22 September 2026 · 5 min read · Oscar Markham
What an accountancy client is actually worth
Ask an accountant what they would pay to win a new client and the answer is usually anchored to one year's fee. Ask how long clients typically stay and the answer is frequently a decade or more. Those two facts do not sit comfortably together.
The number that should govern the decision
An accountancy client is among the stickiest relationships in professional services. People change accountant reluctantly, usually only after being ignored, and the fee tends to rise as the business grows.
So the figure that should set your acquisition budget is the multi-year profit of the relationship, not the first invoice. For most practices that is several times what they currently assume.
What that permits
Once the value is measured properly, a cost per client that felt impossible becomes obviously affordable. Practices routinely walk away from campaigns producing clients at a cost they would happily pay twice over, because they judged it against one year.
The discipline is to measure it once and write it down, so the decision is not re-litigated every time a monthly invoice arrives.
Where the clients actually come from
Not from new businesses, mostly. The great majority of new accountancy clients are leaving another practice.
That reframes the message entirely. You are not explaining why somebody needs an accountant. You are addressing the assumption that switching is a hassle, because that assumption is the only thing keeping most dissatisfied clients where they are.
And when
Demand concentrates hard in the weeks before filing deadlines, when people who have been putting it off finally act.
A flat monthly spend misses the weeks that convert best and overpays in the months when nobody is thinking about it. Weighting the year around the deadlines is the single easiest improvement most practices can make.
Written by Oscar Markham, founder of Dublin Growth Digital. We run lead generation for Irish estate agents and trades, reported every Friday in enquiries and booked work.