Accounting Business Ads

So, you’re ready to start running ads for your accounting firm, but aren’t sure how to start? You’ve come to the right place!

Marketing your accounting firm may seem like a daunting task, and we at Revenue Scout understand why. Advertisements can be costly and time consuming, especially if you aren’t familiar with the best ways to approach them.

However, we know just how to make this process easier and more effective for your business, thus allowing you to gain more clients and reach a wider audience. In this article, we will go over different methods of marketing your accounting firm!

We will cover all of your options when it comes to running ads so that by the end of this article, you will be able to make an informed decision for your company.

Your first step when starting an ad campaign for your accounting firm will be choosing between a traditional marketing approach or a digital one. Both have their own sets of pros and cons.

Not sure which one to pick? Let’s go over each of them to help you decide!

Traditional Accounting Advertising Examples

In short, traditional marketing is any advertisement that happens off the internet or in person. This is a great way to connect with a wider audience in physical locations.

These ads are typically placed in environments that will be seen or heard regularly by a wide variety of locals. Effective methods of traditional marketing can be radio or television ads, billboards, flyers, and more.

So why is traditional marketing still important?

While you may think this kind of marketing isn’t effective in a time where most people spend hours of their day on their smartphones and computers, you’d be wrong!

Implementing traditional marketing strategies can reach a wider audience if it’s done correctly and your ads are placed in areas that your target demographic regularly visits.

If one of your business goals is to gain a larger local audience, investing in things such as billboards, bus stop ads, or newspaper ads can help you to be more recognizable in your community. This ultimately helps drive more traffic to your business and gaining more clientele.

Here are some traditional ad options available to you:

Newspaper

If you’re hoping to build a more solid client base in your local community, a newspaper ad is a great way to achieve this. Reading a newspaper like the Washington Post can often be a routine part of people’s lives, so getting new eyes on your business with an ad in the paper is always a plus.

Magazines

Similarly to the newspaper, placing an ad in a magazine is an excellent traditional marketing technique that can really showcase your accounting firm to new people within your target demographic.

But how can you do this successfully?

Try to determine what kinds of magazines your target demographic would read, and aim to place your ads them. For example, if you’re looking to appeal to entrepreneurs who may need help managing their new business’ finances, try placing ads for your firm in a popular business or finance publication.

Golf Course Scorecards

There are several creative ways to market your firms services. This can include advertising your business on a golf course scorecard.

Essentially, you would include a business-card-size ad that would be placed on the scorecards that the golfers would refer back to consistently throughout a round.

Rather than just seeing your ad once and forgetting about it over time, they would be looking at your company’s ad over and over, making it more likely for your ad to actually result in a new client.

Billboards

Billboards are typically most effective on major highways or busy roads. To make a billboard really pop, it’s best to choose an eye-catching, memorable, and brief slogan that people can easily read while driving past it. If done correctly, a billboard can reach a wide audience.

TV Commercials

Another way to solidify a strong local audience is by creating commercials designed for television. While this option may involve a bit more work and money, it may be the one that has the highest potential to reach a wide audience.

If you present a compelling or memorable TV commercial for your accounting firm, it’s likely that viewers who are intrigued by the ad will be led to research your company further.

Traditional Advertising: The Pros and Cons

While it’s certainly true that traditional marketing can help your accounting firm reach a wider audience and build more brand awareness, there are many things to consider when it comes to taking this advertising approach.

First, there are many advantages that come with traditional advertisement. Marketing channels such as television, radio, and billboards are able to reach a wide range of people, from various backgrounds, all at once. Additionally, these efforts can help to build local brand awareness within your own community.

Furthermore, traditional marketing can increase your credibility in the eyes of consumers, while increasing familiarity in general. Studies have even shown that a consumer is more likely to choose a company that they have heard of before, whether it was through a friend or a brief glance at a billboard advertisement.

So, by having your company’s name visible to a wider audience, they will be more likely to choose your accounting services over another firm.

While there are many pros to taking a more traditional approach to marketing your company, there are also a few drawbacks that you may encounter.

First, traditional marketing techniques are often very costly. While you may be able to reuse some methods to save money (ex. Running the same radio ad every year), paying for various ad spaces, printing materials, and commercials can definitely add up over time.

Additionally, by using traditional advertising methods, you will have a significantly harder time tracking your key performance indicators.

Key performance indicators, also known as KPIs, are the metrics that you can use to keep track of how your marketing efforts are performing. With the amount of money these advertisements cost, it’s important to know how effective they actually are in the long run.

Since there aren’t many ways in which a business using traditional marketing can determine how consumers are reacting to their ads, you won’t be able to easily track and adjust your approach to improve it over time.

Another downside to a more traditional advertising approach is the lack of targeted marketing available to you. When using digital advertisement, you are able to access a variety of filters and tools to show your business to consumers who are specifically in need of your accounting services.

Using these tools, you will have an easier time closing sales through your ads, as they will primarily be shown to your target demographic. With traditional marketing, this is not the case. Since you’re unable to target a specific demographic with a billboard or flyers, your efforts may be less successful in the end.

