Written by Miriad with AI assistance and checked against the sources at the end. A planning template for small accounting and bookkeeping firms, not tax or legal advice.
TL;DR: A marketing plan for an accounting firm fails when it ignores the filing calendar. Put the building work (pages, articles, consent requests) in the quiet months, and keep the peaks for pre-written reminders. The one-page template below has seven fields; the filled-in sample shows a six-person US practice planning a year in about 70 hours.
A marketing plan written in January, full of good intentions, has a hard time surviving the first week of March. The reason is not discipline. It is timing: the plan asks for a blog post a week exactly when every partner is reviewing returns until nine in the evening.
This template starts from the opposite end. It marks the filing deadlines first, then fits marketing into what is left. It is part of our guide to accounting firm marketing strategies, which checks every channel against client confidentiality.
What should an accounting firm marketing plan contain?
A workable plan contains seven things on one page: who you want as clients, the services you want to sell more of, the filing calendar, the marketing tasks by month, who owns each task, the hours you can spare, and two or three numbers you will check. Anything longer tends to stay in a drawer.
The client profile comes first because it decides everything else. "Small businesses" is not a profile. "Sole traders and landlords in our county who need quarterly reporting help" is. If you are not sure who you want, the accounting firm leads article walks through building that profile from your current client list.
The services line matters for the same reason. A firm that wants more year-round bookkeeping and payroll work should not spend its whole plan advertising tax return preparation, which is already its peak.
How do you build the plan around filing deadlines?
Mark the deadlines first and treat the weeks around them as closed to new marketing work. What remains is your real marketing year. For a US individual practice that usually means May to August plus late autumn; for a UK practice the window moves around the 31 January Self Assessment deadline.
The fixed dates you plan around:
- US: the individual deadline for tax year 2025 was April 15, 2026, and Form 4868 gives an automatic six-month extension. The IRS adds that "an extension of time to file is not an extension of time to pay" (IRS, 2026).
- UK: Self Assessment paper returns are due 31 October 2026, online returns and payment 31 January 2027, and the second payment on account 31 July (GOV.UK, 2026).
- UK, new from April 2026: Making Tax Digital for Income Tax is mandatory for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over £50,000, who send quarterly updates through compatible software (GOV.UK, 2026).
Making Tax Digital changes the shape of a UK practice's year. Quarterly updates spread the client contact across four points instead of one January rush. For marketing, that means four natural moments to say something useful to sole traders and landlords, and a service (quarterly reporting support) that did not exist as a package before.
The one-page template
Copy the table below into a document or spreadsheet and fill one row per month. Each row names one or two marketing tasks, the person who owns them, the hours they may take and the data level involved, so the confidentiality question is answered before the task starts, not halfway through it.
| Field | What to write |
|---|---|
| Target clients | One sentence: client type, size, place, service need |
| Services to grow | Two or three, ideally year-round work (bookkeeping, payroll, advisory services) |
| Filing calendar | The deadline weeks you will not schedule marketing in |
| Monthly tasks | One or two per month, written as deliverables ("services page rewritten"), not activities |
| Owner | One name per task |
| Hours | Per task, from your own timing once you have it |
| Data level | None / client list / client file, which decides the tool |
| Measures | Enquiries by source, reviews received, newsletter replies |
The "data level" field is the one most templates leave out. A task marked "none" can be drafted with a public AI tool from public sources. A task marked "client list" (a newsletter send, a review request) keeps the list inside the email tool. A task marked "client file" (a case study) needs written client consent before anyone starts writing.
A filled-in sample plan
The sample below is for a fictional US practice, so you can see what a complete row looks like. Replace the months with your own filing calendar, the hours with your own timing after the first quarter, and the tasks with the services you actually want to grow next year.
Example (illustrative, not a real case): A six-person practice (two CPAs, one enrolled agent, three staff) with about 450 individual and 60 small-business clients. Target: local trades businesses with 3 to 15 staff who need monthly bookkeeping and payroll. Annual marketing budget in time: 70 hours.
| Month | Task | Owner | Hours | Data level |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| May | Rewrite services page for trades businesses | Partner A | 6 | None |
| June | Two articles: payroll for small trades firms, year-round bookkeeping | Enrolled agent | 8 | None |
| June | Consent request to two clients for case studies | Partner B | 2 | Client file |
| July | Google Business Profile check, review request email set up | Office manager | 4 | Client list |
| August | Case study written and approved by the client | Partner B | 6 | Client file |
| September | Social posts batch for October (12 posts) | Office manager | 5 | None |
| November | Year-end planning newsletter | Partner A | 5 | Client list |
| December | Review requests after year-end meetings | Office manager | 3 | Client list |
| January | Pre-written deadline reminder posts | Office manager | 3 | None |
| February–April | No new work; reply to reviews weekly | Office manager | 8 | None |
| Through the year | Monthly 30-minute review of enquiries by source | Partner A | 6 | None |
| Buffer | Fixes, approvals, surprises | — | 14 | — |
Add the hours: 6 + 8 + 2 + 4 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 3 + 3 + 8 + 6 + 14 = 70. The buffer is there because review and client approval always take longer than the draft.
