How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025

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What Does “How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025” Talk About?

This episode of the James Dooley Podcast brings together James Dooley and Kasra Dash to walk accountancy firms through a comprehensive playbook for scaling inbound lead generation in 2025. The hosts cover a full spectrum of digital marketing strategies, starting with foundational steps like optimising a Google Business Profile and building dedicated SEO service pages for each accounting service offered. They explain how these two tactics reinforce each other, with strong on-page SEO indirectly boosting the visibility of a firm's local profile and generating more phone calls.

The conversation moves into paid channels, including PPC advertising on Google and Bing targeting bottom-of-funnel keywords, as well as Meta ads on Facebook and Instagram using both lead forms and conversion-based campaigns. James and Kasra also explore organic social media posting, the use of AI tools like N8N to automate scheduling, and the growing importance of appearing in AI-driven search engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude. The episode closes with a detailed comparison of trades platforms like Checkatrade and Bark against exclusive lead generation services, and a data-backed discussion of why inbound leads and real-time lead delivery significantly outperform outbound approaches in conversion rates.

“The conversion rate of not just getting the lead, but the lead actually converting into a paying customer, into money coming into your business bank account is a lot higher. The last stat that I saw for that was something like 16.1 percent end up converting into a paying customer as opposed to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.”

— Kasra Dash

Who Are the Guests on “How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025”?

James Dooley is a seasoned digital marketer and founder of FatRank, a commission-based lead generation service that works with businesses across a range of industries including accountancy. Known for his practical, results-driven approach, James brings hands-on experience in SEO, PPC, and local lead generation, and regularly produces comparison content evaluating platforms like Checkatrade, Bark, and Rated People against exclusive lead generation alternatives.

Kasra Dash is a digital marketing strategist with deep expertise in SEO, paid advertising, and AI-driven marketing. He contributes sharp insight into Meta ad structures, AI search engine optimisation, and the mechanics of inbound versus outbound lead conversion. Together, James and Kasra form a complementary duo that blends technical knowledge with practical business advice tailored specifically to service-based firms like accountancy practices.

What Are the Key Takeaways From “How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025”?

Here are the key points discussed in this episode:

  • Optimising a Google Business Profile by collecting five-star reviews, building citations, and posting regularly is the foundational first step for generating more local leads as an accountancy firm.
  • Creating dedicated SEO-optimised service pages for each individual accounting service not only helps those pages rank but also indirectly boosts the visibility of a firm's Google Business Profile for relevant keywords.
  • Shared leads from platforms like Bark and Checkatrade create a race to the bottom on price, making exclusive lead generation services a significantly more effective option for maintaining lead quality and profitability.
  • Inbound leads convert into paying customers at a rate of approximately 16.1 percent compared to just 1.4 percent for outbound leads, making inbound strategies ten to twelve times more effective at generating revenue.
  • Responding to an inbound enquiry in under one minute increases conversion rates by approximately 63 percent, meaning that real-time lead delivery and fast response systems are critical components of any lead generation strategy.

“I think 63 percent higher and when we came and got the KPIs down it was like trying to respond within under a minute. And it was like what we used to think five minutes was good and then when people respond in under a minute, so inquiry comes in, can you either ring them or email them back saying thanks a lot for the inquiry and then get more information.”

— Kasra Dash

Is “How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025” Worth Listening To?

This episode is a genuinely practical resource for any accountancy firm trying to understand where to invest their marketing budget in 2025. Rather than offering vague advice, James Dooley and Kasra Dash walk through each strategy in a logical sequence, from free tactics like Google Business Profile optimisation and organic social media all the way through to paid channels and AI automation. The hosts are candid about the pitfalls of each approach, such as click fraud in PPC campaigns and the poor lead quality that can come from Facebook lead forms, which gives listeners a realistic picture of what to expect before committing resources.

What sets this episode apart is the data the hosts bring to the table. The comparison between inbound and outbound conversion rates, 16.1 percent versus 1.4 percent, and the 63 percent uplift from responding to leads within a minute are the kind of concrete figures that help business owners make informed decisions rather than following trends blindly. The discussion on AI search engines like ChatGPT and Gemini as emerging lead sources also adds a forward-looking dimension that most marketing content for accountants fails to address. Whether you are just starting to build your online presence or looking to refine an existing strategy, this episode delivers actionable guidance grounded in real experience.

Who Should Listen to “How to Get More Accountant Leads in 2025”?

This episode is ideal for:

  • Accountancy firm owners and partners looking to increase their volume of inbound client enquiries through digital channels
  • Marketing managers at financial services firms who need a structured overview of local SEO, PPC, and social media strategies
  • Small business owners in professional services who want to understand the difference between shared and exclusive lead generation and how to evaluate lead generation partners
  • Entrepreneurs and agency owners interested in how AI tools and AI search engines are changing lead generation in 2025

Where Can You Listen to James Dooley Podcast?

