Home / Google Ads for Accountants
Google Ads for accountants, built around the tax calendar.
A click on an accountancy term costs £6–9. A retained client is worth £1,000 or more a year, every year they stay. That trade only works when the clicks land on people ready to switch firms — so that is what we build for. Three senior marketers, running Search and landing pages for practices spending £1,000–£7,500 a month.
From £950/month · no contracts past month three
At £2,800 a month in clicks, a typical ~£35 lead buys about 80. Get the same 80 at £20 and roughly £1,200 a month comes free — more than the fee. Worked in full on the pricing page (LocaliQ 2026 framing).
No call required · read-only access · in writing within 48 hours
Why accountancy clicks behave differently
Most Google Ads advice is written for emergency trades — burst pipe, dead boiler, buy now. An accountancy practice is a different purchase. The searcher is choosing a relationship, the demand follows the tax calendar, and the account has to be built for both.
- Demand follows deadlines. Searches for a new accountant cluster around Self Assessment in January and around company year-ends through the rest of the year. A firm that is invisible in those weeks does not just lose a click — it usually loses that client until the same deadline comes round next year.
- The searcher is usually switching. Most people typing accountancy terms into Google already have an accountant, and something has gone wrong: a missed deadline, a fee jump, silence in the week they needed an answer. The window is short and decisive, and the firm that answers it well wins years of fees.
- Clicks cost £6–9, and the waste sounds plausible. That is the realistic band on UK accountancy terms (live UK click-cost data). What burns budget is everything that sounds nearby: job hunters, accounting courses, free-software searches, people working out how to file their own return. None of them will ever pay a fee, and untended accounts buy them all day.
- The client is recurring, so the maths is forgiving. A retained client is typically worth £1,000 or more a year in fees, every year they stay. Won properly, one client quietly pays back months of advertising — and that same forgiving maths is exactly why wasteful accounts in this sector run unnoticed for so long.
LIVE ACCOUNT DATA · ANONYMISED · AUTOMOTIVE TAKEOVERS, NOT ACCOUNTANCY — THE RESULTS SECTION BELOW SAYS PLAINLY WHAT TRANSFERS
The enquiry maths, worked plainly. At £6–9 a click, a page converting at the typical 7–9% prices an enquiry at roughly £70–£130. A page built properly — our target is 13–16% by day 30 — brings that under £70. The 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit reads your live account and shows which side of that line you are on: findings in writing within 48 hours, read-only access, no call required.
What we run for accountancy firms
Google Ads and landing pages, nothing else. One loop, worked every week: switching intent in, plausible-sounding waste out, budget shaped into the weeks that matter.
Search built on switching intent
Campaigns split by service — annual accounts, Self Assessment, limited company, VAT and bookkeeping — on the terms people use when they are ready to move firm. Job, course, software and how-do-I-file searches are blocked before they spend, and the search-term report is worked every week: negatives added, winners fed.
A page per service, built for phones
A searcher wanting annual accounts lands on an annual-accounts page, not a generic services list. Fast, device-built, form where the thumb lands. On pages we build, the target is 13–16% conversion by day 30; typical accountancy pages run 7–9%, against LocaliQ’s 2026 cross-industry search average of 8.18%.
Tracking that counts enquiries
Calls and forms wired as conversions before any bid moves — if the account cannot see an enquiry, it cannot buy more of them. We report enquiries and what each one cost, never "clients won": your close rate is yours. Budget then follows what converts, leaning into deadline season instead of sitting flat.
We measured the UK’s 30 most persistent PPC agencies. Median mobile load: 8.6 seconds. Four scored 90+. This page loads in under 2.
William Thomas · David Peters · Amalie LinesThree senior marketers. No juniors, no hand-offs.
Proof from the takeovers, honestly labelled
None of the results below is an accountancy firm, and we are not going to dress them up as one. They are account takeovers from other sectors. What transfers is the method that produced them: rebuild around buying intent, block the plausible waste, track every enquiry, move budget weekly.
Cost per lead, vehicle remapping specialist — taken over from a previous agency. 16.44% conversion rate.
Live account data, 14 days, anonymisedCost per lead, specialist automotive network. 468 leads in 30 days.
Live account data, 30 days, anonymisedWork booked through the account for a steel fabrication firm.
Client-reportedThe wider book backs it up. Across all three desks we run £191K of client spend and 10.6K conversions in an average month, at £17.95 per conversion and a 16–17% conversion rate (live account data, anonymised). For scale: LocaliQ’s 2026 cross-industry search averages sit near $66.69 per lead — about £50 — at an 8.18% conversion rate.
Pricing, on the page
No "book a discovery call to find out". One management fee, and you can hold it against the waste it removes — an exercise an accountant will enjoy more than most.
From £950 / month
- Google Ads management: build, negatives, bids, budget
- Landing pages built and tested per service line
- Conversion tracking set up and checked, calls included
- Plain-English monthly report: spend, enquiries, cost per enquiry
- No contracts past month three
The ~£35 framing is deliberately cautious — LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmarks put the average search cost per lead near £50. In accountancy terms the fee has a simpler yardstick: £950 is around the annual fee of one smaller retained client, and unlike the fee, the client pays again next year. If the account cannot win at least that reliably, the audit or the monthly report will say so plainly.
Questions accountancy firms ask us
Does Google Ads actually work for accountants?
Yes, when the account is built on switching and deadline intent rather than generic terms. Clicks cost £6–9 on most UK accountancy searches (live UK click-cost data), and a retained client is typically worth £1,000 or more a year in recurring fees — so the arithmetic is comfortable, provided the waste around those terms is blocked and the landing page holds the click.
What does a click cost on accountancy keywords?
£6–9 on most UK accountancy terms, based on live UK click-cost data. Competitive city terms and phrases like small business accountant sit at the top of the band, so we cap bids and cut anything the enquiry maths cannot support.
How many enquiries — and how many clients — should we expect?
We forecast and report enquiries only, never clients, because the close rate belongs to your firm and we will not guess at it. For the enquiry side: on pages we build the target is a 13–16% conversion rate by day 30, while 7–9% is the typical band for the sector, and your monthly report shows exactly where you sit.
Is it worth advertising outside January?
Yes. Self Assessment drives the January peak, but company year-ends and switching moments — a fee rise, a missed deadline, an unanswered email — are spread across the whole calendar. The right move is shaping budget into the peaks rather than switching the account off and losing the history it has built.
We were searching for marketing for accountants generally — do you do SEO and social too?
No. We do Google Ads and the landing pages behind them, and that focus is why our numbers look the way they do. If your bigger constraint is somewhere else, the audit will say so in writing rather than sell you management you do not need.
We already have an agency on the account. Can you still look?
That is the most common situation we audit in. The 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit runs on read-only access — nothing changes, your campaigns keep running, and we never contact your agency. The written findings are yours to act on whether you stay, renegotiate or move.
Find out where your spend is leaking before the next deadline rush.
The 12-Point Wasted-Spend Audit reads your live account and puts the findings in writing within 48 hours. No call required, read-only access, and the document is yours either way.