with SEO), which are advertisements displayed on search engines' search results pages.

If you have been running search advertising on Google for a while and have been successful, consider copying your campaigns over to Bing Ads. In an October 2022 study from StatCounter, Bing was the primary search engine used by approximately 3.57% of online users.

4.) Display Ads

You'll find display ads on all kinds of message boards, chat rooms, game lounges, news websites (sometimes even nearby news stations), gossip websites, and more.

These are commonly used within the Google Ads and Bing Ads platforms.

To get started with display ads, you just need a set of ad creatives in different image sizes. Both ad platforms have algorithms that help you drive results from your ad spend if you have an understanding of your target audience.

5.) Retargeting Ads

Your accounting firm website, landing page, or sales funnel won't convert everyone on the first visit.

To help people return to your website after they've thought through various options, retargeting ads are almost always recommended.

You can run retargeting ads on Google Ads, Bing Ads, Facebook Ads, and many other platforms.

6.) Shopping Ads

This type of search ad was popularized by Google Shopping Campaigns.

To get started with Google Shopping, you just need an ecommerce website, a product feed (CSV or TXT), a Google Merchant Center account, and a Google Ads account for your accounting firm.

With these tools in place, you'll be able to provide Google Ads an updated list of all your accurate product data, including the title, SKU, image, price, and availability. From there, they will be able to find the right types of search queries to display your products at the top of the search results page.

7.) Video Ads

Social networking websites such as Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube allow you to advertise with video.

Using YouTube Ads is as easy as setting up a video ad campaign in Google Ads.

Facebook Ads is required if you want to run video ads on Facebook or Instagram.

Video is an excellent ad creative in terms of conversion opportunities. We frequently use video ads to showcase product launches, custom services, personal introductions, and more!

If you have the budget to support ad creatives in video format, look to implement them into your PPC advertising campaigns.

Tips for Managing Paid Ads for Accountants

Our team of paid ads experts is knowledgeable in the latest paid ads trends for accountants and other industries.

Here are some of our best tips to follow for keyword research, audience research, landing page / sales funnel optimization, conversion rate optimization, and ad creation.

1.) Keyword Research Tips

In the context of paid advertising, you'll find keyword research for accountants mostly relates to search network campaigns on the Google Ads and Bing Ads platforms. After all, search ads only show up based on what your accounting firm targets on Google or Bing.

A search for "nearby accountant" on a search engine, for example, might lead someone to a accounting firm website in their area. It wouldn't be necessary to conduct extensive keyword research to target that exact phrase.

However, what if the exact match keyword isn't generating enough search volume and the accounting firm needs to expand their advertising reach? To solve the problem, keyword research would be required.

After discussing options, the next step might involve the paid ads manager talking with the accounting firm about what products / services they want to target more often and where. A broader keyword targeting strategy than exact matches might also be necessary.

For instance, the paid ads manager might discover high search volume for "nearby accounting firms" or even "accountant services." The first phrase is targeting a type of business or organization in the area. The second phrase is targeting a service, which might result in a more lucrative conversion.

You can also benefit from keyword research when building out negative keyword lists. You can use negative keywords to prevent your PPC advertising from showing up in search queries that you know are not likely to result in more clients.

For example, an individual looking for "free services from accounting firms" or "when to advertise to accountants" is unlikely to convert. They might see your paid ads if you use broad keyword targeting without any negative keywords like "free" or "advertise".

You can see that as you scale your ads and reduce wasted ad spend, the needs for keyword research become more complex.

2.) Audience Research Tips

Audience research is often mentioned as part of scaling social media ads on Facebook and Instagram for accountant PPC advertising campaigns. There are options within Google Ads and Bing Ads for audience targeting as well though.

Let's go over a little history on audience research and targeting within the Facebook Ads platform.

In years past, accountant-focused paid advertising managers relied heavily on building out their own custom audiences within Facebook. After all, one of the most appealing features of the Facebook Ads platform was the data it collected on its users, which accountants lined up to exploit.

A number of factors, including data privacy and machine learning, have had an impact on custom audiences over time.

In the iOS 14.5 update, Apple included a pop-up message that allowed users to opt out of tracking for personalized ads. As a result, Facebook had difficulty tracking mobile device behavior. Even ad attribution reporting was affected.

For most accountant-focused advertising companies, machine learning algorithms greatly reduced the need for custom audiences and lookalike audiences. With such sophisticated algorithms, it's often more harmful to choose your own interests compared to letting Facebook figure it out for you.

While there will still be plenty of accounting firm paid advertising agencies relying on custom audiences, the trend is moving toward broad targeting. You can see it in every upgrade within Facebook Ads Manager as they slowly remove interest-based targeting options, or push for "Advantage Detailed Targeting."

This blog article from Social Media Examiner does a good job of talking about recent changes to audience targeting, if you'd like a second opinion.

This isn't to say audience research and targeting is going away. The targeting options within accountant ad campaigns will likely always be manageable to boost performance.

3.) Landing Page Creation & Optimization Tips

An important factor in the success of your accounting firm paid ads campaign is the landing page.

