Digital marketing tools

Content messaging to deliver on your promise

The highest-converting lead generation campaigns are the ones that deliver on what they promise. They should create a seamless transition from your ad copy and design to the deliverable itself.

Pay Per Click ad copy

When you set up your next Pay Per Click (PPC) ad copy you need to ensure that the content of the ad and call to action (CTA) that the prospect clicks on reflects what is on the landing page of your website.

Content marketing

Make sure that you’re presenting a consistent message throughout the process and providing value to everyone that engages with your lead capture.

Your lead generation campaign should mirror everything else on your website, on your blog, and within the product that you will eventually try to sell or the services you provide. If not, you’ll have a difficult time getting your lead to the next lifecycle stage.

Your campaign should be about more than just obtaining an email address. It should be about developing a new customer. This is why a dedicated landing page for your offer is really important.  

Call to action

CTAs are meant to send visitors to a landing page where they can receive a specific offer. Don’t use CTAs to drive people to your homepage, for instance. Your landing page needs to elaborate more on what the ad is about – that’s why someone clicked on it in the first place. You then want that person to stay on your website as long as possible so irrelevant content will send them packing far too early.

Even if your CTA is about your brand or product (and perhaps not an offer like a download), you should still be sending them to a targeted landing page that’s relevant to what they are looking for and includes an opt-in form. If you have the opportunity to use a CTA, send them to a page that will convert them into a lead.

Lead generation strategies

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics such as CTAs and website pop-up boxes to capture emails through to digital marketing campaigns such as Pay Per Click advertising, social media networking via LinkedIn Sales Navigator and optimising your website to improve rankings in search engines.

Inbound marketing agency in Surrey

If you’re looking for qualified leads become a lead generation magnet with the help of Smart Cow. Take a closer look at our marketing services or book a consultation and we can discuss digital marketing strategy that is best to achieve your business goals.

We specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon. If you’re looking to grow your business, get in touch.

Find our more about lead generation strategies for your business in our blog.

Business man doing online marketing

Why use paid advertising?

As part of an inbound marketing strategy for an accounting firm once a target audience has been established and agreed for marketing purposes a content marketing strategy would be created. This would usually include activity search as Search Engine Optimisation (SEO), social media management and email marketing. Utilising the resources at your fingertips to reach potential and existing clients in an organic way.  

So, why would an accounting firm need to conduct paid for advertising and when? Quite simply, paid for advertising is a great way to reach your target audience and swiftly. If you need a boost in search engine results pages (serps) or want to specifically target an audience segment then Pay Per Click advertising (PPC) can help your firm be found and to stand out in local search results against your competitors.

But you want a campaign to be cost-effective so how can you get the best Return on Investment (ROI)?  

Be targeted 

Put simply, be targeted. One of the great things about digital marketing is that you can target your campaigns about products or services to your specific audience. In contrast to billboard advertising, you can make sure that just your target audience see your ads. Just think of all the information you may have shared online about your age, gender, interests and location, all this and more can be used to market to specific people. 

Website landing page 

Ensure that your website landing page for your PPC campaign is relevant. When a prospect types a search query, while your ad may be relevant to them and they click on the ad, your landing page needs to be clear. If the page doesn’t have useful or relevant content, service details, price indication or a quick way to contact you to ask questions then you will lose the lead.  

Let analysis create the ads

Keep an eye on the stats when you start a PPC campaign such as with Google Ads. For each PPC ad campaign Google provides recommendations for tailoring your initial ads even further.

So, check the keywords you want to be found for as well as those pesky negative words that aren’t relevant to your ad such as ‘jobs’ as you want potential clients – you’re not offering a job position.  Then tailor your ad copy accordingly based on previous successes, new keywords and ongoing competitor research.

Google Ads quick tips 

As a go to search engine, having a Google ad appear amongst the top results in search is a huge bonus especially if your website is new and you are at the beginning of your SEO strategy.   

For your Google ad search campaigns, create more than one expanded text ad so that the best ad can be found.  

Create responsive search ads as well as text ads. You create a list of different headlines and descriptions and the Google technology does its thing by combining the best combination of title and text into the ad based on which is the best performing.  

Structured snippets allow prospects to see a preview of your services. This helps with standout on the search page.   

