Accounting firm Google Ads - £10/day dead end?

dusting

There's a certain poetry to running ads for a small accounting firm. You think you understand intent, you set up the campaign, and then the numbers stare back at you like a ledger that won't balance. That's where i am right now.

Client is a ten-person accounting firm in West London. Started search ads about a month ago. 106 clicks, roughly 1,800 impressions, average CPC around £2.40, total spend £256. Zero conversions-not from calls, not from form fills, not from booked appointments. Traffic goes straight to their homepage because I haven't built landing pages yet. Budget is £10 a day.

I spoke with Google's outsourced support, and they wanted me to double the daily budget and split the campaign into Search and Performance Max. felt like someone trying to sell me a bigger boat before I've even caught a fish.

A colleague once told me you don't fish for salmon with a worm in a pond. for accounting leads, a £10 daily budget is that worm. You need to add a zero just to get in the right waters. industry chatter suggests a CPC of roughly $16, so you're looking at $80-$120 per conversion if the targeting is tight. But the bigger issue is the homepage. Sending high-intent searches to a generic homepage is like handing a hungry man a menu with no prices. A single service landing page with one clear call to action will almost certainly perform better than any keyword adjustment.

so where does that leave us? campaign type: pure Search with 2-3 tightly themed ad groups. Keywords like 'accountant near me', 'accounting firm West London'. budget: realistically £100 a day to start seeing meaningful data. Conversion tracking: calls and form submissions, but make sure the phone number on the landing page matches the tracking. And yes, landing pages are non-negotiable. The homepage is the conversion killer, not the ads.

still an hungry learner here. If anyone has specific averages for CPC and conversion rates in UK accounting, I'd appreciate the wisdom

maya-b2b

mate, £10 a day for accounting leads? That's not going to cut it. Add another zero at the very least.

Send that traffic straight to a dedicated landing page, and structure it around two or three tightly themed ad groups. Focus on high-intent keywords like "accountant near me" or "accounting firm near me."

From what I've seen, clicks in this space typically land around $16, so you're realistically looking at a cost per lead in the $80-$120 range. if you can't stomach that budget, re-evaluate your targeting or consider LinkedIn outreach as a cheaper alternative

nightowl

The homepage isn't the problem - it's that you're forcing high-intent searchers to play detective. Someone searching "accountant West London" already knows what they need. Landing on a generic homepage is like walking into Harrods just to buy milk: you're forced to navigate aisles you don't care about. A single focused landing page with one CTA will outperform the homepage every time, no keyword changes needed. It's a classic case of intent mismatch dressed up as a brand problem.

metricsmadness

You're actually getting decent traction for a tenner a day - I wouldn't hit the panic button yet. The real drag here is that your traffic lands on the homepage rather than a page that speaks directly to one problem. For accounting firms, conversion is like tuning a radio: you don't broadcast "accounting services" to everyone, you pick a frequency - tax returns, bookkeeping, VAT, small business stuff - and build a landing page that locks onto that signal with a clear call-to-action and trust markers.

Your cost per click around £2.40 in London isn't painful. I've seen far worse. What I'd do first is tighten keyword intent and add a solid chunk of negative keywords. Then build one simple, targeted landing page before you even think about raising the budget. Also, steer clear of Performance Max this early. With zero conversion history and a limited budget, it's like throwing seed on concrete - you get no roots. Stick with Search for cleaner learning and control. Let conversions come in naturally, and only then start scaling. Treat the budget like seedlings, not fertiliser.

masoncollab

Honestly, your budget is the killer here. I've worked with a few accounting firms and the ones that succeed have a landing page that mirrors exactly what someone typed in - generic homepages just burn cash. Phone call tracking is a game changer too, especially for service businesses.

And yeah, ignore those "Google specialists". They're glorified sales reps with a script and zero understanding of your actual client acquisition model.

If you're open to it, I'm happy to have a quick look at your account and flag what's off. We're based in Europe and specialise in service-based campaigns, so I can give you a straight answer. Drop me a DM if you want to chat it through.

buggedout

The homepage is the first thing I'd fix. For accounting searches, dedicated landing pages consistently outperform general pages - you want them hitting the exact service they searched for.

A few other things:

£10/day in London is tight for accounting keywords. Cost-per-click is likely eating into any meaningful impression share.
Stick with Search only for now. No point spreading that budget across Display or Performance Max.
Spend time in the search terms report. Add negatives aggressively. A meaningful percentage of clicks in this niche ends up being junk traffic if you're not actively filtering.

growthgeek

You're overcomplicating this. Everyone jumps to landing page fixes like it's gospel, but 100 clicks with zero conversions doesn't automatically mean the post-click experience is the problem. Sometimes it's the ad targeting or the match types that are pulling in junk traffic.

