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Why use paid advertising?

05/17/202109/03/2020 by scmarketing

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.

Lead generation strategies for your business

06/21/202108/25/2020 by scmarketing

The main purpose of your online lead generation strategy is to get people to visit your website.

Online lead generation encompasses a wide range of tactics and digital marketing campaigns depending on platform you choose to capture leads. So, we thought we’d take a closer look at some of the tools and the strategies you can employ to help increase website traffic and increase your chance of quality leads.

PPC lead generation

Pay Per Click or PPC is a way of advertising on Search Engine Results pages (SERPs). Google ads are generally the most popular. With Google getting 3.5 billion searches a day, you can see why. PPC is a great option for lead generation but it’s important to get the content of your ad right to entice a click in the first instance.

We also recommend creating a specific landing page so that your web page reflects what people have clicked to see. This will help you avoid bounce rate as those clicks will be from warm leads.

You then need to make sure you have good keywords targeted to your audience as well as negative keywords to help extend your budget further.

Our blog what is PPC has further background detail on this lead generation tactic.

LinkedIn lead generation

LinkedIn is a great B2B social media networking platform. When attending events, even virtually, there’s always the networking opportunities to add contacts to your network post event. By messaging either prior to an event or post event, you have a great hook to personalise your message of introduction which is likely to get a connection made.

With more remote working, LinkedIn has really come to the fore for networking and lead generation. The LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a great asset to grow your network by being truly targeted to find the right prospects for your business. Learn more about how LinkedIn can help you grow you discover prospects.

Facebook lead generation

If you think of Facebook as a search engine, having your business present on this social media platform at the very least offers a place for you to be found with contact details, business hours and your latest updates. But most importantly it offers reassurance and brand awareness about your business services and products.

For some businesses it may not necessarily be the primary social network platform but it’s always useful to post updates to help drive traffic organically back to your website. If anything, it’s important for increasing brand awareness and improving SEO (search engine optimisation).

Facebook Ads was launched in 2007. Facebook Lead Ads are all about lead generation and the process is simplified to attract prospects. Pre-populated forms make it easy for people to fill out forms on their mobile. You can customise forms to improve the quality of the leads you attract.

Your website and lead generation tools

Eye-catching call to action buttons are essential on a website. It helps guide the visitor – your potential clients – and helps them navigate the web page. Also create pop-up boxes for email sign up forms to your website. This can be achieved with a lead generation tool such as Hubspot.

A virtual tool such as Hotjar has a heatmap which represents how visitors to your website are navigating their way around your site. You can see where site visitors spend time and where they don’t.

Tips for campaigns

It’s important to organise leads so that you can make it a successful lead generation campaign. This is where lead generation tools and software can help. They can help you understand more about the people visiting your website and what pages they are interested in so that you can tailor information accordingly. It can help you capture email addresses simply. Or understand what they looked at on your website before completing a form.

As a Hubspot partner, we can help you with marketing automation and CRM for your business to help make a really effective lead generation campaign.

What’s important about any lead generation campaign is to continue to be insightful with your communication, providing answers to challenges that you know your customers face. Your ongoing content marketing plan should factor in where prospects are on their buyer’s journey. Someone at the beginning of the buyer’s journey might be interested in insight like an ebook, whilst someone who’s now familiar with your company might be more interested in a free trial or demo.

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 a digital marketing strategy that’s best for your business.

We specialise in digital marketing for accountants as well as providing digital marketing services and web design for local businesses within Croydon.

6 digital marketing tactics for accountancy firms

08/07/2020 by scmarketing

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.

Digital Marketing for accountants in London

04/01/202002/26/2020 by scmarketing

Is your accounting practice looking to attract more quality clients and qualified leads? Digital marketing for accountants is key.

A digital inbound marketing strategy could be the answer to help you reach potential Clients and retain existing ones.

Attract and retain clients

With the top 15 accounting firms in the UK based in London alone, having a search engine marketing strategy in place to help your website stand out is vital to lead generation.

Ultimately you want to generate traffic for potential customers, nurture those leads and then convert to a client. This journey is very rarely a one-stop shop. Your prospects will have done their research, checked out you and your competitions services and read online reviews.

But first things first, to generate traffic you’ll need to take a few steps for your firms website to be found using online marketing.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Through optimisation of your website and a good digital marketing strategy you can help generate traffic and attract good qualified leads from business owners who are interested in your services.

Read our blog post about what SEO agencies should offer London firms to help you review your current website and implement some quick win optimisation tricks.

Content marketing

As part of your accountant website review, take a look at the content. Is it easy to read, to the point and simple to navigate? Offering tips on accounting services and advice on new regulations helps position you as a thought leader to your client base. With fresh blog content, search engines have new content to find you for and that can easily be shared on social media.

But one review you can make is your use or keywords – are they relevant? For instance are you using such phrases as ‘accountants in London’? This all helps search engines find you and show you in relevant search results.

Pay Per Click

This digital marketing tactic offers a truly targeted way to reach potential prospects.

Pay Per Click campaigns (PPC) mean you can focus on geographical areas, pinpointing areas of London and Greater London as well as choosing demographics to fit your target audience.

Be succinct and to the point in your ad messaging as you only get a limited word count to play with. Test out your messaging too. The beauty of a PPC campaign is you can tailor and continue to tweak ads depending on results. In doing so you can really begin to see a Return on Investment (ROI) with a Google AdWord campaign.

Our blog on tips for setting up and running PPC campaigns will give you more insight to set up a specific campaign.

While a remarketing campaign provides that all important brand awareness as those ads will follow visitors around the web. Understanding how remarketing can grow your business has more helpful tips for you to consider for your accounting firm.

Lead nurturing & automation

Even if you have a good conversion rate, you’ll still need to be managing hundreds of leads through the life cycle. To make this efficient, you may want to consider applying several automation tools. From email campaigns, sequences and workflows, automating repetitive tasks can help free up time.

A good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) solution can also pull teams together to work effectively on leads and clients.

Looking for leads?

There’s no doubt that optimising your website will help create stand out and help you be found for your services. However, as you’ve read, there’s a whole host of ideas to consider, and more. So, if you feel you need support in attracting leads to grow your accounting firm, then get in touch with Smart Cow, a digital agency for accountants, and we can look at creating a digital marketing plan specifically for your practice.

Book a Free consultation.