Start with the client you want and the rule book you work under. Then do the three things that bring most new engagements to a firm: be found locally, answer the questions clients ask before they call, and make it easy for happy clients to say so, within the rules.
Everything here can be done without a single claim about results, rankings or savings. The firm's expertise, shown plainly, is the whole pitch.
Start with the rules of your profession
Before any tactic, read what your licensing body allows. In the USA, state boards of accountancy and the AICPA Code of Professional Conduct set the rules on advertising and solicitation for CPAs, and firms that practice before the IRS also answer to Treasury Circular 230, which the IRS describes as the mandatory rules of conduct for attorneys, certified public accountants and enrolled agents who represent taxpayers. In Canada, each provincial CPA body has its own code. The rules differ in detail, so this guide tells you where the lines usually are and asks you to check your own.
Two national rules apply to every firm. The Federal Trade Commission's Endorsement Guides say that a connection between an endorser and a business that consumers would not expect, such as payment, a gift or a family or employment relationship, must be disclosed clearly and conspicuously; the Guides were revised in 2023. And the IRS reminds the public that anyone with a Preparer Tax Identification Number may prepare returns, that credentials differ, and that it keeps a directory of credentialed preparers. For a credentialed firm, that directory and your own credentials are a marketing asset to use truthfully. General information, not legal advice; your counsel has the last word.
Step 1: Choose the clients the firm wants
A firm that markets to everyone gets the clients nobody else wants. Decide, with the partners, which engagements the firm wants more of: individual returns, small-business bookkeeping and tax, advisory and fractional finance work, audit and assurance, a specialty such as medical practices, construction or ecommerce sellers, or cross-border work. Each one has a different buyer, a different season and a different fee.
Write the chosen segments down with the words those clients use, the questions they ask at the first meeting and the times of year they look. That paragraph becomes the brief for the office page, the content calendar and the referral conversations below. Our professional services page describes the firms we suit the same way.
Step 2: Be found locally
Most new individual and small-business clients still search for an accountant near them, and Google's guidance on local ranking says the local results rest on relevance, distance and prominence, that a complete and accurate profile is more likely to show, that replying to reviews helps a business stand out, and that there is no way to pay for a better local ranking.
- Verify the Business Profile for each office, with the firm's real name only, the right category (accountant, tax preparation service or certified public accountant as applies), the services listed by name, true hours and seasonal hours, and photos of the office and the team.
- Build an office page on the website for each location with the address, directions, parking, the partners who work there, the services offered there and the areas served.
- Keep name, address and phone identical on the profile, the site, your professional body's directory, the IRS directory where you qualify, and the local directories clients use.
- Reply to every review in your own words, within a week, and never confirm or reveal that a reviewer is a client beyond what they said themselves; confidentiality does not stop at the review page.
If you want this done for you, our local SEO agency page explains how we work from the profile and the office pages, and our local SEO checklist for small businesses covers the general steps.
Step 3: Content around deadlines and decisions
Accounting content works when it answers a question a client has this month, and it fails when it explains what an accountant is. Google's helpful content guidance asks whether a page shows first-hand expertise and gives a reader reasons to trust it, and names trust as the most important quality; a partner who has handled a hundred of these situations can write a page no content farm can match.
Plan the calendar around the year: filing deadlines and extensions, estimated payments, year-end planning, changes in the rules as they are announced, and the decisions clients face, such as choosing a business structure, taking on a first employee, buying equipment, or selling the business. Add a short page for each service and each specialty with the questions clients ask at the first meeting, answered plainly. Keep each piece dated and reviewed when the rules change, because a stale tax page is worse than none.
Email the same material, once a month, to clients and to people who asked for it, within CAN-SPAM in the USA and with consent under CASL in Canada. Our content marketing service page explains how we plan and write this with a firm's partners.
Step 4: Referrals and reviews, within the rules
Referrals bring most of a firm's best clients, and they can be organized without breaking any rule. Keep a list of the lawyers, bankers, financial planners, insurance brokers and business advisers who serve your chosen clients, meet them with something useful to say, and send them clients when it is right. Tell clients plainly, at the end of a good engagement, that the firm grows by referral and that you would welcome an introduction.
Reviews follow the same discipline as everything else in the profession. Ask every client, at a natural moment, with a direct link, and offer nothing in return. Check your board's or body's rules on testimonials before you publish any on your own site, and disclose any connection the FTC Guides would consider material. A steady flow of genuine reviews over years is worth more than a burst, and far safer.
Step 5: A website that a cautious client trusts
Six things the site must have:
- The partners' names, credentials, licences and photos on the site, because clients hire a person as much as a firm.
- A page per service and per specialty, in the client's words, with the first-meeting questions answered.
- Office pages as above, and a contact route that says who will reply and when.
- A secure client portal link that is easy to find, and a plain statement of how client data is protected.
- No claims about savings, refunds, outcomes or rankings, and no comparison with named rivals.
- Fast on a phone, with the phone number and the booking link one tap away.
Step 6: Paid search, carefully
Paid search suits a firm with a clear specialty and capacity to take on work in season: “small business accountant [city]”, “[industry] CPA”, “tax accountant for [situation]”. Write the ads within the same rules as everything else, send the click to the matching service page, track calls and booked consultations, and pause when the firm is full. Broad terms such as “accountant” in a large city are expensive and bring work the firm may not want. Our law firms guide covers paid search for a regulated profession in more detail, and most of it applies here.
How to measure marketing for an accounting firm
Count new engagements and their first-year fee value by source, each month: local search, the website, referrals by referrer, paid search, events and speaking. Add consultations booked and the share that became engagements. Review the figures at the partners' meeting, and move effort toward the sources that bring the clients you chose in step 1. Website visits and followers are not in the report. Our guide to lead generation for professional services covers the counting in detail.
If you want it run for you
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. Our professional services page explains how we work with accounting and CPA firms within the rules of the profession, and our guide to marketing for consultants covers the advisory side of a firm's work.
The guides in this series
This guide sits in our professional services series. The guides below cover the accounting side in more depth and link back here. This guide is general information, not legal advice; the rules of your country, state and province apply, and your counsel has the last word.
- CPA firm website design: the pages a client checks before engaging a firm, and the AICPA Code's advertising rules the pages must follow.
- Bookkeeping marketing ideas: a niche, local search, referrals from accountants, deadline content and consent-based email for a bookkeeping practice.
- Digital marketing for law firms: the main guide of the professional services series.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.