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You can also subscribe using the RSS feed: https://feeds.transistor.fm/james-dooley-podcast

What Are Listeners Saying About This Episode?

★★★★★

“Really appreciated the breakdown of shared versus exclusive leads. I had been using Bark for about six months and always felt frustrated by competing on price, and now I understand exactly why. The stat about inbound leads converting at 16 percent versus 1.4 percent for outbound genuinely changed how I think about our marketing spend.”

— Rachel T.

★★★★★

“James and Kasra clearly know their stuff. The point about responding to leads within a minute boosting conversions by 63 percent was a wake-up call for our team. We have already changed our intake process off the back of this episode.”

— Marcus B.

★★★★★

“Surprisingly detailed for a short video episode. I expected generic advice but the tip about creating individual SEO service pages to also help your Google Business Profile rank is something I had never heard explained that clearly before. Shared this with our whole team.”

— Sophie W.

James Dooley and Kasra Dash explain how accountancy firms can scale inbound lead generation because Google Business Profiles and SEO service pages increase local visibility. They outline how PPC and Meta ads capture bottom of the funnel intent because targeted searches and enquiries convert at a higher rate. They discuss organic social media and AI automation because consistent posting strengthens brand reach. They compare trades platforms with exclusive lead generation because shared leads reduce quality and push prices down. They highlight why inbound leads outperform outbound and why real time delivery boosts conversions because rapid responses align with peak intent.

James Dooley: If you are an accountancy firm and you're looking to successfully scale out and grow your accountancy business, this video is for you. We're going to be breaking down all of the different strategies when it comes to lead generation and how to successfully grow your business and which marketing strategies you should double down on and which marketing strategies you should also avoid as an accountant. So, James, take it into strategy number one. So step number one, what I'd be looking to do to grow is a Google Business Profile. If you already have one, I'd be making certain that I would be reaching out to all my existing clients to try to get me as many five star reviews as possible. It's a great way of Google Business Profile to generate more leads. There's obviously getting citations and doing Google Business Profile posts and uploading photos on there. So that's definitely step one that I would be doing to try to generate more local leads.

Kasra Dash: So step number two, this is kind of to bolster onto your actual Google Business Profile is I would be creating dedicated service pages for each of your individual services as SEO optimised pages on your website. Now the good thing is when you start doing that, it's also going to help first of all rank your actual SEO optimised page, but there's also more likelihood of your Google Business Profile ranking and showing up for those keywords as well. So you're indirectly going to get more phone calls as well.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And if you are looking for more local leads, another option that you could be doing is PPC lead generation. That's pay per click within Google or within Bing where you're trying to target the bottom of the funnel keywords that can try to generate you some more enquiries. The difficult part to this is you need to make certain you do team up with a good pay per click agency because there is click fraud and there's also needing to build up a negative keyword list so it's not people applying for jobs like a careers kind of job. So PPC can work well but in the wrong hands you can waste a lot of money but it's another way of generating local leads.

Kasra Dash: Yeah. And then after that you've also got Meta ads as well. So like Facebook, Instagram, where the next time when somebody goes onto Facebook they might be scrolling, they might see your ad. Now there's a few different ways that you can set up Facebook ads. You've obviously got option A which is lead forms which is really easy to do. They don't even leave the Facebook platform, they never click onto your actual website. Now the issue with lead forms is that the quality might not be great, but you can obviously add more questions in to try and up that quality of the actual lead. Then you've also got conversion ads as well where that actually gets sent through to your website and then they fill out the contact form to you or on your website as well. So you've got a couple different options there that you can do.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. And then another way to grow more local leads could be organic social media. So posting regularly on Facebook, on Twitter, on YouTube, on Pinterest, on Instagram. There's lots of different platforms out there that you can be trying to get there. Reddit's quite big nowadays. Quora is quite big if people have got questions and you can answer it. So organic social media is another great way to be generating more local leads for your business.

Kasra Dash: With organic social media, I would say that it's more of like a volume game. So you want to try and make certain that you're constantly uploading whether it's for example a daily schedule or a weekly schedule. You might say, okay, I want to try and upload five videos a week. And you should just try and stick to that, especially when it comes to algorithms like YouTube and Twitter and stuff.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, what's your thoughts on using any sort of AI agents if they can try to team up with someone to get use like N8N to kind of automate and schedule posts on social media? What's your thoughts on trying to leverage artificial intelligence? It's all the rage nowadays for trying to generate more leads. Would you try to team up with an AI consultant to set that up?

Kasra Dash: Yeah. So you can definitely go down that route where you're setting up AI agents to potentially crop up some videos and autopublish to YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and stuff. But another thing that I would also be focusing on is AI search. So a lot of people have started to move away from Google. Not everyone because there are billions of people still using it every single day. But there are slowly people starting to search in engines such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Groq. And if your brand isn't actually showing up in any of those you will have a little bit of an issue showing up and generating leads on those search engines as well. So that's another thing that I would be focusing on as a company.