Finally, traditional advertising is less adaptable than its digital counterpart. Once your company prints or runs an ad, it can be time consuming, frustrating, and costly to change it.

Since it can be extremely difficult for traditional marketers to make changes to their ads quickly, they may have a harder time making content that stays relevant for an extended amount of time.

Digital Accounting Firm Advertising Examples

Now that we’ve gone over your traditional advertising options, let’s talk about digital advertising.

But what exactly is digital advertising?

Essentially, digital advertising includes any form of marketing that you do for your company that takes place on the internet. From google ads to social media marketing, there’s a wide variety of platforms for content marketing for accountants that’ll get more people aware of your firm.

Even your official website can be a component of your digital advertising campaign!

How might ads on social media differ from traditional advertising?

One excellent aspect of digital advertising is that there are many ways to approach it. Below, we at Revenue Scout have listed a few methods of digital advertising that you can use for your accounting firm today:

Google Ads

With billions of users visiting the platform every day, it’s no wonder why Google tends to be the most popular method of online marketing. Google ads is a platform that offers paid advertising specifically to the people who need your services the most.

But how exactly does it work?

When you search something on Google, the first couple links that show up will most likely be an ad for the exact thing that you are searching for. The companies whose links are showing up in those position paid to be there.

This is because the top spots of a Google search are statistically the most clicked on. Therefore, paying for an ad that places you directly at the top of a relevant Google search can be a worthwhile effort for any business.

Let’s think about it another way!

If someone searches “accountants near me”, and your ad pops up, they’re more likely to click on it because you’re top of the page and offering exactly what they’re looking for.

Given how expansive Google's reach can be, investing some time and money in Google ads is a great place to start your digital advertising journey. Plus, you can set the ads to run in accordance with your budget!

Bing Ads

Through Microsoft’s search engine, you can advertise accounting services to people who are searching for accounting services in the area. Similarly to Google ads, you can use Bing ads to get your accounting firm’s website listed first for searches related to your business by using keywords.

Your ad can also show up to consumers at the top or to the right of Yahoo and MSN searches. Through Bing ads, you can choose who to target using filters. Select criteria based on location, specific times of the day or week, or individual demographics. You can also run multiple ads at once to determine which approach works best when it comes to attracting new clients.

The best way to get the most out of these advertisements is to make it as convenient as possible for potential clients to contact you. In your ad, include your contact information and a direct link to your website. Try offering something unique, like a free consultation to new clients to incentives them to reach out.

Facebook Ads For Accounting Firms

Many business owners throughout a wide range of industries use Facebook ads to reach new audiences, and for good reason!

Although Facebook has over 2.9 billion users, its primary focus when running an ad campaign is showing your business to the people who’d be most likely to show interest in your services.

As an accounting firm, this can be extremely beneficial in your pursuit to win over more leads and gain a larger clientele.

Facebook ads take a long list of factors into consideration before showing your business to their users. This includes demographics, their location, interests, and any other profile information that indicates what ads an individual user will actually engage with or be interested in.

Similarly to other platforms, Facebook ads appear for users throughout the website/app. While they are labeled with a “sponsored” message, they usually appear as normal posts in a user’s feed, including a link to the business’ website and a call to action.

Instagram Ads

Owned by Facebook, Instagram is a platform with an equally effective approach to running ads to a wider audience. Similarly to Facebook, these ads often show up on a user’s main feed, story feed, reels feed, or explore page.

While an ad on Instagram will always have a “sponsored” tag included in it, the most effective ones have an organic feel and look just like a normal social media post. Your ad will do best if you are able to convey an eye catching message in a single photo.

Best of all, on Instagram, you will have the option to set up an ad campaign based on what your own specific goals are for it.

For example, if your goal is to increase traffic to your website, your ad campaign will appear a certain way. If your goal was to increase your engagement on your social media pages that ad would look different from the other because the objective has changed.

Therefore, being aware of your goals and objectives before beginning your marketing campaign on Instagram will help you succeed in the long run. This is because the setup of their ads system is centered around helping you meet your goals.

LinkedIn Ads

With millions of professionals across all industries using LinkedIn, the platform has proven to be a powerful way to gain leads and promote your business. This is especially true for accounting firms, as many entrepreneurs, business owners, or professionals across any industry may be in need of your accounting services.

One of the reasons that LinkedIn is so popular for accounting advertisement is because of the number of options that business owners have when trying to reach their goals. Here are several approaches that you can take when advertising your accounting firm:

• If your goal is simply to get a wider audience familiar with your company, you can start with an awareness ad. This can help you increase followers and views.
• If you’re interested in getting more website traffic and engagement, you can opt for a consideration ad.
• If you want to turn leads into a closed sale, you can choose to invest in conversion ads.

All of these ads will have different approaches when it comes to the content you will be providing. That’s why it’s important to establish your goals and targets before drafting anything.

Youtube Ads

If you’re looking to get a little more creative in your advertising approach, Youtube ads could be right for you!

Advertising your accounting firm on YouTube is a little different than other platforms. This is primarily because you will have to make a compelling video ad to be shown to new audiences and grab their attention.

