Many accountants find that paid ads such as Google AdWords are the most time efficient and cost-effective ways to gain visibility, which in turn, brings traffic to your website or perhaps even a phone call to your office. If you are looking to grow your accountancy, you may wish to pursue paid ads on Google. Here’s a bit on how Google AdWords works along with some tips on optimising your campaign for optimum ROI.
How Google AdWords Works
Although there are several ways you can use Google AdWords, it all boils down to finding keywords you feel potential clients may search for. However, there is something called “keyword competition” that will take a bit of explaining so that you choose the right keywords for your paid ads. You can check out this resource to learn about keyword competition strategy. This should be the first step in any Google AdWords campaign because you need to know how to pick the right terms most likely to be used in a Google search.
What Kind of Google AdWords Campaign Will You Use?
There are several ways to use those keywords once you find them. You may want to use them on a search campaign. When you write your Google ad with the keywords you’ve chosen, your ad will pop up at the top of a search page or in one of the sidebars whenever someone searches for the search terms you’ve chosen. You can also run a Google AdWords campaign on Display Ads, Video Ads or Universal Apps Campaigns. Learn about the different types of AdWords campaigns and how they work on the Google site.
Cost vs ROI – What to Look For
Now then, how can you tell how your ad is performing if you are running a busy accountancy? Many small to midsize accountancies can’t afford a managed ad campaign and so they set up and monitor their strategies themselves. Unfortunately, this could take a great deal of time without the proper tools. There are ways of monitoring performance with very little effort so that you can go about doing what you do best, accounting. What you will be looking for is the cost of your campaign vs the return on your investment, in this case the cost of the Google AdWords Campaign. If it isn’t performing as it should, you may need to rethink the AdWords or target audience you’ve chosen.
If you aren’t getting the click-throughs to your site or the phone calls you expected, it’s time to re-evaluate your strategy.
Tools to Help You Review and Analyse Your AdWords Campaign
As a busy accountant, you know how time consuming it can be to chart and track statistics. Instead of spending hours looking at data, why not employ specific tools developed to review your Google AdWords campaign and analyse where problems exist. You can find great tools on the WordStream website that are user-friendly and easy to use. It is vital that you find analytics tools that work in the background gathering data which is easy to read so that you can get to the root of the problem quickly and efficiently. Time is money, as you know, and you have little to waste.
Signs of Danger and What to Do If Your Campaign Is Not Performing
To sum it all up, you are going to be watching clicks through to your site or the number of phone calls you receive from that Google AdWords campaign. If they aren’t forthcoming, it’s time to rethink your strategy as mentioned above. Either you are using the wrong search terms, or you are not placing your ads on the appropriate sites. At this point, take out the keyword competition tool again and look for words which may be more popular. You can re-write your current ad or create a new one with these keywords, but the important thing is not to keep investing in a campaign that isn’t performing.
With so many automated tools to choose from, there is no reason to spend needless hours on analytics. Let the tools do the work for you while you focus on your accountancy. Check in as often as you can to keep an eye on how your campaign is going and at the first sign of danger, start thinking about revisions to your strategy. By maximising performance, you are also maximising ROI which is the ultimate goal to grow your business with a limited amount of effort.
Ben Maden, founder and managing director, Matter Solutions
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