Using Google Ads for accountants is one of the best ways to advertise your offerings and services. Thousands of accounting firms have had success using Google ads to acquire clients and get more leads. With the right approach and strategies, you can too. This article will guide you step by step on how to create Google Ads for your accounting firm.
Google Ads for Accountants
How does Google Ads work?
If you want to advertise your business and only pay when your ad gets clicked, then Google Ads is the right advertising tool for you. This online digital platform will show your advertisement along with the organic results on the Google results page.
You create a Google Ads account, create an ad campaign, then write an ad copy, assign keywords to your ads, and once a potential customer searches using the keyword you assign, then your business advertisement will show up on their screen.
Is Google Ads effective for accountants?
According to recent data and statistics, the market for the accounting service industry is expected to reach $868 Billion by this year (2022). This is a significant increase of 9.1% to the compound annual growth rate. This growth will directly affect the competitiveness of the market for accounting firms.
With this, most firms are putting money on advertising to get more leads and to increase awareness of their accounting services. With Google Ads, you can easily set up a campaign, and reach more potential clients digitally and most accounting firms are already doing this.
Here are some examples of Google Ads for accountants that you can see along with organic search results:
Usually, Google Ads experts are hired to create and optimize an advertisement campaign for accounting services. You can talk and consult with our experts for hassle-free management of your Google Ads for accountants.
Want to get started with Google Ads for accountants?
Creating a Google Ads account
Before you can create a Google Ads account, you need to have an existing Gmail account. If you already have one, go to the Google Ads home page and click ‘Start Now’.
Sign in using the Gmail account that you intend to use for creating Google Ads. Once you are signed in, you will be redirected to a page where you will ask which advertising goal you want to choose. Instead of choosing, click the ‘Switch to expert mode’ link below.
Switching to expert mode will give you access to all the Google Ads settings and data. You want to have full control over your Google Ads campaign. If you are not in expert mode, Google will automatically decide on almost every aspect of your ad campaign and you don’t want that.
Google Ads Campaign Set Up
Campaign goal and type
After you switch to expert mode, you will be asked which goal you want for your campaign, since you want full control over your ads, select ‘Create a campaign without a goal’s guidance’. This will prevent limitations when you decide on changes in the future.
Then, choose the campaign type. Most accounting firms get leads from their website and Google search results. Click ‘Search’ type since it aligns with your accounting services campaign.
Then, type in your website and phone number if you have one.
After that, you should be redirected to campaign settings.
Labeling and networks
Input the campaign name and make sure that the context is recognizable. You can use codes and create your own formatting for creating names or labels for all segments within your Google Ads account.
For the networks, make sure to turn them off as you only want your ads to focus on showing to Google search results. If these are checked, your ads will be shown to other Google site partners (Youtube, etc.), and other non-Google websites.
Location settings and language
Select the area where your target audience is located. This is important so that your ad will only show to people who are actually in the area you are servicing.
You can either type in a country, city, region, or even use postal codes. If you want to target by radius, just click ‘Advanced search’ and click on ‘Radius’. Type the area you are targeting and choose the value in radius.
After that, choose your preferred language for advertising. As much as possible, just choose 1 language to prevent complicating your ad campaign. If you want to advertise using multiple languages, just create individual campaigns for each language.
Budget and bidding basics
In order for your campaign ad to show up, you need a budget to make them run. Choose the budget that you are comfortable spending per day in a Google Ads for accountants campaign.
For the bidding, you can choose from conversions, conversion value, clicks, and impression share. But for this ad campaign, we will choose ‘Clicks’.
Keep in mind that your budget can affect how many clicks you will get per day. You can set the maximum cost per click on your ad campaign. For example, you set the CPC max limit to $0.50, this means with a $50 budget, you can get up to 100 clicks per day.
By leaving this blank, Google will automatically determine the cost per click value for your ad campaign. This will give you an idea of how much CPC you should set if you decide to manually set it in the future.