High intent searches? Sure, but not all "accountant near me" clicks are equal. If you're sending people to a generic homepage, yeah it's weak. but a focused landing page won't save you if the audience is wrong. i'd rather test a simple homepage with a strong, singular CTA than blow budget on a dedicated page prematurely.

And PMax? I actually disagree. With no conversion data, PMax can burn cash, sure. But it also surfaces audience signals fast if you set it up right. You don't need a dozen conversions to start feeding it-just one solid event and some negative keywords. the black box argument is lazy, it's a tool, not a curse.

bottom line: don't assume the landing page is the silver bullet. Check the search terms, tighten the targeting, then worry about the page

funnelhacker

you're getting clicks at a decent CPC, which is actually not bad for accounting in West London. But sending that traffic to a generic homepage instead of a dedicated landing page is basically throwing money into a void - I've seen that kill conversion rates more times than I can count.

for an accounting firm, you need a specific page per service. Tax prep, bookkeeping, VAT returns - each one gets its own URL with proper tracking baked in before you even launch the campaign. that's step one if you want any hope of seeing leads instead of just clicks.

what I'd actually do here: pick their highest-value service - probably tax returns or year-end accounts - and build one laser-focused landing page. headline should hit hard: "West London Accountants - Tax Returns Filed in 3 Days" destroys generic taglines every time. one single CTA (book a call or submit a form), sprinkle in trust signals like Google reviews, years in business, certifications. Make it mobile responsive, obviously. Then run search ads to that page at £15/day for 2-3 weeks before even thinking about Performance Max. industry average CPC for accounting in London is £3-£6, and conversion rates can hit 5-8% if your page is tight and the offer is direct.

That's the play. no need to overcomplicate it

cpaoptimizer

Mate, $100/day is the bare minimum for Google Ads to even get data. And yeah - you absolutely need a dedicated landing page for the accounting service, not the homepage. Homepages kill conversion rates for niche campaigns.

dailygrind

immediate fix: 1) Build a dedicated landing page. 2) Specific offer for accounting leads. 3) Single form above the fold. Homepage is killing conversions.

olivia-roas

Honestly, that £10/day budget is a death sentence for any service business, especially accounting where the lifetime value is massive. You have to work out what the client can actually stomach as a CPA - for high-ticket stuff like tax planning or audit prep, £200 is easily doable if the close rate is there.

Don't waste a penny on broad match or long tail nonsense. go straight for the transactional keywords - "accountant for small business", "tax return filing", "bookkeeping services near me". Exact match, high intent, nothing else. The CTA needs to be a booking link, not a phone call or a contact form - forms have shockingly low conversion rates for professional services. A decent calendar tool (Calendly, Acuity, whatever) will outperform every time.

That £10/day is just burning cash and killing your data. ramp it to at least £50-100/day to get a statistically significant sample. Run two or three tightly themed ad groups, A/B test the headlines and landing page copy, then lock down what works and scale the hell out of it. Anything less and you're just guessing

maya-b2b

With Google Ads for accounting firms, I've seen the best results when you segment keywords by intent and shift Performance Max to only qualified lead types. The real challenge is setting up tracking properly - have you got conversion actions mapped to phone calls and form submissions yet?

noahcontent

That Google rep advice is exactly the kind of thing that keeps small firms stuck. Increasing budget to £19 and throwing PMax at an account with zero conversion data is like turning up the volume on a broken radio - more noise, no signal.

106 clicks, zero conversions, and a homepage destination? That's almost always a landing page problem, not a budget problem. Homepages are designed to tell people everything about the firm. Someone who typed "small business accountant West London" lands there and has to hunt for whether they're even in the right place. Most bounce. A dedicated landing page with a headline that mirrors your ad copy and a single clear CTA (call or form, not both) will shift your conversion rate long before any budget increase will.

On your specific questions:

Campaign type - Search is the right call. Do not even look at PMax until you've got at least 30 conversions in the account. It needs conversion history to optimise. Right now it would just burn budget with no signal to latch onto.

Budget - £10 a day is not the bottleneck. The destination is. Keep budget flat until tracking is confirmed and the landing page is live.

Conversion tracking - Before anything else, open Google Tag Assistant and verify your tags are actually firing on form submission and call completion, not just on page load. Zero conversions on 106 clicks sometimes means zero conversions. It also sometimes means broken tracking. Always confirm which you're dealing with before drawing conclusions.

Industry benchmarks - Your CPC at £2.42 is reasonable for professional services in London. Conversion rate on a dedicated landing page for accounting services typically runs 5-10%. On a homepage it's usually near zero - exactly what you're seeing.

The rep is measured on spend, not your results. The push to increase budget and add PMax is structural, not specific to your account. Treat it as noise and fix the page.

maya-b2b

What's the campaign objective here?

dusting

cheers, aligns with macro trends.