Marketing for Accountants

What marketing works for accountants?

The marketing that works for accountants is a mix of referrals, local search and seasonal paid ads, held together by a website that converts. Referrals bring the best-fit clients, Google Maps and organic search bring a steady flow from people new to your area, and Google Ads fills appointment books during the June to October rush.

Most firms over-invest in one channel. A firm that lives on referrals stalls when its referrers retire. A firm that lives on Google Ads pays for every client, every year. The goal is several channels feeding one website, with tracking that shows which clients come from where.

Channel	Best for	Time to results	Typical cost
Client and partner referrals	Business, advisory and SMSF clients	Ongoing, relationship-driven	Your time
Google Maps and local SEO	“Accountant near me” and suburb searches	3–6 months	$800–$3,000 per month (market range)
Organic SEO for services and niches	Business tax, BAS, niche and SMSF searches	3–6 months	Included in most SEO retainers
Google Ads	Tax-time appointments, fast	Days	$500–$1,500 per month management, plus ad spend
Email newsletter	Retention, cross-selling, referrals	Each send	Software plus your time
LinkedIn	Advisory clients and referral partners	Months of consistent posting	Your time

We deliver the website, local SEO, organic SEO and Google Ads parts of this. Newsletters and LinkedIn are advice: they work best written by the partners themselves, because clients want to hear from their accountant.

For the full detail on search, including Business Profile setup and the TPB and APES 110 rules for your site, see our SEO for accountants page.

Why should an accounting firm pick a niche?

A niche gives you something specific to say. “Accountant for tradies” or “accountant for medical practitioners” lets you write pages, ads and newsletters that answer that client’s real questions, which generic firms can’t do, and it makes you the obvious referral inside that industry.

Good Australian niches tend to have recurring compliance work and questions that generalists answer badly:

• Tradies and builders. Vehicle and tool claims, quarterly BAS, contractor versus employee questions, Xero or MYOB setup.
• Medical and allied health. Service entity structures, contractor arrangements with practices, payroll tax questions that vary by state.
• Farmers and primary producers. Farm management deposits, income averaging, drought and disaster grants. A firm in Wagga Wagga, Dubbo or the WA Wheatbelt has a natural edge here.
• Property investors. Rental schedules, depreciation, capital gains on sale.
• Hospitality and retail. Award wages, payroll, cash flow and stock.

Niching doesn’t mean turning other clients away. It means your marketing leads with one or two client types, and your website has a dedicated page for each. A Hobart firm can still do individual returns for anyone; it just doesn’t spend its ad budget competing for them.

How do referral partners fit in?

Referral partners are other professionals who see your ideal clients first: mortgage brokers, financial planners, business lawyers, bookkeepers and business bankers. A few active partners can send more business and SMSF clients than any ad campaign, so treat them as a channel and track them.

What helps partners refer to you:

• A page to send people to. A referral page explaining who you work with, what the first meeting looks like and fixed-fee starting points makes a referral easier to pass on.
• Referring back. Brokers and planners want referrals too. A firm that refers clients needing a loan or financial advice gets remembered.
• Tracking. Ask “who referred you?” on every enquiry form and in the first meeting, and record it. Without that, you can’t tell which relationships to invest in.

Be careful with money changing hands. ASIC’s guidance for accountants says you can refer a client to an AFS licensee, but you must tell the client about any benefits you or your associates get from the referral. This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice. Our pages on marketing for mortgage brokers cover the other side of that relationship.

Should accountants run Google Ads at tax time?

Usually, yes, for a short season. Google Ads search volume data for Australia (via DataForSEO) shows “tax agent near me” at about 18,100 searches in July 2026 against 2,400 in December 2025, and “eofy” peaking at 60,500 in June. Ads let you capture that peak while organic rankings are still building.

Run it tightly:

Month	Focus
May to June	EOFY planning for business owners and investors
July to October	Tax return appointments, with the 31 October self-lodgment date as a deadline people respond to
Around 28 October, 28 February, 28 April, 28 July	BAS help for businesses behind on quarterly lodgments
November to April	Pause or cut back, and put the budget into SEO and referrals

Filter out the searches that won’t become clients. Negative keywords for “free”, “mytax”, “ato login”, “online tax return” and job searches like “tax accountant jobs” stop budget leaking to people who want to lodge themselves or work for you. Send ad clicks to a specific service page with booking, not your homepage.

Typical Australian market rates for Google Ads management are $500–$1,500 per month with ad spend separate, or 10–20% of spend. For campaign setup, see our Google Ads service. Don’t run ads you can’t service: if your July appointment book is already full, extra clicks just create unhappy prospects.

Do email newsletters and LinkedIn work for accountants?

Yes, mostly for keeping and growing the clients you have rather than finding new ones. A short newsletter before EOFY, after the federal budget and a few weeks before each BAS date keeps your firm in mind and prompts clients to book, refer friends and ask about extra services.

The Spam Act 2003 applies. In plain English, from the ACMA’s guidance: you need consent before sending marketing emails, each message must identify you and include your contact details, and every message needs a working unsubscribe that you honour within 5 working days. Existing clients may give inferred consent where the email relates to their relationship with you, but express consent recorded at sign-up is the safer path. This is a plain-English summary, not legal advice.

LinkedIn suits advisory and referral work. Partners posting plain-English notes on tax changes, a client’s (anonymised, permitted) problem solved or a cash flow tip stay visible to business owners and the brokers and lawyers who refer. Keep posts inside APES 110: no exaggerated claims about your results, and no knocking other firms. We don’t manage social accounts, but we’ll make sure every post has a relevant page to link to.

What should an accounting firm’s website do?

An accounting firm’s website should turn the traffic from every other channel into booked appointments. That means a page for each service and niche, fee guidance, a booking or enquiry form on every page, and trust signals people check before they call: the TPB symbol with your registration number, eligible member designations and real Google reviews.

The common gaps are an outdated SMSF page that predates the 2016 licensing change, a single “Services” page, no fees at all, and a contact form that goes to an inbox nobody checks in July.

Fixed-fee packages make the biggest difference to conversion. “Individual tax return from $X”, “sole trader BAS and tax package from $Y a quarter” or “company compliance package from $Z a year”, with a clear list of what’s included, let a prospect decide before they call. Firms worry that publishing prices invites shoppers, but the clients who book after reading a fee page have already accepted the price. Add online booking with real appointment slots for July to October, a short “what to bring” checklist for tax appointments, and a note on whether you offer remote appointments for clients who’ve moved interstate.

Typical Australian market ranges for a small-business website are about $1,000–$3,000 for a template site and $3,000–$15,000 for a custom build, depending on pages, integrations and copywriting. A lead-generation site for an accounting firm usually sits in the custom range because each service and niche needs its own page.

How much should an accounting firm spend on marketing?

There’s no fixed percentage, but a common pattern for a small firm is SEO year round, Google Ads for four or five months around tax time, and partner time on referrals and the newsletter. These are typical Australian market ranges, not our quote:

Item	Typical Australian market range
SEO, single office in a competitive area	$1,500–$3,000 per month
SEO, multi-office or national niche	$3,000–$6,000+ per month
Google Ads management (ad spend separate)	$500–$1,500 per month, or 10–20% of spend
Small-business website, template	$1,000–$3,000 one-off
Small-business website, custom	$3,000–$15,000 one-off
One-off paid marketing or SEO audit	$500–$2,500

Judge it by client value, not cost per click. For a hypothetical firm in Bendigo where a business client is worth $4,000 a year in fees and stays five years, one extra business client is worth about $20,000. Two or three a year from search and ads covers most budgets in the table. Work with us is month-to-month, with no lock-in; see the scopes on our SEO pricing page.

Want to know which channels would bring your firm the most good-fit clients? Get a free marketing and SEO audit.