Ad rotation
Below the budget and bidding, you should see ‘Show more settings’. Click on it and go to ad rotation. Make sure to choose ‘Do not optimize: Rotate ads indefinitely’.
If this is not clicked, Google will decide which ads to show more often and the other ads won’t get enough data for optimization.
Ad extensions
Ad extensions adds extra information and increase the overall size of your ad campaign. Because in advertising, the bigger the size, the better. You can add site link extensions, callout extensions, call extensions, and so on.
Here’s what an ad campaign looks like with ad extensions:
Keep in mind that Google Ads won’t probably show all ad extensions at the same time, so make sure to only use ad extensions that match the need of your ad campaign.
Ad Group Creation
Before we proceed with ad group creation, let’s discuss what is an ad group and other things that you need to know when creating an ad group.
What is an ad group?
An ad group contains a set of ads and keywords that targets a specific theme or topic. Ad groups are important to prevent general or broad targeting of your ads.
For example, you want a separate ad for “tax filing services” for people who are specifically looking for tax services, and a separate ad for “bookkeeping services”. You can create an ad group separately and write ads that are specific to the topic of the ad group.
When you are brainstorming an ad group, we recommend putting it in a spreadsheet for better documentation. Here is an example of 4 ad groups that cater to specific accounting topics or services:
When keywords below the ad group topics are used in a Google search query, the ads within your ad group will be triggered and show up on the Google search result page.
Keyword match types
Notice the notations that we used for the listed keywords under ad groups? Those are match types notations.
Keyword match types are notations you put at the start and the end of each keyword. These notations will determine how your keywords will match each search query that is related to accounting services.
- Broad match – matches to all similar search queries
- accounting rates –> auditor prices
- Phrase match – will only match if the “keyword” assigned is included in the search query
- “accountant nearby” —> forensic “accountant nearby” green mall
- Exact match – will only match if the search query is exactly the assigned [keyword]
- [payroll services] —> payroll services
Keyword match types are important to prevent unnecessary clicks and spending on your ad campaign. Each match types are equally important and it can be used depending on the goal of your campaign.
Now that you are familiarized with the ad group let’s create one about ‘tax services’. It is important to assign a name to your ad group that you can easily recognize or remember.
After that, input your website URL and accounting services that are related to ‘taxes’ since it is the topic of this ad group. Then, click ‘Get Results’. This will give you keyword suggestions to add to your list. Remove the ones that are irrelevant, and add keywords from the spreadsheet that you created for ad group brainstorming.
Make sure to use match-type notations as we discussed earlier. Once done, you can click ‘save and continue’ or you can also create another ad group.
Want an in-depth Google Ads campaign for your accounting business?
Keyword Research For CPAs & Accounting Firms
Your ad groups won’t work and will not show up if you don’t have keywords in them. That’s why it is important to get the right keywords for your ad campaign. So how do you find more accountant keyword ideas and suggestions?
Keyword research
Google Autocomplete. The most basic technique to find out what people are searching for is the use of Google autocomplete suggestions. Type in the keyword that you want to use for your ad campaign, and Google will give you suggestions on what people are currently searching. This won’t give you lots of keywords, but it is still helpful for your keyword research.
Keyword Planner. Google Ads has its own keyword research tool called ‘Keyword Planner’. This can be found on the ‘Tools & Settings’ under ‘Planning’.
Then, click ‘Discover new keywords’.
Type in your accounting services or the keywords that you want to get ideas and variations from. After that, set your target location and input your website URL. Then click ‘Get Results’.
You should get the results immediately and this would give you a list of keywords relevant to the services you put earlier.
This is a great research tool since this data is directly from Google and it gives you lots of information that is helpful in your ad campaign planning.
The result gives you an idea of how many people are searching this keyword per month, and how much cost per click is average for such keyword (you can base your CPC on this if you set it manually).
Online keyword research tool. There are lots of available online keyword research tools and most of them are free or have free trials.
Now that you have options for keyword research, do not forget to put them in a spreadsheet for better documentation.
