Clicks and clients: A Google Ads gut check

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By Janet Berry-Johnson | writer

You don't need a six-figure ad budget to make Google Ads work for your firm. But you do need a solid strategy. Robert Satrom, founder of Feedbackwrench, helps accountants and bookkeepers stop wasting money on the wrong clicks and start turning ad traffic into paying clients.

In this Q&A with The Net Gains, Satrom shares the biggest mistakes firms make with Google Ads, how to get your local listings working for you and why your landing page should talk less about bookkeeping and more about solving business problems.

Getting into Google Ads can feel overwhelming for accountants and bookkeepers. What’s the most important thing to get right before spending a dollar on ads?

First, start with Google Ads in your local community, particularly within a 20- to 50-mile radius around your Google Business Profile location. Then, you'll not only get the regular Google ad placement, but if you connect your Google Business as an asset in the ad account, your Google Business profile, with all your credibility-building reviews, can also show up. Our data shows local business owners are drawn towards local bookkeepers and accountants. 

Second, build your landing page to actually convert business owners. Financial services are very difficult to sell for a number of reasons, and business owners are a fairly sophisticated prospect. So you want a website that adheres to some best practices, which we teach in our Accountant/Bookkeeper course. 

What are those best practices? Well, it's not about you, it's about your prospective client. You need authentic imagery of you and your team, customer-focused, compelling messaging that aligns with what's important to the client, social proof and a really great video sales letter on your landing page.  

The bottom line is if your landing page isn't an amazing swing of the bat to get a business owner to take a step with you, trust you and see that you're a great solution for their problems, your Google ads are pointless.

The market is heating up. Our clients, as well as many other accounting and bookkeeping firms, realize they can add huge value to business owners as their outsourced accountant, fractional CFO, tax strategist or other value-focused role. This means they can legitimately charge significantly higher retainers, which in turn attracts more people willing to spend higher amounts of money on advertising. A local accounting or tax business should be prepared to spend between $15 and $300 per day on Google Ads, depending on their growth goals, available capital and capacity.  

What kinds of offers or services perform best in Google Ads for accounting professionals (tax prep, cleanup, monthly packages, something else)?

People come looking for a core service, and your process sells them more comprehensive services or "outsourced accountant" or Fractional CFO services. Your typical contractor or home service business owner is looking for business CPA, business tax returns, business accountant, bookkeepers near me, bookkeeping services, etc. We actually provide the top keywords people use for this on our website.

It's easiest to sell tax returns to individuals; it's hardest to sell the monthly retainers. The key is to understand that people search for the solution they THINK will solve their problem, but your process of discovery should uncover that they need tax planning, excellent bookkeeping, monthly reports on sales, job costing for construction companies and so many other things.

How can firms avoid wasting money on clicks from the wrong audience when they serve a specific niche or only want local leads?

Google Ads is all about the keywords people associate with what they think will solve their problem. My suggestion is to start with LOCAL leads. I've laid out some of the best practices, but you need to be ready to stomach the costs of advertising. Many other business verticals understand the costs associated with generating leads, but accountants, bookkeepers and tax professionals are hilariously averse to investing.

Ensuring you switch your location setting to market ONLY to people living in the area is huge. The other is to uncheck the display network and the search network. These will waste your spend.

You need to get enough front-end activity going to fuel enough discovery calls and analysis sessions. Google Ads, SEO, Meta Ads, YouTube Content and other digital platforms are very easy ways to leverage your capital and create front-end marketing activity. 

This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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