Solved: Google Ads paid audits for a tax relief company?

Hi there,

Thanks for getting in touch. I understand you're looking at Google Ads for your tax relief company and are weighing up your options between going it alone with some audits or hiring a freelancer. It's a common crossroads for a lot of businesses, so happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience.

So, you're weighing up DIY vs. a freelancer...

Alright, let's tackle this head-on. The idea of managing the account yourselves and getting periodic paid audits is a decent shout on the surface. You get some expert eyes on what you're doing without the full monthly retainer of an agency or freelancer. The big catch here, and I've seen this go wrong for people, is who's doing the audit. You don't just need a "Google Ads expert"; you need someone who gets the financial services space, and ideally, tax. The advice for an ecommerce store selling t-shirts is worlds away from the advice for a company handling sensitive tax matters. A generalist PPC bod might give you technically sound advice that's completly wrong for your audience or, worse, sails a bit too close to the wind on compliance. The devil really is in the detail with this stuff.

The other side of this coin is managing it yourself. You mentioned you're technically competent, which is a great start. But honestly, Google Ads isn't a "set it and forget it" platform. It's a proper time sink. To do it well, you need to be in there regularly, checking performance, tweaking bids, testing new ad copy, adding negative keywords, keeping up with Google's constant updates... it's practically a part-time job. You have to ask yourself, is your time best spent becoming a PPC expert, or is it better spent running your tax relief business and talking to clients? For most business owners, it's the latter. I remember one client, a medical job matching SaaS, where reducing their Cost Per User Acquisition from £100 to £7 required immense hands-on work on Meta Ads and Google Ads. That's the kind of hands-on work that's hard to do on the side.

A good freelancer or a specialised agency can bridge that gap. But as you've already found, they come with fees. The key is to view it as an investment, not a cost. A good one should generate a return that more than covers their fee. When you're talking to them, don't just look at price. Look at their case studies. Have they worked with professional services or B2B clients before? Do they sound like they actually understand your business model? If they start making wild promises about guaranteed results, I'd run a mile. No one can promise anything in paid ads.

We'll need to look at your website first...

Before you even think about spending a single quid on ads, we have to talk about your website, or more specifically, the landing page you'll be sending traffic to. This is single-handedly the most common and expensive mistake I see businesses make. They spend thousands on ads, driving traffic to a homepage that isn't built to convert. It's like paying for a massive, flashy billboard on the motorway that points to a shop with no signs and a locked door.

Your ad campaign will have one goal: to get a potential client to take a specific action. What is that action? Is it filling out a contact form? Is it booking a free 15-minute consultation? Is it downloading a guide on tax relief? Whatever it is, your landing page needs to be 100% focused on getting the visitor to do that one thing. That means no distractions. No links to your blog, no 'about us' page in the main navigation, nothing that can pull them away from the call-to-action.

The copy on that page is also massively important. For a service like tax relief, trust is everything. People are handing over sensitive financial information. Your landing page has to scream professionalism and credibility. That means:
-> Clear, persuasive headlines: Address their pain point directly. Something like "Are You Paying Too Much Tax? Find Out How Much You Could Save."
-> Social proof: This is huge. You need client testimonials, reviews (ideally from a trusted source like Trustpilot), logos of any publications you've been featured in, and any accreditations you hold.
-> A clear explanation of the process: What happens after they fill in the form? Break it down into simple steps. It removes fear and uncertainty.
-> A professional design: It doesn't need to win awards, but it needs to look clean, modern, and trustworthy. A shoddy-looking site will kill your conversion rates, no matter how good your ads are.

Getting this page right will do more for your campaign success than almost anything else. A 1% increase in your landing page conversion rate can be the difference between a profitable campaign and a money pit.

I'd say you need to focus on Google Search...

For a service business like yours, Google Search ads are almost certainly your best bet to start with. Why? Because you're catching people at the exact moment they have a problem and are actively looking for a solution. They're typing things into Google like "help with my tax bill" or "how to claim R&D tax relief". The intent is sky-high. You're not trying to interrupt them while they're scrolling through cat videos on Facebook; you're providing the answer they're literally asking for. This is what makes search so powerful for lead generation.

The foundation of a good search campaign is keyword research. You need to get inside the head of your ideal client and think about all the different ways they might search for help. This would involve a mix of problem-based keywords, solution-based keywords, and competitor keywords. For a tax relief company, a quick brainstorm might look something like this:

You'd then group these into tight, themed ad groups and write specific, relevant ad copy for each. The ad needs to grab their attention, reflect their search query, present your unique selling point, and have a strong call-to-action telling them exactly what to do next ("Book Your Free Review Now"). Also, make sure you use ad extensions. Sitelinks, call extensions, location extensions... they all make your ad bigger, more prominent, and give users more ways to get in touch. It's amazing how many advertisers dont bother with these.

You probably should budget for this realistically...

This is the big question, isn't it? What's this all going to cost. The honest answer is, it depends. The cost per click (CPC) and cost per lead (CPL) for financial services are going to be higher than for, say, a local cleaning company. We've run campaigns for a home cleaning service that got leads for £5 each, but also for an HVAC company in a competitive area where leads were closer to $60. For a specialist B2B service, it can be higher still. For your niche, you could be looking at a CPL anywhere from £30 to £80, maybe even more depending on the specific service and how competitive the keywords are. R&D tax credits, for example, is notoriously competitive.

As a starting point, I usually suggest a minimum ad spend of £1,000 - £2,000 per month. That's not a magic number, but it's usually enough to get a meaningful amount of data coming through so you can start to see what's working and what's not. If your CPL ends up being £50, a £1,000 budget would aim to get you 20 leads. Is that enough for you? You need to work backwards from your goals. How many clients do you need per month? How many leads does it take to get one client? That will inform your budget.

And I'm going to sound like a broken record here, but none of this matters if your tracking is broken. You absolutely MUST have conversion tracking set up properly from day one. That means tracking every form submission on your landing page and tracking every single phone call that comes from your ads. If you don't, you're just guessing. You'll have no idea which keywords, which ads, or which campaigns are actually driving leads, and you will absolutly waste money. We find so many accounts that have this set up wrong, and fixing it is the first thing we do.

You'll need a solid plan to get started...

So, pulling all this together, it's not just a case of 'turning on' Google Ads. It's a process. Whether you do it yourself or hire someone, the steps are largely the same. Getting the foundations right is what seperates the successful campaigns from the expensive failures.

This is the main advice I have for you:

As you can see, there's a fair bit to it. Juggling all of this while also running your core business is a massive challenge, which is why many businesses ultimately decide to bring in specialist help. An experienced hand can navigate the complexities, avoid the common pitfalls, and get you to profitability much faster than you'd likely manage on your own.

I hope this has given you a much clearer picture of what's involved. If you'd like to have a proper chat about your specific situation and see how we might be able to help you implement a strategy like this, feel free to book in a free, no-obligation consultation with us. We could take a look at your website and walk you through a plan in more detail.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh