In the competitive field of accounting, marketing your accounting practice can be quite the challenge, not to mention cripplingly expensive for the smaller company. It might seem a hard task to compete with those big national chains and their slick TV ads, even though the personal touch you can bring to their finances will be far more beneficial to them. So how can you drum up extra business without breaking the bank?

Traditional avenues of advertising such as the local Yellow Pages, or radio and television, however small the station are just too far out of the advertising budget that many accounting practices have to work with. In addition, how well this kind of investment works is almost impossible to track. You may indeed be gaining a new client as a result of a commercial they have seen or heard, but the chances are you will forget to ask, and the client will probably be far more concerned about their financial situation to mention how they happened to discover your accounting practice. However, in order to survive and prosper, marketing your accounting practice successfully is crucial.

There is another, very effective and economical method of marketing your accounting practice that you may have never considered, or even heard much about. In today’s economic climate, the savvy accountant should consider the great power of online advertising. Thanks to the great spread of everyday Internet use by exactly the people you need to target and the power of major search engines like Google, you can target specific geographical areas for people searching basic keywords, in this case things like “accounting” “tax preparation” and even simply “accountant”. Even better, online advertising lets you target the specific demographic you are seeking. Someone searching such specific keywords is already looking for information about the very services you provide, and so it is only to your great benefit that your accounting practice ranks high in the search results.

But how does this kind of marketing really convert into great accounting practice advertising? To be most effective you need to direct the person who clicked on your brief little online ad to a more expansive “landing page”. On this page you need to create a great and compelling reason for this potential customer, or visitor (they are “visiting” your page now) to share their basic contact information with you. Filling your page with interesting and informative articles about accounting, with an offer to provide a free consultation if the user fills in a simple contact form can be a great way to find new clients. The data is emailed to you directly and immediately, letting you follow up immediately, while the contact still has their finances and your services fresh in their mind.

The true beauty of using the Internet and this kind of accounting practice advertising is how little it costs. You will only be charged for potential customers who take the time to “click” on your ad specifically, those people who are demonstrating a real interest in your practice. Online advertising like this really is the best and economically sensible way to make the best of your accounting practice marketing dollar.