How to Get Accounting and Bookkeeping Clients: 8 Best Tactics

If you want to go full-time with your business, you’ll need more clients. Typically, you’ll need 20 to 30, depending on your income goals and the packages you offer. So, how do you market your services to find new potential clients?

If you’re not sure, you’re not alone. Many accountants and bookkeepers struggle with generating leads and finding more clients. Fortunately, it’s a skill you can learn and one that will pay dividends for the life of your business.

We’ve asked some of our FreshBooks Accounting Partners to share which tactics they’ve used successfully to find clients for their own bookkeeping businesses or accounting firms.

Many of the methods not only attract new clients but also pre-qualify them, so you get connected with prospective clients who are the best possible fit. In other words, you end up with better clients and a better experience running your business.

1. Establish a Niche

Are you serving anyone and everyone who comes through the door, or do you have a particular specialty? Choosing a niche for your bookkeeping or accounting services may feel limiting when you’re trying to grow your business, but it’s actually a powerful positioning tool that can boost profitability, deepen client relationships, and help you scale your firm.

Whether you choose to carve out a niche in a specific industry, like restaurants, or a specific service, like payroll, you’ll be viewed as a specialist by current and prospective clients. They’ll know they’re working with someone who understands their world and their needs–and who lives and breathes this work–rather than someone who dabbles in it. Many high-quality prospects seek out accounting and bookkeeping professionals who are known as the “best” or most experienced in their area of business.

Working within a niche also makes you more visible and easier to find online, as you can pinpoint who you serve and what you do using with the keywords and phrases your ideal clients search for.

Perhaps most important, developing a niche allows you to charge premium fees. When you’re as a specialist, you’re known for understanding aspects of accounting and offering services that not every accounting professional can do. Premium fees mean more profit in your pocket and they also mean you need fewer clients to reach your goals.

2. Give (and Receive) Referrals

Having a strong network of like-minded professionals in your industry is a great way to establish credibility and give/receive support and referrals. Look for CPAs, bookkeepers, coaches, and advisors online and in your local community whose approach to business you align with. Invite them to 1:1 coffee chats, either IRL or online to share best practices and see where your work may intersect.

Be curious about the kind of work they love–and don’t love–to do and point out opportunities to share referrals, or even collaborate with client work. For instance, if you’re a bookkeeper who doesn’t do tax work, you might suggest to a tax practitioner who is sick of dealing with messy client books, that you could each refer the less desirable projects to the other.

It may take time to build trust and rapport with other professionals, so be sure to stay in touch to share resources or news, and inquire about how things are going from time to time. Even better, make referrals as often as you can. This will show that you’re serious about having a long-term, reciprocal professional relationship. Plus, it looks good to future clients.

It’s also helpful to look at any interaction as an opportunity for a referral.

“I like to develop relationships with people that lead to work,” says Melanie Schroeder, CPA, CGA, RPC at Out of The Box CPA. “I also focus on providing the best care I can to current clients so they become a great source of referrals as well!”

3. Strengthen Your LinkedIn Presence

If the idea of in-person “networking” makes you shudder, you can accomplish a lot on LinkedIn. This is where many professionals across all industries go to check out the credentials and networks of people they’re considering working with. In fact, more than 250 million people in North America use LinkedIn. That’s a lot of potential clients and referrals.

By having a strong presence on LinkedIn, you can attract prospects and referrals even when you’re not actively on the platform. Some of the ways to ensure your profile is working for you:

• Build your professional network: Connect with professionals in your industry and in the industries where you want to attract clients.
• Ensure your profile is complete: Compare your profile to some of your competitors’ for ideas on how to put your best professional foot forward.
• Contribute thought leadership: Are you passionate about an accounting tool or approach? Do you have a particular expertise that not everyone has? Are there new industry developments you feel strongly about? Write posts that demonstrate your skills and knowledge.
• Support others: Like, comment, and amplify others’ posts and offer to make recommendations whenever possible. This will give others a window into your character and approach to service.

4. Get Certified and/or Join a Partner Program

As an accountant or bookkeeper, you’ve got plenty of competition. For bookkeeping, in particular, the barrier to entry is low. Meaning, you don’t need a specific degree or background to become a bookkeeper—just the skills to help your clients. But because of that, it can be harder for you to set yourself apart from others in the eyes of your prospects.

A great way to do this is to become certified with your accounting software and join a partner program. Most accounting software tools offer training and certification, which can give your clients confidence that you know your stuff.

Some programs, like the FreshBooks Accounting Partner Program, also provide free tools to help you get new clients. FreshBooks Accounting Partners have the opportunity to be included in a directory where business owners can find or be matched with FreshBooks-certified accounting professionals. Partners also have access to an online community where like-minded professionals share tips and leads.

5. Offer Free Consultations

Some clients like to understand the value of what they would get before investing in a relationship with a new bookkeeping or accounting professional. A one-hour consultation is also an opportunity for you to assess whether a potential client is a good fit for your firm.

If that goes well, you might get started with a small project to give them a taste of what’s possible–and see how they receive your advisory services. Acuity Accounting CEO Kenji Kuramoto often suggests a “door opener” project to help both he and a possible client decide if they’re right for each other.

And at the same time, I was building relationships with them, and getting a feel for the organization.

“[In the consultation, I’d say something like], ‘What I’d like to do is put together a small project to assess your accounts receivable and invoicing function. I’d like to understand why it sounds like it’s taking a long time for customers to pay you,’” he said.

At the end of that spec project, Kenji would give the client an analysis to help them with their next steps. “That was fairly effective,” he says, “because were were boiling down to something that I was relatively comfortable with from a pricing perspective, and giving them something of value they could walk away with. And at the same time, I was building relationships with them, and getting a feel for the organization.”