Some ads on youtube will be shown directly on the homepage of users that are most likely to engage with your content. Others will show up as one of the first few videos on a search result, or in the “suggested videos” section of the platform.

In addition to these ads, you can also run a skippable in-stream ad. This is the most common type of paid advertisement that you will find on YouTube. These will play before or during a popular video on YouTube.

Sometimes the ads will offer the viewer the option to skip it after 30 seconds or so. You may want to opt for this feature. While it may seem counterintuitive, making these ads skippable will actually give you tons of information on how the ad performs with your target demographic.

If you don’t have the budget for a high quality video ad, don’t worry, you can still use YouTube to market your accounting firm! YouTube also allows overlay ads, which simply appear as a banner on a video that a user is already watching.

Display Ads

A display ad will appear on various pages related to your business to attract new viewers to your accounting firm and are usually text, photo, or video based. Display ads are a great remarketing technique that gets your accounting firm re-seen by people who have already visited your website or interacted with your content.

You’ve likely interacted with these kinds of ads before without realizing it!

For instance, have you ever been online shopping for a pair of boots but never actually purchase them? Well, the next few times you use the internet you likely found that the exact pair of boots you had been looking was being promoted to you.

That’s a remarketing/ display ad!

Display ads will typically show up to the right of a related web page or app that a consumer is viewing. It’s, therefore, important to make them attention grabbing, or else the viewer will simply keep scrolling.

By focusing your efforts on remarketing, you’ll be able to keep your accounting firm fresh in people’s minds, increasing the likelihood that they will actually take that final step in contacting you for your accounting services.

You can set up display ads through Google, and similarly to the other platforms mentioned above, you’ll be able to directly target specific demographics.

Digital Advertising For Accountants: The Pros and Cons

Over time, digital advertising has become increasingly popular with businesses across all industries, and it’s just as effective with accounting firms. But what exactly are its pros and cons?

Let’s start with the potential downsides you may encounter when using digital marketing as opposed to traditional marketing.

Digital marketing can take a lot of work. Historically, traditional marketing has been driven by a compelling story to capture a viewer’s attention. But, digital ads require a bit more strategy.

For example, one of the most effective methods of digital marketing for accounting firms is SEO. For SEO to be successful, companies will need to be strategic with their keyword selection and link building process, all while selling their company to new consumers and trying to rank higher on search engine pages.

Another pillar in digital marketing strategy is the use of social media. Many companies find the task of learning how to effectively use social media to build brand awareness, promote their services, and engage with their audience to be stressful.

But don’t get overwhelmed! While there can definitely be a learning curve involved with this approach, once you get the hang of it, you will very quickly see the results of your hard work. Ultimately, these techniques tend to help companies grow faster and more reliably.

The main reason that digital marketing has become so popular in recent years is because of the shift in consumers’ habits and overall attention. In other words, the way that people engage with content and media has changed drastically.

For example, traditional cable TV viewership has significantly decreased, along with newspaper sales. While billboards still have prove to be successful to some degree, they can be costly and difficult to change if you want your ad to stay relevant to new audiences.

But since most audiences are regularly tuned in to online platforms, you’ll have an easier time reaching new consumers digitally.

As mentioned earlier, traditional marketing doesn’t allow companies to control who is seeing their advertisements. On the other hand, with digital advertisements, you can be more strategic.

Across all platforms, digital advertisements allow businesses to narrow in on their target demographic, which only increases the likelihood that your ad will effectively help you to reach your business goals. For example, Google and Facebook allow users to target specific audiences that have a history of engaging with content that’s similar to yours.

This allows for remarketing, which is the practice of showing your ads specifically to people who have already visited your website or interacted with your content in the past.

Lastly, digital advertisements allow you to track how your marketing strategies are actually performing in real time. By tracking your KPIs, you can view which demographics are engaging with your content as well as which formats are performing the best, and adjust from there.

Since it’s so convenient and quick to change your ads to stay relevant, you can continue doing so as much as you want, ensuring that the ads that you are paying for are actually working in your favor and growing your audience.

Traditional Advertising vs. Digital Advertising: Which One Should You Choose?

At the end of the day, we at Revenue Scout believe that digital advertisements can make the biggest difference for you and your accounting firm in terms of reaching new potential clients, growing your brand, and actually seeing a return on the time and money you are investing into marketing your firm.

At the end of the day, you will get more eyes on your website using SEO than you will with a TV commercial. Additionally, this approach is more cost effective, which is always a bonus.

Bottom Line

While digital ads may require a bit more strategy and time, they will also do more in the long run to help you to attract new audiences.

Traditional marketing has a long history of success, however, when choosing new methods for advertising your accounting firm, it’s important to consider where consumer’s attention lies.

Now that you have an understanding of traditional vs digital advertisements, you’re ready to take the next steps in your marketing adventure. If you are looking to grow your accounting firm, Revenue Scout is here to help!

Our team offers accounting firms high quality SEO and digital marketing services to help them succeed. We have helped countless businesses grow their clientele, reach new audiences, and get ahead of their competition. We’re confident that we can do the same for you.

Give us a call today to get started. We look forward to hearing from you!