Google display ads also offer a way to reach a wide number of people. These ads show across over 2 million sites, videos or apps – part of a Google Display Network. So ads will appear based on online activity.  

Read more in our blog where organic misses pay per click can hit.  

Remarketing  

While we predominantly concentrated on PPC with Google Adwords in this blog, you may be interested to read about the benefits of remarketing.  

Have you ever seen those ads that follow you around the internet after you searched for something online and it shows up on another site a few days later. This is remarketing and it’s a useful digital advertising tactic.  

Sales very rarely result from a smooth journey from ‘A’ to ‘B’ and remarketing helps you guide people along the journey. 

Read about the benefits of remarketing.  

Google AdWords certified 

Each year at Smart Cow Marketing we ensure that we are Google AdWords certified. This is probably one of the most important certifications there is with regards to Search Engine Marketing (SEM) and in particular Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising. It is an important credential for marketers and one that is not lightly awarded. Receiving a Google AdWords certification means that Smart Cow Marketing continues to be recognised as being Adwords experts in Croydon.

PPC agency Croydon

We’re a digital marketing agency with a specialism in marketing for accounting firms and local businesses in Croydon. With many marketing tactics whether organic or PPC advertising, we can help guide you. We can provide a tailored proposal for your business needs. Book a free consultation.

Digital marketing for accountants

6 digital marketing tactics for accountancy firms

With many of us now remote working and embedded in the virtual world, the importance of presence online has never been so important.

If you’re an accountancy practice looking to ramp up online marketing activity or need a little advice on where to start, here’s our lowdown on the digital marketing tactics to think about and incorporate into your marketing strategy.

Website optimisation  

We always start with a website review. Take a look at the content and check that it’s up to date. Then delve a little deeper and check whether all the information is on your website that you would except if you were a visitor to the site.

Don’t make it difficult for people to find things. Don’t be fancy. Make your menu and page content clear so that it’s easy for your website users to navigate. Be informative and professional, yet friendly and approachable.

When reading through your current website content, in the back of your mind always be thinking about what people search for when they are looking for accountancy services. These phrases should then become your keywords. Then make sure you have these keywords within content on your website.

Having keywords in your H1 and H2 headers will also help highlight what’s on that page to search engines.

On the backend make sure that you also have your meta descriptions and alt tags completed. This will also help with SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

Read more about SEO with our blogs, Improve local SEO by creating local content and 6 SEO tips to improve search ranking.

Blogs

Don’t ever think that blogging isn’t for an accountancy practice. With the amount of regular updates for businesses from HMRC, and a lot more right now, there’s heaps of information to be talking about and informing your existing clients as well as your prospects. Be factual with content – offer tips, latest government updates, industry statistics and insight.

Writing blogs or having a news page is a great way to get fresh content onto your website which is what you need to help your accountancy practice be found in search engine results pages.

It’s a great way for you to add in those keywords you’ve researched too.

Google My Business

Make sure you’ve populated Google My Business with details of your firm. This is free to do and at the very least make sure you get the basic information up there about your company, such as website, telephone number, contact email and opening times. This all helps with SEO and it’s another place that you can be found in search.

You can have the chance to add updates too. So you can repurpose your blogs and add the content here as well. It adds quality links back to your website which is another thing that search engines look for to help understand the authority of your page.

Pay Per Click

Pay Per Click (PPC) is a great way to help increase traffic to your website. We recommend having a specific landing page created for a PPC campaign so that when people you are targeting click on an ad they will be taken to a relevant page. This helps reduce bounce rates and attracts quality leads.

A well targeted PPC campaign can help give you a real boost in search results and a way to reach your potential customers.

Social media marketing

A Facebook or Twitter account with up to date detail of your firm ensures you have visibility on two of the largest search engines. Whilst it may not lead to direct sales, they are great brand awareness platforms.

LinkedIn is a great channel for accountancy firms. With LinkedIn it’s worth remembering that you’re networking. It’s not about selling it’s about creating that business relationship.

So, if you’re not already regularly posting on a social media platform, perhaps now is the time to explore this for your accountancy practice. Look at your competitors and see what social networks they have presence. It makes sense to be in the same place.

Read our blog on the different social media platforms and how to use them for more insight.