Negative keywords
During your keyword research, you will encounter some irrelevant keywords that may come up since it is related to business. But you can prevent that by making a list of negative keywords.
As we recommend a while ago, you should also have created a spreadsheet for irrelevant keywords or terms that have no intention of hiring your services like this one:
Notice how we used phrase match notations for this list. This means that your ad won’t show up to whatever search query that contains keywords on that list. You can read this article about using negative keywords to learn more.
Once you’re done with the list, you can copy and paste it to the negative keywords list which can be found on the ‘Tools & Settings’ under ‘Shared Library’.
Once you’re done, click ‘save’. This should be saved on your negative keyword lists.
How To Write Effective Headlines And Descriptions
URL and display path
Before you write headlines and descriptions for your ad campaign, you need to put the final URL where the potential client will be redirected once they click on your ad.
Make sure that the URL is related to whatever is written on your actual ad copy. Then put relevant keywords on the display path. This will not affect the link as it is only for display.
Headlines
You can write up to 15 headlines and Google will create a combination of headlines and determine which will work the best for your ad. You can also pin and fix the placement of each headline if you want to since there are usually 3 headlines shown in an ad.
So how do you write headlines? Google will give you ideas for your headlines and some of them will be from your provided URL.
The goal of the headline is to catch the interest of a potential client since headlines are the first thing they see in an ad. Here are some useful tips in writing headlines:
- Add numbers or any acceptable character symbols to Google ad
- #1 Accounting Firm New York
- Starts @ $499/month
- Fast & Affordable
- Use CTAs or call to action texts in your headline
- Call Now!
- Consult Today!
- Call Us For Free Consultation
- Adding geographic keywords on your headline
- Accountant Near Me/You
- Accountant Near LA
- Accounting Firm Irvine
- Tax Services NY
- Adding reflective questions
- Need help with your taxes?
- Don’t know how to file taxes?
- Need bookkeeping services?
Descriptions
You can write up to 4 descriptions and again, you can pin and fix their placement.
Google will also give you suggestions for this but how do you write descriptions?
- You can also apply the headlines techniques when writing a description.
- Using numbers and symbols
- Adding CTAs
- Using geographic keywords
- Including reflective questions
- You can also use this format that is usually used by Google Ads professionals
- Reflective questions + Your guarantee as an accountant
- Testimonials
- Features of your accounting services + CTAs
- Features of your accounting services + Benefit that they will get
Once you finish writing your ads, click ‘save and continue’. Your overall ad campaign will be reviewed and suggestions will be given out by Google. After fixing errors, and following suggestions, you can now publish your ad campaign.
Now let’s talk about the part after your potential client clicks on your ad.
Optimizing Landing Page for Accounting Firms
A landing page is where your potential client will be redirected once they click on your ad. This is the link that you put in the final URL.
Landing page essential
Landing pages should include:
- Company logo – for business recognition and awareness
- Contact information – so they can contact you easily with just one click
- Heading – gives an idea of your business brand, headings should be catchy
- Service Page – shows what services you provide
- Review page – provides trust to your business
What is a good landing page?
Now that you know what should be included on your landing, you also need to check the overall user experience on your landing page
Is your website fast-loading? Make sure that your website is fast-loading since it greatly affects the decision-making of your customer.
Is your landing page easy to use? Your landing page should be easy to navigate to give a great overall user experience for your potential client.
Does your website work on mobile phones? Most people use mobile phones to search and look for services online. So make sure that your website is mobile-responsive.
If you have forms, is it short and easy to answer? If you need to use forms on your website, make sure that it only asks for basic information and can be answered within seconds.
What to optimize your landing page but don’t know where to start?
Get Started Now With Google Ads For Accountants
Creating Google Ads can be time-consuming and this guide is just the start. There is still a lot more to learn and one thing for sure is that Google Ads for accountants is effective and you could get more leads and grow your business if you start now.
If you are interested in building comprehensive and in-depth Google Ads for accountants, you can consult with our experts for free!
