How to find bookkeeping clients for your business

The lifeblood of bookkeeping businesses and accounting firms is a healthy spread of clients. You don’t want to rely on a few big-ticket clients for your cash flow, nor do you want to be on an endless chase for business. What can you do to find bookkeeping clients? How do you attract potential clients to consider and take up your accounting services?

Nail your bookkeeping or accounting website

When investigating potential bookkeeper business or advisory services, your website is the first thing many prospective clients see.

Your site both exudes your first impression and is also one of the primary ports of call for clients looking to contact you. Through your website, prospective customers can peruse your services, perceive your professionalism, book a consultation, or request a quote.

If you’ve started in business recently, falling over at this crucial juncture can heavily diminish your ability to find accounting and bookkeeping clients.

Make sure your website:

• Is clear, uncluttered, and to the point.
• Has an obvious pathway to contact forms, contact detail, or appointment setting options.
• Contains simple menus that outline your services and how you can help.
• Is well-branded and clean with attractive design elements.
• Is fast and mobile optimised.
• Has good SEO.

Complete your Google My Business profile

Filling out your Google My Business profile is paramount to being found online, especially through Google Maps. (It’s very common for potential clients to use Google Maps to find local businesses).

To show up first or second in local Google and Map searches, your Google My Business profile needs to be fully complete. It should also connect to your website and social media platforms.

Take advantage of online business listings and reviews

On top of perfecting your Google Business profile, when seeking to attract new clients, also consider combing the web for review sites and online business listings. (Many advisors win bookkeeping clients by being listed on these directories.)

Invest in thought leadership

To be more proactive in gaining clients, you need to position yourself as a thought leader, not just a business owner.

Demonstrate your skills, expertise, and the value of your bookkeeping services, by creating some content! Whether it’s filming short videos, hosting webinars, writing blogs, or offering quick tips and commentary on compliance changes – whatever format you choose, just go and do it.

By giving away snippets of knowledge for free, you demonstrate why someone would pay for your services.

Your subject matter expertise also makes for killer social media content! Thought leadership articles go hand in hand with a strong social media game, so for the best results (increasing your reach and gaining traction quickly) cultivate both at the same time.

Extend your reach with social media, blogs, and content marketing

When seeking more clients for your bookkeeping business or accounting firm, social media platforms, content marketing, and blogs should be the mainstay of your marketing efforts.

Tips, videos, blogs or commentary posts should form a central pillar of your social media game.

Frequent and high-quality social posts will set you apart from your competitors and make you more visible to new clients. Blogs are great for SEO, and for bringing people to your website, and short videos are accessible and highly ranked.

Create a basic social media calendar to keep up your cadence. Think about ‘boosting’ posts by putting small amounts of money behind them to increase their reach.

Work harder for referrals

What’s the best way to get a referral? Just ask!

Sure, you can completely rely on your good work to passively induce a client to recommend you to their friends and family, or you can pursue recommendations actively.

Indeed, there’s no harm in asking for, and even incentivising, client referrals. With solid service delivery, and by being proactive, you can land multiple new clients by word-of-mouth.

Partner with other qualified and trusted professionals

Find out who your potential service partners could be – there are multiple options when it comes to accounting and bookkeeping professions.

From software providers, industry groups, and related businesses with complementary offerings, forming business partnerships is a great way to increase your exposure, network with relevant businesses, and attain industry accreditations. This in turn will assist you to find clients.

Upsell complementary services to your existing clients

Once you’ve landed a client, double down on your efforts by offering good value complimentary services. If a client initially engages you to help with payroll, why not offer them tax time services in due course as well? If they want help with accounting software and basic bookkeeping setup, they may also be partial to deeper business advisory services like forecasting, bank reconciliation, budget advice or help with business plans.

The point is, that once you have a client, and have satisfied them with great service at affordable prices, this client is gold. They’ll not only recommend you to others but also form a lifelong relationship with you and uptake a variety of services.

Time your follow-ups right

If you’ve had past clients that only wanted you for tax filing, or a few consults, be sure you retarget them at an appropriate time, with a message to match.

By upkeeping your CRM, you’ll know important upcoming dates for your clients, and position yourself to re-win their business with a simple and timely reminder email.

You can extrapolate this into proper email marketing campaigns. By creating lists that group previous clients by ‘type’ or about timely events, you can easily contact a few at a time and keep business flowing.