White-haired older man sitting in front of a computer, wondering how to use online paid advertising for his accountancy firm
Campaigns, Lead Generation, Niche Marketing, ROI, Sales

Paid Ads for Accounting Firms: How They Work and How to Start

Posted on by Adam Bell

White-haired older man sitting in front of a computer, wondering how to use online paid advertising for his accountancy firm

You’re doing the marketing for your accounting firm. You’re putting in the effort: posting on social media, working on your website, getting regular content out there. It’s moving, slowly, but you find yourself asking: would online advertising (a.k.a paid ads) speed things up? Would they actually bring in new clients, or would it be money thrown into a void with nothing to show for it?

Then you wonder: where would I even start? How do ads actually work? What’s a realistic budget? How long before I see anything? What if I set it all up and it flops?

If that’s where you’re at, this blog post is for you. We’ve pulled together the questions we hear most from accounting firm owners who are considering paid ads, and answered them for you.

Feel free to jump to a section that answers your specific question:

 

First things first: Are you ready for ads?

Advertisements work best when they’re amplifying something that already has a bit of life to it. Think of them like a megaphone: brilliant if you’ve got something worth saying, and even more powerful once you know exactly who you’re saying it to.

Before running ads, you need to have a few things in place. Without these, you will find yourself amplifying something that doesn’t work.

A decent online presence. If you’re advertising on Facebook or Instagram (we’ll come to platforms in a moment), your profiles need to be set up and active. If you’re choosing Google Ads, make sure the page people land on reflects what they searched for. The first heading on that page especially needs to contain the search term key words. If someone searches ‘self-assessment accountant’ and lands on your homepage that talks generally about your firm, the connection is lost. If they land on a page dedicated to self-assessment services, with that phrase in the headline, they’re far more likely to stay and get in touch.

Content that’s already working organically. If you’ve got a piece of content that’s gaining traction – a downloadable guide people keep sharing, a blog post that gets consistent search traffic, a resource that generates enquiries – that’s a useful signal. It tells you people find it valuable, which means putting advertising budget behind it is a smart move. You’re not guessing whether it’ll resonate, you already know it does. Ads can generate results from scratch, but they work hardest when they’re amplifying something that has some momentum already.

A budget you can commit to for at least 6-12 months. The first few weeks of a campaign are mostly about learning, not leads. Going in with that expectation makes the whole process a lot less stressful.

One thing worth adding: ads don’t have to be aimed at people who’ve never heard of you. Retargeting (reaching people who’ve already visited your website, follow you on social media, or are on your email list but haven’t taken any action yet) is often a more efficient use of budget precisely because there’s already some familiarity there. The barrier to engagement is lower, and the conversion rate tends to reflect that.

 

Which platform is actually right for your ad?

There are three main ad options worth knowing about for accounting firms.

Google Ads works by showing your ad to people who are already searching for something. Someone types “accountant for small businesses” or “how to pay myself as a limited company director” and your ad can appear at the top of those results. Because people are actively looking, they’re more likely to click and convert. The trade-off is that it tends to cost more per click than social platforms, especially for competitive search terms. 

At the time of this post (it changes regularly, so keep checking!), professional services keywords typically run between $4 and $6 per click in the US and £3.50 to £5.50 in the UK. Most firms running a meaningful Google Ads campaign will need to spend upwards of $1,000 a month.

Meta (Facebook and Instagram) works differently. Your ad appears in people’s feeds while they’re scrolling through photos of their cousin’s holiday and news they didn’t ask for. You’re not reaching someone mid-search; you’re interrupting them. That sounds harder, and it is, but it’s also much more affordable. When the creative (the image, video, or copy in the ad) is right, it works well for building awareness and generating leads.

At the time of this post, clicks typically run between $0.70 and $2.00 depending on your industry, audience, and location, making it a reasonable place to start testing without a large upfront commitment.

LinkedIn is the most expensive of the three, but it has something the others don’t: accurate professional data. On LinkedIn you can target by job title, industry, company size, and seniority. That information is more reliable there than anywhere else, because people tend to keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date. If you’re specifically trying to reach business owners in a particular sector, LinkedIn is worth serious consideration despite the higher cost. 

Budget-wise, currently you’re realistically looking at $30 to $50 a day (around £25 to £40) to gather any meaningful data. Clicks typically cost between $5 and $12 depending on how competitive your target audience is.

There’s no single right answer here. It comes down to who you’re trying to reach and what you’re promoting.

 

How does audience targeting work? (It’s changed a lot.)

If you’ve heard anything about ads targeting, you might have a picture in your head of being able to get really precise: targeting people by their job, their interests, their behaviour online. That used to be much more accurate than it is today.

A few years ago you could target people based on specific things they’d bought or pages they’d visited. Because of privacy changes, that level of detail is largely gone. On Meta in particular, what they now call “audience suggestions” are broad pointers rather than precise filters. You’re nudging the algorithm in a general direction, not handing it a specific list.

What actually does the targeting now is the creative ad content itself. 

