Key Takeaways
- Learn what it means to takeover your targeted market with a digital takeover
- Identify the top digital marketing challenges that CPA firms face and how to overcome them
- Learn how one CPA firm utilized these steps to dominate in their local market against larger competitors
What is a Digital Takeover?
A digital takeover is when a company can achieve strong brand visibility along with its services or products across the most popular digital platforms like search, social, and more.
Below are some key components of a digital takeover:
- Being able to align your brand and its elements across several digital platforms. For example, digital assets include the exact spelling of the company name, logo, tagline, trademark, copyright, and more.
- Knowledge and monitoring of top industry competitor’s digital footprint using reputation monitoring tools.
- Claiming a geographic area as your “backyard” and dominating the digital recognition and visibility in it.
- Being able to gain visibility and recognition for company services and products when the brand is sought out by users across top digital platforms.
What are the Top Challenges CPA’s Face When it Comes to Digital Marketing?
Staffing Seasonality and Business Cycles
Many CPA firms have fluctuating business cycles that revolve around important tax filing and reporting dates. This can lead to swells of inbound requests during busy times and fewer request during off-peak times of the year.
Along with client and service seasonality are staffing fluctuations that are designed to accommodate the number of tax returns, filings, and related documentation for the peak and off-peak times of the year.
Lastly, with seasonality in the business cycle, may accountants also map their advertising and marketing activities and budgets around these times of the year. Quite often, firms STOP marketing activities during peak and off-peak times because of a lack of time or other resources.
Important 2026 Tax Dates That Contribute to Seasonality for CPA Firms
Jan. 15, 2026 – Final estimated tax payment due for the 2025 tax year (fourth quarter).
Feb. 2, 2026 – Employers must furnish W-2 forms, and certain 1099 forms (like 1099-NEC) must be sent to independent contractors.
April 1, 2026 – The deadline for taking your first Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) from a retirement account if you turned 73 in 2025.
April 15, 2026 – Tax Day: Deadline to file your 2025 federal income tax return (Form 1040) and pay any taxes owed. This is also the last day to make contributions to an IRA or HSA for the 2025 tax year.
April 15, 2026 – First estimated tax payment due for the 2026 tax year.
June 15, 2026 – Second estimated tax payment due for the 2026 tax year.
Sept. 15, 2026 – Third estimated tax payment due for the 2026 tax year.
Oct. 15, 2026 – Deadline to file your extended 2025 tax return if you filed for an extension by April 15.
Dec. 31, 2026 – RMDs for the 2026 tax year must be taken by this date.
A Lack of In-House Digital Marketing Expertise
As specialists in tax and accounting, smaller CPA firms usually do not have an in-house digital marketing team. And as such, they require the assistance of a trusted third-party provider.
Digital Policies and Restrictions
It’s no secret that tax preparation and planning can fall under the “financial services” umbrella for many platform policies.
A good example is the Financial Products and Services policy for Google Ads. Depending up on the website content, ad content, account hygiene, and claims made; an advertiser may receive limited ad impressions or even an account suspension.
What Digital Marketing Activities Should CPA’s Invest in for a Great ROI?
If a CPA firm wants to have its digital marketing become sustainable and effective, it really needs to view the tasks of digital marketing as investments that can hold their value through the year.
Let’s take a look at some of the top digital marketing investments CPA firms can make that hold their value and why:
- Proper Analytics and Lead Tracking. This one is huge. Having the right data about how your digital marketing is working helps to drive future decisions, identify trends, and areas for improvement. Being able to identify what activities generate your inbound leads helps to steer budget conversations and much more.
- Brand Alignment. Quite often firms hear the word “brand”, and they think that is something that’s reserved for large organizations who have think tanks on the subject. But the fact is that small firms can be just as intense with their brand as larger firms. Some examples of how a small firm can align its brand are:
- Having the exact same logo on all platforms
- Making sure the precise firm name and contact information is uniform on all platforms
- Making sure that the firm summary is uniform on all platforms
- Making sure that the service listing of the firm is the same on all platforms
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Earning organic placement in search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing for relevant searches by users is critical for a CPA firm to be found by prospective clients. As a top activity for new business development, search engine optimization earns a place at the top of the digital marketing list.
- Inbound Links. High-quality links from other websites, blogs, and trusted media sources are huge factors for building trust with online users, and, for signaling to search engines that your website is worthy of a high ranking.
- Mentions. A few years ago, the topic of mentions would have had you scratching your head as a CPA firm. However, with the advent of AI search engines and platforms, mentions are a top driver of winning rankings in AI search. Trusted review websites, digital press releases, and a company name embedded in relevant text all matter greatly.
- AI Search Rankings. When prompts are entered into AI search engines, they return answers and long-form content. Unlike search engines, AI search engines offer deeper insight than a list of blue links which keeps users engaged and refining their search for deeper answers.
- Paid Search Ads. Sometimes paid search ads, like Google Ads, get a bad rap because they are perceived to be too expensive for smaller CPA firms. However, because of the seasonality of the CPA firm business cycle, Google Ads can be used to match this rhythm by being active during certain times of the year. This can significantly save a firm thousands of dollars if other activities such as search engine optimization and AI search rankings are development and solidified.
- Social Media Marketing. Some CPA firms shun the idea of being active on social media. However, it should be taken under advisement that these platforms allow firms to reach different demographics and also can protect their brands by reserving the firm name on social media channels.
CPA Firm Digital Marketing Case Study – How They Did It
Now, let’s do a deep dive on how one small CPA firm utilized the above tactics and strategies to create record breaking business and personal tax leads and new clients for their small firm.
- They focused on quality content creation. The firm utilized their blog to create really good tax related content that was then assigned to certain categories so that users could access it from multiple areas on the website.
- The content and website pages were search engine optimized. The firm invested in search engine optimization for their existing website pages and new blog posts. A strong focus was made on making sure that each page had a focus on specific keywords and topics so that search engines would more easily recognize and rank the pages.
- Good content created good links. When blogs were circulated on social media and ranked in search engines, other website owners and bloggers linked to them because the information was highly relevant to business and personal tax matters.
- They aligned their brand for mentions. The firm went through their online directory and review profiles to make sure that everything was uniform in regard to the company name and information. They then used digital press releases that timed with the tax filing dates during the calendar year to help promote their services and expertise.
- They looked backward to see forward. Because the firm had very good analytics in place, they were able to see the previous years website traffic amounts and how the seasonality of the cpa firm business cycle would impact the coming calendar year.
- Paid search ads were used. The firm took advantage of the immediate visibility that Google Ads offers. However, they were strategic in the use of the platform by blocking ads from showing in irrelevant areas of the state and country, targeting ads towards certain audience types, and keyword match types.
- Brand protection mattered. The firm recognized that competitors would purchase their name in paid search in an attempt to hijack the company brand. They utilized a subscription with GetRank to monitor their brand and help protect it from competitors that sought to steal their brand equity in search.
How The Online Body Guard© Helps CPA Firms
The Online Body Guard© offers scalable digital marketing and online reputation monitoring solutions for CPA firms that generate results that matter. Our deep industry experience allows us to build and execute strategies that allow even the smallest accounting firms to compete in just about any market.
To learn more about how we can help your firm, contact us to schedule a free consultation or register a free account with us today.
