Source:  Google Trends

The alarming online search trend is a wake-up call to the worldwide accounting community.   It also confirms the AICPA’s latest survey about how all size firms are having a hard time getting new clients (and retaining clients).

Observations

• Online searches for “accountants” have declined by 50% since 2004

•  The steady decline represents a CAGR of about -10%.

•  The problem is happening worldwide – not just in the United States.

Some good explanations

•  Do-it-yourself accounting software is stealing market share from accountant practices.

•  Accountants don’t know how (or want) to market themselves online. 

Some other explanations – mostly refuted

 We’ve spoken to the accounting community and got a lot of possible explanations.   Here are some of the explanations we’ve refuted.

•  “Clients search for specialties.”  We’ve tried multiple types of accountant searches (CPAs, PCAOB, financial planners, etc.) and almost all are seeing declines.

•   “Clients look for accountants in a particular location”.   Since this was a broad search, the location would be included in the trend (e.g. a search for “accountants in Omaha” would appear in the trends since the word “accountants” is in the search).

•  “All professional services are seeing a decline”.   Actually, the trends search for “doctors” didn’t see the same decline – while lawyers did see a similar decline (lawyers are facing pressure from DIY alternatives as well).

• “There's a problem in the way Google scales the search volume in the graph”.    While there are more pictures of cute kittens on the internet, the search volume was indexed in relation to 2004 – and there are more people using the internet now than ever before.  Read more here about how Google scaled the data.

Some possible (and controversial) solutions

Here are some ideas we heard from the accounting community to help fix the problem.

• Accountants need to make it more convenient for clients to work online with their accountants.  One of the main draws of DIY alternatives is convenience.   Accountants need tools to make their service equally as convenient online (e.g. online credit card processing, virtual office tools, or anything that reduces a trip to an accounting office).

• Organizations, like the AICPA and the Institute of Chartered Accountants, need to spend more on marketing their members to the general public.   For example, in 2010, the AICPA made over $200M+ from its members, but only spent $8M on marketing members (NOTE:  AICPA executives pocketed $21M in salaries).   To contrast, Turbotax and H&R Block combined spend about half a billion on marketing a year – and have whittled away at the image of accountants as “quality” practitioners.

• Create a real directory for all accountants to be listed and marketed effectively.   Make it so easy for clients to search for an accountant online that customers have a single destination to find and compare accountants.   Currently, potential clients who try to search for an accountant online have a herculean task– clients are using Google, Yelp, Linkedin, state board websites, and other sources to try to triangulate and find a great accountant.   The AICPA and other accounting organizations could band together to create a common marketing platform for all their members – and use revenue from members to market the directory to the general public.

The team at Teaspiller is lucky because we get to talk with online customers searching for accountants every day.   We can see that there’s a basic public awareness problem on the value of using an accountant.  But we also hear about the complaints about “quality” and “convenience” with using accountants too.  The Google search trend is an alarm about our complacency as an industry -- and should be a call to action.

Learn more how Teaspiller is innovating accounting marketing ...   Try our free tool that gets & retains clients:  http://www.teaspiller.com/accountant-marketing/