the simple, easy steps for getting started with google ads in time for busy season.
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with becky livingston
as the 2022 busy season begins to loom larger, this is a great time to get to know google ads, says becky livingston, 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间’ digital marketing guru says in this replay of recent 卡塔尔世界杯常规比赛时间 flash briefing webinar. flash briefings are fast-paced 30-minute conversations on urgent issues and quick answers.
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livingston walks you through the steps from beginning to end. start by defining your perfect client, then begin building the right offer for them, she says. after that, you can lay out a schedule and work on a budget. but start early, because if you’re looking for tax clients in the run-up to tax season, the best keywords will start to get pricey. by livingston’s estimates, 10 to 15 percent of accounting firms are already using google ad words. that may sound like a lot. but there’s still plenty of room for firms — especially local firms — to dive in and start landing new clients.
- download the slide deck for google ad success tips for accountants
transcript
transcripts of our episodes are made available as soon as possible. they are not fully edited for grammar or spelling.
rick: hi, this is rick telberg with becky livingston. becky, what do accountants need to know about google ads?
becky: that’s a great question. with the busy season just around the corner, google ads are your friend. they are one of those things that help you get your brand out there. one for year-end. any businesses that are dealing with a calendar year-end of december now is the time to start thinking about those campaigns. then also pre busy season for tax accountants who are looking at hopefully an april 15th deadline this coming year in 2022. i’m currently talking to my clients about when do we release those ads? what do they look like and are we promoting anything in particular? we usually start those ads in mid-january because that’s when people start thinking about it.
we run them generally through the first week of march, we run them much later than that, you’re just getting the 1040 folks or extensions running through into the next fall. we plan that out and we say, what are we going to promote this year? even if we’re going to promote, what are we promoting? are we promoting just tax services? are we promoting a niche audience? are we targeting to a specific group of people geographically by age, income, all kinds of things. then we also look at business ads for year ends, quarterlies, extensions which we know is right around the corner and all those other things. the ads help you one, help with search engine optimization because it will put you on page one before anything else will, other than local listings.
two, it also boosts your brand name in the index, so as google is searching for brands and it’s trying to index your website, having some advertising oomph behind it is very helpful for the search engines. it doesn’t cost a lot of money. the closer you get to tax season though, if you’re doing tax ads, that costs money. on average cost per click for a tax ad is about $11.50. if your budget’s $50, you have three clicks and you’re done, maybe four depending on your audience. that’s it, you’re done for the day or you’re done for the month if you only have $50. we have to really look at that and talk about budget, geography and target and all of that stuff to make sure the budget’s set correctly.
rick: becky, how many accountants are actually using google ads these days?
becky: there’s what? about 44,000 firms in the united states. i would guess and this is an estimate of mine, probably 10 to 15%. it’s a really low number, it’s amazing to me. i think it’s because it scares people. they don’t know how it works, they don’t know how much it costs, they don’t think it’s worthwhile because they tried it once with a coupon and they didn’t get any leads, so they think it doesn’t work, it does work. i do it with clients quite often, i’ve been running bookkeeping ads, i’ve been running advisory ads, this year i’ve been running special content ads, maybe it’s construction ebooks or real estate or manufacturing. you have to work with someone who really understands the system and to make it effective for the return on investments. that’s what you need to do, but it can be very effective.
rick: what’s so complicated about google ads. becky, what is it about google ads, that seems to frighten accountants that they shouldn’t be afraid of?
becky: one of the things that frightens them is how to write an ad effectively. you have very limited amount of characters to get someone’s eyeballs and the headlines. accountants, generally aren’t writers and they have to write something. they think, “oh, i’m just going to put accounting services, tax accountant, 21 years of service,” or whatever years they’ve been in business. that’s not what’s going to grab someone’s attention, you have to grab their attention with a pain point. “payroll giving you a headache? we can help. do you know what your tax breaks are this year? if not, give us a call.” that kind of stuff, because if your audience can’t feel or see themselves in your ad, they’re not going to call you. that’s the hard part, i think, writing something that gets their attention.
rick: becky livingston, thank you very much.
becky: you’re welcome. thank you.
rick: i’m going to ask one more question. it’s about what we’ve learned in the pandemic? becky livingston, how has accounting marketing changed because of covid?
becky: wow, that’s a really interesting question and one of the things i think that changed the most, having come from a big four firm, not just the remote work aspect of it, people working together, but remotely, i think the aspect of how do we do business if we’re not physically in front of someone. because a lot of times, you have meetings with your clients. now you got this machine in between you. how do you make it personal? how do you help them to understand what they’re doing is right or wrong or how can they do it differently?
one of the biggest shifts i’ve seen this last 20 months or so, webinars. off the hook, people are doing webinars. i think that’s really a valuable tool for people because you have the ability to talk about pain points, how you can help them solve them, case studies, it doesn’t have to be your face in front of the camera the whole time. that’s a really interesting shift, is toward the webinar space and video. a lot more firms are calling me about video. that’s some of the changes i’m seeing.
rick: interesting. becky livingston, thank you very much.
becky: thank you.