James Dooley: Yeah. And also, if you're looking for more business leads in the local area, something else that I would definitely be looking to do is team up with some of the trades people websites. So you've got certain ones like Checkatrade, Bark, Builder Builder, TrustATrader, Rated People. All these different platforms can generate you more local leads. What I would say is making certain you're tracking your KPIs to see what return on investment you're getting. You should be tracking not only the cost per lead but the cost per acquisition and how much that is getting you on a return on investment. But trades people websites like those platforms can work very well. I would say make certain you check out the links in the description because we do quite a lot of different videos comparing Checkatrade with Fat Rank or Bark with Fat Rank, Rated People with Fat Rank, Builder Builder with Fat Rank. So now obviously I've mentioned Fat Rank a few times. Kasra, what's your thoughts on lead generation companies as opposed to trades people companies?

Kasra Dash: Yeah. So with lead generation companies, I would almost say that every single lead generation company you want to try and do your due diligence. So make certain that if you are in a specific niche that the lead generation company has actually generated leads in that industry before. I would also maybe even have a strategy call with them and say okay, this is my budget, this is how many leads I ideally want etc to make certain that your actual KPIs do align with that lead generation company. You also want to make certain what type of leads are they. Are they exclusive leads? Are the leads only going through to yourself or are they shared leads which that's what a lot of other lead generation tools and lead generation companies do like for example Bark and Checkatrade and stuff. Whenever we, myself and James, have spoken to company owners that have used those services, that's one of their biggest pain points where they say, yeah, it's a shared lead and it's kind of a rat race down to the bottom of who's the cheapest basically. So that's a couple things I would be asking lead generation companies before partnering up with them.

James Dooley: Yeah, for sure. I mean, if anyone is interested in generating more local leads, I strongly recommend heading over to fatrank.com where we have a commission based lead generation service. That means you only pay a finders fee on converted jobs. You've nothing to pay on the pay per lead. You have nothing to pay until you get paid, until you convert that job on a pay per sale basis and you've completed the job and been paid. That's when you only have to pay fatrank.com. So head on over to fatrank.com to see whether you qualify. But I want to kind of expand a little bit further. Right. So what is your thoughts on inbound lead generation versus outbound lead generation?

Kasra Dash: So I always prefer inbound. The conversion rate of not just getting the lead, but the lead actually converting into a paying customer, into money coming into your business bank account is a lot higher. The last stat that I saw for that was something like 16.1 percent end up converting into a paying customer as opposed to 1.4 percent when it's an outbound lead.

James Dooley: Yeah, that's pretty crazy. That's like a 12.

Kasra Dash: Well, yeah, it's 10 to 12 times more conversion.

James Dooley: Yeah.

Kasra Dash: Like it's crazy how much more conversion that is. You need to do a lot of volume for outbound, whether it's cold calling or cold email or LinkedIn Sales Navigator and stuff like that. And sometimes you just need a lot more staff to do it as well. And people sometimes don't, they're looking at the cost going I want to generate free leads and they're like they think they're generating free leads but they still cost of like the email sending, still cost of the sales team to try to convert them and stuff like that. So yeah, I completely agree with you that inbound leads is so much better than outbound leads. But what's your thoughts then on, some people ask the question that come through that want local leads and then they talk about are these real time leads, like is real time leads very important to get so as soon as they inquire it comes through to you straight away?

James Dooley: Yeah, it's very important. And I think the last stat that we saw internally was if you are able to get a real time lead it converts 60 percent higher. Was it 60 or 65?

Kasra Dash: I think 63 percent higher and when we came and got the KPIs down it was like trying to respond within under a minute. And it was like what we used to think five minutes was good and then when people respond in under a minute, so inquiry comes in, can you either ring them or email them back saying thanks a lot for the inquiry and then get more information. Yeah, it was pretty.

James Dooley: So I mean I'm not saying that every company needs to respond in under a minute. There are certain things that we obviously look at at Fat Rank when we're looking to partner up with businesses. That's one of the things that a lot of businesses fall short on where they might be away for five days on holiday and they don't have somebody to pick up the leads and we're still providing the leads. So there's all these little different nuances that we look at when we're partnering up with companies. But the best thing that I would recommend to anyone that's looking to scale their business, that's looking to get a consistent flow of high quality leads is just fill out the form at Fat Rank. The team will tell you if you're the right fit or if you're not and we'll also tell you and give you feedback why you're not the right fit and what you should do as your next steps. So I hope you like all the different strategies we've been through there for lead generation for accountants. Over at fatrank.com, we work with a lot of different accountancy firms. It could be a chartered accountant, a tax chartered accountant, or it could just be bookkeeping and payroll. So make certain you fill in the form at fatrank.com and hopefully we can start to generate you more leads for accountancy companies.

Creators & Guests

James Dooley Host
James Dooley

James Dooley is a UK entrepreneur.

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