Let's begin by examining the landing pages for your accounting firm to make sure they follow best practices. Our review takes into account the following factors:

• Do you have a headline that emphasizes benefits?
• Are there any images above the fold?
• Is the content written in a compelling manner?
• Am I able to find a lead form right away?
• Are the call to actions easily noticeable?
• How quickly does the page load?
• Is social proof present?
• Can I load the page on a mobile device?

Quality landing pages are the result of many factors. Here is a great write-up about what makes a high converting landing page.

Until you have a landing page that follows best practices, don't spend money on paid advertising. Ideally, you should never consider your landing page to be finished. Try running A/B testing every few months to continue refining your sales pitch.

4.) Funnel Tips

As an alternative to a landing page, you might want to consider building out one or more sales funnels. We rely heavily on sales funnels for lead generation, email audience building, and even online purchases.

For example, we have a client that promotes an online fitness challenge that you could even join from your local area. While managing their internet marketing we built multiple sales funnels within Click Funnels. Here are some of the funnels we made:

• We used squeeze pages to help capture email addresses while building awareness for the program.
• We used lead magnets to provide people with healthy eating tips, fitness tips, webinars, and sneak peaks in exchange for an email address.
• We used application funnels to push people toward the idea of wanting to apply to participate in exclusive programs.
• We used sales letter funnels to serve as the registration system for the online program.

There are many different types of funnels, so your accounting firm isn't limited to only these options. Just keep in mind these can be incredibly helpful for gauging interest in a product or service, building out an email subscriber base, and selling a product or service online.

5.) Conversion Rate Optimization Tips

Having a clear understanding of your conversion rate is critical to making informed advertising decisions. The average conversion rate is between 1-3%, but that varies greatly between industries, products, and services.

Let's run through a basic scenario to help illustrate the impact of conversion rates.

1. You sell a $100 product or service on your website.
2. You have a 1% conversion rate, meaning for every 100 people who visit your website you sell 1 product or service.
3. You have a $1.00 average cost per click (CPC), meaning for each person who visits your website you spend $1.00.
4. To sell 1 product or service, you need 100 clicks from paid advertising, which would cost you $100. This is known as your cost per acquisition (CPA).
5. Your return on ad spend (ROAS) would be 1x, meaning for every dollar spent in paid ads you get one dollar in return.

For most accounting firms, this return on ad spend wouldn't be acceptable. Sadly, we often see this type of ROAS when jumping into new client accounts.

To improve the situation, you hire a paid advertising company to modify your campaign settings, ad creatives, and landing page experience.

Let's assume those improvements bring your conversion rate up from 1% to 2%. That means for every 100 visits to your site you now sell 2 products. This is twice the return on ad spend! You might be profitable now selling that product or service, if your margins are good.

Understanding your conversion rate, and knowing how to improve it, can be crucial to the management of your paid ads.

6.) Ad Creation Tips

This is potentially one of the most important aspects of a Facebook Ads account, but it also applies to Google Display Ads.

When you run Facebook Ads or Instagram Ads for accountants, you are mostly targeting a cold audience that is more interested in quickly scrolling by advertisements in favor of seeing what their friends and family are up to online.

You should develop an understanding of how to capture someone's attention in a split second.

To do this, you need to build out amazing ad creatives that make someone stop for a second and say to themselves, "wait a second, what...?"

This doesn't happen by running the same ad creative over and over and over again. Even if it is a good ad, it will eventually become stale. You should change things up frequently, even if you are just targeting people nearby.

If you don't change out your ad creatives and test new ideas, you'll suffer from what is called "ad fatigue." This is the state in which your target audience has already seen your ad so many times that they instinctively scroll by it without ever interacting with your brand.

Don't be caught in this situation. You should understand when to pause an ad because it isn't performing as well as it once did. You should understand when to test new ideas, especially if you are emotionally attached to an ad that you spent a lot of time making.

Why Choose WebCitz to Manage Your PPC Solutions

We'd love to partner with your accountants on paid ads! As a full-service PPC ads management firm helping accountants, we have multiple internal teams focused on search engine marketing, social media marketing, sales funnel development, and ad creative testing. This is not true of all accountant-focused PPC management firms, since most only have a single person handling all the tasks. For those accounting firm paid ads firms, campaign optimizations and creative ideas might not be tested often enough to bring about the results you need.

There are many factors to consider when researching PPC advertising firms for your accounting firm. The paid ads tactics and plans we suggest for your accounting firm are backed by more than 20 years of experience. As a lead generation agency, we often use similar paid ads plans.

Accounting firms should choose our paid advertising company because they feel confident we are the right team. Our PPC specialists are a good option for numerous reasons:

• It has been more than 20 years since we opened our doors, which makes us an industry leader.
• Our paid advertising help us rank for keywords we don't yet rank organically for.
• We do not outsource online advertising services for our accounting firm clients, including PPC management, sales funnel development, or ad creative services since we have our own internal advertising team.
• If you call us during normal business hours, you will likely get an answer from one of our teammates within a few rings.

Let's discuss what our PPC experts can offer your accounting firm! We often provide complete PPC advertising management packages to accountant-related small businesses, but we can also augment the marketing department of larger accounting firms to fill in missing skill sets.

We hope you consider our company when looking for a paid advertising firm for your accounting firm. We would be happy to talk to you about your follow-up questions via email or phone if you have any.

800-796-8263 Email Us