Email marketing

A targeted email marketing campaign can have a significant impact on Return on Investment (ROI). What’s great about email is you can repurpose content you already have from blogs or it’s a great way to highlight updates to services.

But what’s key is that you make your email campaign personal. Really think about the person who has signed up to receive your emails and what they want to hear about. They are a target audience so think about how your email can benefit them. If it’s sharing news about latest legislation that they should be aware of or some interesting stats that can help their business planning or growth, then that’s of interest.

Our blog on email marketing benefits for your business has some further detail on the structure of your emails, through to the importance of mobile optimisation and analysis.

Digital marketing for accountants 

We provide digital marketing for accountants with bases in Croydon and London. 

Take advantage of our free website review and download our Beginner’s Guide to Inbound Marketing to help you on your digital marketing journey. Or book a free consultation to chat further about your goals for your accounting practice and we can tailor a proposal for you.

PPC Agency

Overview of the different types of Google Ads

You’ve more than likely heard of Google Adwords and you may be familiar with the term Pay Per Click (PPC) campaign. Well a Google Ad is a type of PPC campaign.

However, there’s a few different types of campaigns that you can actually run from your Google Ads account.

So, here’s a short summary of the types of Google ads you can run as part of an online marketing advertising campaign. There’s a wide choice so you can find the best fit based on your business objectives.  

Google Search ads  

If you set up a Google Search campaign then this is the type of ad that appears in the Google search results when you type in something that you want to find. In the search engine results pages, you’ll see a few suggestions at the top of your page with a little ‘Ad’ icon beside it which denotes a Google Ad.  

What’s good about a Google Ad campaign as this is the most popular search engine and by running ppc ads your business is visible on the first page of the search results.

This is a great way to get brand awareness of your business, a new site or new products and services. Plus, you can add in calls to action to really help drive visitors to your website.   

Google Display ads 

These type of Google ads can appear across a network of websites. Google says you can reach more than two million sites and apps across the internet using a Google Display ad.

These ads can also help increase awareness and reach to your core audience as you can target specific interests.  

Google Video ads 

Google video ads are still a form of PPC, meaning that you as the advertiser will only pay if someone decides to watch your video ad.  

A video ad can help you reach your target audience at scale by appearing when someone is perhaps researching a product or service. This way a potential customer has the chance to view your video as it appears on YouTube or the network of sites as mentioned in Display ads.  

Google Shopping ads 

You know the run of ads that appear at the top of search when you Google a product? That’s what these shopping ads are. Another great way to get your product to appear in search and next to other Google text/responsive ads.  

This is a great way to raise awareness of your products and boost traffic to your website for purchases.  

Google App 

According to Google, these ads run in search, play and YouTube. Plus a raft of its network of sites. This campaign is about getting downloads and you just need to add text, how much you will pay for the click of the ad (known as Bid) and then Google optimises it for the best results.   

Ad copy

The copy is a key part of the advertising and should stem from your overall content marketing plan. Your text ads should be succinct, to the point and specific to your target audience to really encourage your ads to be clicked.

Make sure that the landing page you choose is specific for your ads. It can take time to set up the ad campaigns so knowing that all the information relevant to your campaign is in the landing page is essential for success. YOur website landing page should also be mobile optimised – so do check that too before you make your ads live.

However, the beauty of Google ads is you can hone your campaign. So, you can tweak copy here and there depending on the CTR (click through rate) or maximum bid you have associated with the ad.

Lead generation with PPC marketing

A PPC marketing campaign such as running a Google Ad (in whichever ad form) is a great lead generation tool. With the sophisticated technology you can really target your audience so you can obtain good quality leads from conducting such a campaign.  

So, if you’re looking to increase brand awareness, promote your latest products or want to encourage people to take action, then perhaps a PPC campaign is right for your business. 

Pay per click Croydon

We’re a PPC agency in Croydon working with a range of businesses on their digital marketing activity. We can work with you on a standalone PPC campaign or create a mix and match of digital marketing approach depending on what your business goals are.  

If you would like your Google Ad Campaigns set up for you, we can do this and then let you continue to run the campaign yourself. Or we can provide this service on a monthly retainer basis.  Get in touch and let’s chat further.