6. Actively Participate in Community Events

Community can mean many things, including your neighborhood, culture, industry, or area of interest. As a small business owner, it’s important to show up for the communities that mean something to you and your clients. That might mean:

• hosting webinars on aspects of accounting that your clients–and prospects–would value
• sponsoring and participating in community or industry events
• attending industry events and networking with your peers
• joining industry associations and taking on volunteer roles within them

When you take part in professional activities outside of your workplace, you have the opportunity to demonstrate your expertise and skills, engage with and build relationships with potential clients or referrals, and share a bit of your personality.

7. Invest in Thought Leadership

Sharing your knowledge can be a great way to build your credibility and your brand. And the way people consume information on the web today makes it easier than ever to establish yourself as a thought leader.

How to Do Thought Leadership Right

Accounting professionals who have found success as thought leaders stress the importance of sharing knowledge freely. This isn’t about promoting your brand or services. It’s about a genuine desire to be of service.

“I have established a brand that is genuine and shows my passion for the mightiness of cloud technology to improve business owners’ lives,” says Kellie Parks, CPB, Cloud Accounting Aficionado at Calmwaters Cloud Accounting.

Communicating in this way is a win-win. It not only shows your prospects what you know, but it also helps to build a brand identity that showcases who you are and brings you clients who are a good fit for your practice.

Thought Leadership Mediums to Try

A blog, a Facebook Group, and/or a social media business page can all be great places to share accounting and bookkeeping knowledge and tips for potential clients, says Sal Rezai, CPB, and Expert Cloud Bookkeeper at Accounting By Sal. New clients have sought Sal out based on social media and Google My Business posts. Why? “Most importantly, I have engaged with group members and showcased my knowledge by answering their questions.”

The great thing about blogs and social media is that while it takes time and consistency, it’s absolutely free and in your control. You don’t need to get a publisher’s attention or have anyone’s permission to become a thought leader.

Here are some of the many avenues for thought leadership content:

• posts on your own blog
• guest blog posts
• posts on social media platforms like Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter
• YouTube videos
• podcast interviews
• webinars
• live or virtual speaking engagements
• helpful (not promotional) answers to questions on social media or discussion boards

8. Offer Advisory Accounting and Bookkeeping Services

Adding advisory accounting services to your menu can be a great long-term play. Past clients who consider you a reliable financial advisor can be a good referral source. Plus, advisory clients provide higher monthly fees, reducing the number of total clients you need to be profitable.

[Advisory] clients are often very enthusiastic about the type of work we do and therefore make awesome referrals!

“Clients often think they want something simple like ‘bookkeeping,’ but are coming to us after a bad experience or overpaying with another service provider,” says Shea Keats, Founder/Advisor at Breakaway Bookkeeping & Advising.

“Being able to support our clients by looking at the health of their whole business and offering advisory services means that they can feel confident in their decisions. These clients also are often very enthusiastic about the type of work we do and therefore make awesome referrals! They also tend to increase their scope of work very quickly, once they realize what we can offer.”

An advisor becomes an integral part of the client’s business, often leading to referrals and long-term client relationships. So, how do you start? Choose one advisory service to offer and build from there.

What Not to Do

We’ve shared some powerful strategies to get new clients for your bookkeeping business, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution. It all depends on who you’re serving and where they’re looking. Focus on the strategies that work best for you. Here are some tactics for finding prospective clients that haven’t worked as well for the accounting pros we polled.

Rely on Traditional Marketing

Using paid advertising to find new clients may seem like the obvious place to start, but many accountants and bookkeepers have found it to be a poor fit. “Traditional” here includes everything from online marketing and advertising using Google Ads, Facebook ads, LinkedIn ads, and ads on other social media platforms to email marketing to old-school, paper-based advertising methods like business card marketing and direct mail.

Why should you tread carefully with paid ads? It can take a huge budget to build enough awareness with prospective clients to really get a return on your investment. “I advertised a few times on Facebook and got no results,” says Sal Rezai. While there are many reasons a Facebook ad might not perform well, you can quickly blow your budget by attempting to optimize your ads.

Get Too Narrow

You don’t have to use every method out there, but be sure you’re not relying too heavily on a single tactic with marketing materials, either. “Putting all your marketing eggs in one basket never works!” says Shea Keats. “By using multiple marketing streams, success comes much sooner.”

Stick With Something That Feels Wrong

Melanie Schroeder didn’t like online marketing using Google ads and Facebook ads because “it didn’t fit my personality and the way I like to do business.”

Shea Keats says, “Many of our advisors at Breakaway think that in order to get clients, they have to do social media, even though they aren’t excited by the idea or consistent on those platforms. When they’re not consistent, they don’t see results.” Likewise, some types of networking may not align with your personality or values.

Don’t use initial discomfort to avoid trying something new or a little bit daunting, like public speaking or networking (two things that require practice for many of us). But do remain true to who you are and what your business is about.

Looking to Attract Clients? Take It One Step at a Time

With these strategies in your toolbox, it will be much easier to entice prospective clients for your bookkeeping business. It can be overwhelming at first. Remember, you don’t need to do all these things at once, and you probably shouldn’t even try.

Choose the method that you’re most comfortable with and that fits your goals (quick wins vs. long-term brand building etc.) and start there. Once you have that strategy working, you can decide if it’s time to add another or double down on what’s already working.

It takes time to build your dream bookkeeping business, but one thing’s for sure…you can do this! All it takes is consistency and commitment, so choose your favorite method and take the first small step today.

This post was updated in September 2024.