How To Get Bookkeeping Clients
Growing a bookkeeping business is hard work. Let’s keep it realistic and practical.
Here are 7 proven strategies to get new bookkeeping clients that you can implement today.
We’re playing with AI. Try listening to our AI podcast of this blog post or watch the video summary below.
Mike de Ravel
Providing expert marketing insights for accountants, bookkeepers and tax professionals.
How To Get Clients As A Bookkeeper
Starting a bookkeeping business has become a popular and accessible option in recent years. But the key to any business success is growth. How do you get bookkeeping clients? If you can’t answer this question, you’ll struggle to scale, replace lost clients and reduce the stress of running your bookkeeping business.
In this blog, we’ll share 7 proven strategies to help you answer the question, ‘How to get clients for bookkeeping?’ and take your business to the next level. We’ll look at:
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1. Get More Bookkeeping Clients Through Referrals
Let’s start with an easy, achievable win. Just ask happy clients for referrals.
Word of mouth is still one of the best ways to grow any business. A happy bookkeeping client will gladly tell others about your services, often without you even prompting them. But in this case, we are going to prompt them!
Here’s 3 tips to get bookkeeping clients through referrals:
- Ask at the right time: The best time to ask for a referral is after you’ve delivered excellent service. Timing is key.
- Make It Easy: Provide clients with a short email or message they can send to their network. Make it easy for prospects to contact you.
- Incentivize them: Create a formal referral program that rewards clients for successful referrals, offering discounts or free services in return.
2. Get Bookkeeping Clients Through Online Directories
This takes a bit of manual work on your end, but its extremely easy to do. You can get clients for your bookkeeping business by listing your services on popular websites that prospects use to find a bookkeeper.
A lot of these online directories are free to list on and they rank well on search engines. This strategy also helps your own SEO and website rankings. You can list your bookkeeping services on sites like Yelp, the Digital Bookkeeping Association, Xero, QuickBooks ProAdvisors listing, BlueVine, Next Door, TrustPilot, and many others.
You can also get onto online marketplaces like Thumbtack or Upwork to find bookkeeping clients.
3. Think Outside The Box
Everyone who’s trying to figure out how to get bookkeeping clients is doing the same general activities. Try thinking outside the box. It starts by understanding your target audience really well. Understand where they go, what activities they’re involved in, what interests they have. Sometimes if you meet them in places where they’re more relaxed it can be easier to connect with them.
Here’s a couple of different ideas:
- Targeting new bookkeeping clients who typically have young kids? Maybe run an ad in the school's monthly email.
- Go to your county website and get a list of newly registered businesses that would be in need of a bookkeeper.
- Go to industry events that your target market would go to. If you have the budget, put up a small stand.
- Get involved in the local community and expand your network - sports clubs, church, parks, etc.
4. Get Bookkeeping Clients With A Great Website
Your bookkeeping website is the cornerstone of good online marketing. Its the window into your business.
Do it poorly and prospects are not going to find your website, trust it, or make an inquiry. Get it right and your website can become a steady pipeline of new clients. Our bookkeeping clients consistently generate new organic leads through their websites every month.
A website is not something that should be taken lightly. A 1 page site will never be found. Cheap templates don’t rank. If you’re going to build a website to get bookkeeping clients, do it properly. Here’s a few tips:
- Understand your target audience and customize your content towards them.
- Use modern, clean design that easy for visitors to engage with.
- Make sure your website is mobile friendly and easy to use.
- Take the time to do your SEO properly. If you don't, know one will see your website.
- Include relevant keywords like 'bookkeeping services + your area' or 'bookkeeping services + your niche'
- Keep adding content to your site. It's NOT a set and forget thing. Keep adding blog posts that are valuable to your audience.
- Hire an agency that builds websites for bookkeepers to do it properly, like MITCO Digital.
You can get more great accounting website design tips in this blog here.
5. Get Local Bookkeeping Clients On Google My Business
This is a simple thing that any local bookkeeper can do to get more bookkeeping clients. You can set up and optimize your own Google My Business profile here: https://business.google.com.
This is an essential tool for local SEO. You’ll get a local listing and as you climb the rankings you’ll start to show up in local search results and map results. It makes it easy for potential bookkeeping clients in your area to find you. If you’re just starting out, this may be difficult to do if you don’t have a physical workspace. Check Google’s policies for more information.
A few tips:
- Keep your profile updated. Check it monthly.
- Add your business operational hours
- Add your primary service category.
- Add any other relevant categories.
- Post to it regularly.
- Add real images or yourself, your team, clients and offices.
- Keep adding client reviews.
- Add your reviews to your website with a plugin.
- Reply to all reviews.
- Make it easy to contact you. Add your phone number and a link to your website.
6. Get Bookkeeping Clients On Social Media (Smartly)
If you’re learning how to get bookkeeping clients, here’s a free, valuable tip – don’t waste your time posting to social media.
9 times out of 10, posting on social media doesn’t generate ROI, especially for new bookkeepers who have no followers. Posting to social media typically only works if the aim is purely for brand building, or if you’re willing to put a lot of effort into creating video content everyday. Most bookkeepers are not.
Be smart about how you use social media. Create your social media profiles, optimize the pages and add a couple of posts, just so that your business looks legit. But then get onto activities that will actually get clients for bookkeeping.
Here’s a few ways that you can make social media work for you:
- LinkedIn: Create a list of prospects and reach out to them directly. Engage with their posts and content.
- Facebook Groups: Become active in small business or entrepreneurship groups, especially local groups or niche specific groups. You may be able to offer valuable financial, tax or bookkeeping advice. Spend 15 mins a day in those groups for a month and see what comes of it.
- Facebook Ads: You can use Meta (Facebook, Instagram, etc) to target specific business owners. Its an affordable platform to get started with. LinkedIn gives you better targeting options but is more expensive. Learn how to get bookkeeping clients using these ads by promoting your services, an offer, or with retargeting ads.
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We give you 24, easy-to-action marketing tips to help you get new clients online.
The checklist covers your website, content, ads and lead generation.
7. Get Clients For Bookkeeping Through Partnerships
There are many accountants, tax professionals and business consultants that work with your target audience but don’t want to touch the bookkeeping.
Reach out to local professionals and create a win-win situation where you both refer clients to each other. Any growth minded accountant or tax professional should be willing to have a conversation with you as you’ll be able to help them scale. You might also want to talk to CPAs that are just starting up their firm. You could provide a valuable service to them while they focus on the accounting and tax.
How To Get Bookkeeping Clients: Key Takeaways
There are a lot of things that you could do to get new bookkeeping clients. Try not to get overwhelmed. Make a list of the things you’d like to do then start with the easiest wins. Look for people who can help. It might be smarter to hire a marketing agency for bookkeepers like MITCO digital that can implement a proven marketing strategy and help you get more bookkeeping clients.
Get Bookkeeping Clients With Our Expertise
We exist to help bookkeepers grow their businesses by leveraging the real power of digital marketing.
Why would you waste money and time on strategies that don’t work and agencies that don’t understand your industry?
We know bookkeeping and accounting. We understand your prospects. Most importantly, we know what works.
Contact us to discuss how we can help you get bookkeeping clients.