How do you keep client data out of the plan's AI work?
Give AI only the tasks marked "none" in the data-level column, and give it public sources as input: the IRS or HMRC page, your own notes, your existing website text. ICAEW's guidance is direct: do not load confidential information into public generative AI tools, and do not expect the tool to replace professional knowledge.
ICAEW's ethics guidance on generative AI maps the tools onto the five fundamental principles. On confidentiality, the line is not loading confidential information into public tools; on competence, GenAI tools "do not make up for a lack" of professional knowledge (ICAEW, accessed 2026). Both points shape the plan. The first decides the inputs. The second decides who signs off: the person who knows the rule checks the draft, not the person who typed the prompt.
What to put in the plan's AI column, concretely:
- Draft articles and posts from a named public source, pasted in.
- Rewrite your own pages for clarity and length.
- Turn a long rule change into a short client-facing summary, then check every date.
- Never: client names, figures, documents, or a description of a client's situation that someone could recognise.
How do you know if the plan is working?
Check three numbers once a month: new enquiries by source, reviews received, and replies to the newsletter. They are cheap to count, and they tell you which task to repeat. Avoid measures you cannot act on, such as follower counts, and give each task at least two quiet seasons before you judge it.
What should the topics be? The AICPA's 2026 Top Issues survey, reported by CPA Practice Advisor, names managing tax law complexity as the top current issue for sole practitioners and firms of 2 to 10 professionals (CPA Practice Advisor, 2026). The complexity that costs your office time is also what your clients do not understand. A plan whose articles and newsletters explain one change at a time is planning around a real need.
A simple measure frame, since no benchmark for small firms is available:
Hours per new client from marketing = marketing hours in the period ÷ new clients whose source was a marketing task
If the sample firm spends 70 hours and records 7 new clients who name the website, a review or the newsletter as their source, that is 10 hours per client. The number means little alone. Compared year on year, it tells you whether the plan is getting more efficient. The tax-change newsletter template is a good first task for November, and accounting firm marketing ideas has more tasks sized for small teams.
If you want the plan's inputs, your target clients, services, fee rules and data rules, written down once so every AI draft starts from them, the Business Brain Starter Kit is built for that. Get notified when it launches.
FAQ
When should an accounting firm write its marketing plan?
Write it straight after the main filing deadline, when the office has time to think, which for a US individual practice is usually May. A plan written in January is written at the start of the peak, and its first tasks collide with return preparation. The first quiet month is also the right time to start the building tasks.
How many hours does a small accounting firm need for marketing?
There is no reliable benchmark for small firms, so estimate it per task and add a buffer. A useful frame is to list each task, give it hours from your own timing, and add a buffer for review and client approval. The sample plan in this article totals 70 hours a year for a six-person practice, as an illustration only.
Can AI write our marketing plan?
AI can draft the structure and the task descriptions if you give it your target clients, services and filing calendar. It should not receive client data, and it cannot decide your priorities. ICAEW notes that generative AI tools do not make up for a lack of professional knowledge, so a partner should set the targets and check the result.
What should go into a UK practice's plan for Making Tax Digital?
Making Tax Digital for Income Tax has been mandatory since 6 April 2026 for sole traders and landlords with qualifying income over 50,000 pounds, with quarterly updates through compatible software. A UK plan can use the quarterly cycle as four contact points, and package quarterly reporting support as a service for the clients affected.
Sources
- IRS, "When to file", 2026. https://www.irs.gov/filing/individuals/when-to-file
- GOV.UK (HMRC), "Self Assessment tax returns: deadlines", 2026. https://www.gov.uk/self-assessment-tax-returns/deadlines
- GOV.UK (HMRC), "Sign up your business for Making Tax Digital for Income Tax", updated 2026-10-13. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sign-up-your-business-for-making-tax-digital-for-income-tax
- ICAEW, "Generative AI and ethics" (Generative AI Guide), accessed 2026. https://www.icaew.com/technical/technology/artificial-intelligence/generative-ai-guide/ethics
- CPA Practice Advisor, "AICPA Survey Cites Change Management for Technology and AI as Top Long-Term Issue Facing Accounting Firms", 2026-06-23. https://www.cpapracticeadvisor.com/?p=185547