Here’s how it works: when someone engages with your ad (watches the video, clicks through, fills in a form), Meta looks at what that person has in common with other users on the platform and starts showing the ad to more people like them. The algorithm figures out your audience by watching who responds. 

That’s why the quality of what you put in the ad matters so much, and why starting with broader targeting and letting the data guide you, tends to work better than trying to micro-target from day one.

One thing worth knowing: Meta will suggest “optimisations” to you constantly, including their Advantage+ features, which basically ask for permission to take your ad and modify it however they see fit. That means changing images, rewriting copy, and reformatting everything. Turning this off is almost always the right call. The versions Meta generates tend to end up a long way from what you actually wanted to say. Part of running ads well is knowing which suggestions to act on and which to leave. Remember, Meta wants to make money from ads: they don’t actually care too much if it works for you or not. That’s up to you – and the strategic partner you’re working with (such as PF)!

 

What makes a good ad?

This topic could fill a whole separate blog post, but here’s the short version.

The most important thing is variety, and the willingness to test. You won’t know what works for your audience until you try different approaches, so rather than agonising over creating the perfect single ad, start with a few variations and let the data tell you what’s landing.

That means testing different lengths and styles of copy. A short, punchy hook works for some audiences. A slightly longer, story-led approach works better for others. The only way to find out which resonates with your specific audience is to run them alongside each other.

Question-led or emotion-led copy works very well. For example, imagine you’re a bookkeeping business targeting handmade sellers, like the kind on Etsy.

One version of your ad says: “Download our spreadsheet template to make doing your small businesses books easier.”

Another says: “Attention handmade sellers! Feeling frustrated trying to use a complicated one-size-fits all bookkeeping system for your shop?”

Neither are “wrong”. Both ads are promoting essentially the same thing, but the second version speaks much more directly to a specific audience and frustration. The person reading it is more likely to feel: “That’s exactly my situation.”

That’s why testing different messaging matters. Sometimes a more niche, direct version performs better than a broader approach because it feels more personally relevant to the right audience.

On format, videos are performing well across platforms right now; they are great to drive engagement and help viewers get to know your firm. Carousels and single images with clear headlines work well when you want someone to do something specific, like download a guide, fill in a form, or book a call. What works best will depend on the objective of the ad campaign, your audience, and the platform it will be shown on. Whether you try one format or a blend of the two, the principle is the same: test across formats, see what gets traction, and do more of that.

 

What does a lead-generating ad actually look like?

Let’s say you’ve created a useful guide, something like “The Financial Health Checklist for Nonprofits”, and you’ve used a Meta ad to promote it.

Someone who works in a nonprofit organisation is scrolling Instagram, and sees your ad. They click the button on the ad, and a form pops up within the Instagram app itself. Some of their details (name, email) may fill in automatically from their profile. They’ll hit submit, and either get a link to download the guide immediately, or it’s emailed to them.

That’s it. The reason this “instant form” approach is used a lot is that it converts better than sending people off on a sidequest to your website, especially on mobile where pages can be slow to load and people are easily put off.

That said, the same guide is also worth putting on your website behind a simple form. Anyone who finds it through Google gets the same download, you capture their details either way, and you’re making the most of the time you spent creating it. Same asset, multiple routes to it.

Once the ad gives you enough signals (consistent downloads, strong click-through rates, form completions, quality of leads etc.) that the asset or download is genuinely resonating, that’s the time to build more around it. Think social posts pointing people to the download page or a blog post unpacking the topic further.

The reason to wait for that signal first is: sometimes the asset you expect to perform brilliantly doesn’t, and a different one surprises you. Let the data guide where you invest the extra effort.

 

How long until I see results from my ad campaign?

How quickly you see results depends on which platform you’re using, your audience size, and how much you’re spending. What’s consistent across all three platforms is this: the first few weeks of any campaign are about learning, not leads. You’re not expecting to be overrun with enquiries in week one. You’re gathering data.

Within the first two to three weeks, you’ll have some early data. You’ll be able to see which version of your ad is getting more engagement, turn off the ones that aren’t working, and try variations based on what is.

For trends you can genuinely make decisions from, give it at least three months. The more budget you have, the faster the data builds up and the faster you can learn. A smaller budget just takes longer to accumulate the information you need to optimise properly.

One more thing: your own sales cycle matters here too. If someone downloads your guide today, they might not book a call for another few months. That’s not unusual at all, especially for professional services. An ad that brings someone into your world at the early stages is still doing its job, even if you can’t see it yet.

This is where a good CRM system earns its keep. It lets you track a lead from that very first interaction, all the way through to becoming a client, and crucially, back to the original ad that brought them in. Without that, it’s easy to underestimate what your ads are actually doing. 

 

Ads aren’t only about leads. They’re also delivering market research

Running ads teaches you things about your audience that are hard to find out any other way.

When you run a lead-gen campaign and certain types of businesses start coming through consistently (say, tech companies, or hospitality businesses, or e-commerce founders), that’s telling you something really useful about who finds your offer compelling. You didn’t have to run a survey or guess. The data just showed you.

That information is valuable well beyond the ad itself. It can tell you which pages on your website to develop further, what content topics to focus on, and what kinds of client reviews to go and gather. Everything connects. The more you run ads, the more you understand your audience, and the better your whole marketing gets as a result.

Ads also build on themselves over time. The first campaign teaches you things the second campaign benefits from. It can feel slow at the start, but that’s true of most marketing that actually works: SEO, social media, content. The foundations matter, and they compound.

 

Someone filled in my form. Now what?

You need to have a plan for follow up, before you launch your ad.

There are two approaches that work well. The first is a personal message from someone at your firm, a quick note saying thanks for downloading and offering to chat if they have questions. No hard sell, just a human making contact. People will appreciate it.

The second is a nurture sequence: a short series of emails that go out automatically over the following days and weeks. The first one might just confirm their download and point them back to it. A week later they might receive something related, another resource, an invitation to a webinar, something that continues building the relationship. At some point in that sequence, there’s a low-pressure option to book a call when they’re ready.

People rarely become a client the moment they download something, and that’s completely normal. Your job is to stay in their world in a way that’s useful to them, so that when they are ready for an accountant, you’re the obvious person (or firm) to reach out to.

Woman sitting on a yellow arm chair with a laptop on her lap and phone in her hand. She is looking thoughtfully out of the window.

 

The realistic picture: Ads ROI builds over months, not weeks

You may be thinking about ads as a cost. The accounting firms who get the best results from them treat ads as sources of information for what works and who’s paying attention.

What you can expect from a well-run ads campaign:

  • Some early engagement data within the first couple of weeks
  • A clearer picture of which types of businesses respond to your message
  • Leads coming through at a pace that reflects your budget and audience size
  • Genuine insight into where to focus your wider marketing efforts

The return on investment picture builds over months rather than weeks, and it’s tied to your sales cycle as much as the ads themselves. That’s actually a good thing, because it means the more you learn, the better the whole machine gets.

Start with something that’s already getting some traction, keep the budget comfortable while you find your feet, and treat the first campaign as the beginning of something, not a one-off experiment.

 

How much of an ads budget do I need in the first 3 months?

You’ll be wondering how much to spend on ads. There are four parts to your ad spend: 

  1. Ad management support (help from an expert to set up, manage, and review ads on a regular basis – usually daily or weekly)
  2. Design and creation of the ads assets and content (images, carousels, ad copy)
  3. Direct ad budget paid to Google, Meta, Facebook etc
  4. Your time and effort to review, discuss, provide input, and collaborate (don’t calculate this as zero!)

Ads management support will likely be in the $1k to $2k range per month. This is an area that falls within the “Good, Fast, Cheap” triangle, where you can only have two of those three things. If the person helping you manage your ads is good and fast, they won’t be cheap. If they’re fast and cheap, they won’t be good. And if they’re good and cheap, they won’t be fast. 

Design and creation of ads depends on how solid your brand and visual identity guidelines are. If those are rock solid, it’s easier for a designer to create what’s needed, and make it look appealing to your ideal client. If you’re just getting started or you have a ‘home made’ type of logo, with no imagery or typography or colour guidelines, you may need some foundational work first. 

Direct ads budget will vary also, but we recommend keeping this low at the start – there’s no point spending thousands on an ad when you don’t know if it’s working or not. Many of our clients spend about US$500 per month on direct ads budget (in addition to ads management support), until we identify which ad is working best. Once we know that, we can discuss increasing this.

All your fees will depend on:

  • How many campaigns you’re running: if it’s one, your ads management & design fees will be lower. If you’re running two or three, or more complex campaigns with multiple ad sets, you’ll need to pay more for the additional time and effort. 
  • Which platform you’re using
  • Whether you’re in the early stages or have been doing it for some time: fees will be higher at the beginning while things are being set up
  • How much work is being done for you, and how much you’re doing yourself 

 

Do I need someone to run this for me?

That depends on where you’re at as a firm.

The platforms aren’t impossible to navigate, and running a basic campaign can teach you a lot about your audience quickly. We’ve found it will take you a significant amount of time to get up to speed, and the early mistakes (overspending on the wrong audience, missing the Advantage+ settings, sending traffic to the wrong page) will cost money before you catch them.

If you have a marketing person in-house, ads can absolutely sit with them, particularly if they’re already managing your content and social channels. What helps most is having someone who understands the strategy behind a campaign, not just how to click the buttons.

The best option is to bring in external support. That might mean an agency, a freelance ads specialist, or a team like ours at PF, where ads sit within your wider marketing strategy rather than operating in isolation. The advantage here is experience – knowing what’s worth testing, what to ignore, and how to read the data when it comes in.

Some firms start with a combination: get guidance on strategy and setup, then manage the day-to-day themselves once they’re confident. We can do this for you, especially if you’re already working with us on an Outsourced CMO service. The most important thing is that someone is watching it regularly. Ads aren’t a set-and-forget channel.

 

Ready to look at whether ads make sense for your accounting firm?

Fill in the discovery form, and we’ll send you a link to book a call with us. We can  guide you based on your current situation.

Not quite there yet? Read our ‘Buyer Focused Content’ guide on how to build the content foundations you need before you start ads.