Running a Google Adwords campaign is a proven strategy when looking to increase targeted traffic. However, it’s not just a plug-and-play process. There are a number of potential pitfalls that can all but destroy your digital advertising budget. However, these mistakes can be avoided. In fact, when employed properly, the following tips will help you optimize your campaigns so that you’re generating qualified leads and converting more sales on customer visits.

1. Proper Keyword and Keyword-Phrase Research

Everything begins and ends with how you research keywords and keyword-phrases. The best available tool includes Google’s Adwords Keyword Planner. It’s a free solution provided by Google that is both easy-to-use and easy-to-implement.

Your focus should be to come up with the most commonly-used keywords by your customers in online searches. Next, place those keywords into different categories so that you can create separate advertising groups. The Adwords Keyword Planner will then provide a complete list of the number of searches by your chosen keyword. You can then isolate that data by reviewing your local market and or your larger market.

Be sure you use keywords that are applicable to your market and never opt for the cheapest keyword; driving unqualified leads to your website because you want to save money won’t increase your conversion rates. In fact, it will frustrate you and drive up your website’s bounce rates.

2. Use a Descriptive Text With Your Keywords

Make sure each of your advertising groups incorporates a well-written text using your chosen keywords. Those advertising groups should link directly to those landing pages that best describe the product or service your advertising. This is a critical portion of the process because it allows you to compare the performance of these different campaigns later on. Ultimately, improving your campaigns comes from comparing results and testing different configurations.

3. Define Your Core Market

Define what market you’re pursuing and make sure your campaign is structured around that specific market. For instance, if you’re only able to provide a given product or service in a specific geographical area, then make sure your keywords incorporate the name of the borough, town, city or state you operate in. This is the type of information your customers will use in online searches.

4. Control Your Budget

The best way to manage your budget is to use Google’s Exact Match process. This ensures that your advertisements will only come up for users when they put in the specific keyword or keyword-phrase you’ve chosen.

5. Split Testing

Finally, be ready and willing to split test your campaigns once you’ve had time to review some of your initial results. Split testing forces you to make one change at a time to see what results it has on your CTR (click-through rates). You’ll then measure the increase or decrease in CTR before making additional changes. A Miami online marketing agency can provide insight into how the split testing is performed.

Make sure you choose a Miami website design firm that knows how to optimize AdWords campaigns. It’s not enough just to work with a firm that can redesign your website. After all, a new website design means nothing if you’re not driving traffic to your site.

Online marketing helps small businesses create a level playing field against their larger, more established and better-financed competitors. However, while the costs of building an online brand are significantly lower when compared to conventional strategies, that doesn’t necessarily mean that mistakes aren’t costly. In fact, those costs can quickly add up. To help, here are five basic rules to live by when launching an online campaign.

Define Core Customer Segments

You need clarity of purpose when launching an online marketing campaign. That involves defining the type of customer you’re pursuing, what they like and dislike, where they get together online, what websites they visit, and most importantly, what social media platform they use to share content. Casting too wide a net, by trying to appeal to too wide an audience, will make measuring success or failure next to impossible.

Don’t Go With the Cheapest Keyword

Keywords are used by potential customers in online searches. It’s those same keywords that are employed within digital advertising campaigns. A common mistake is to use an inexpensive keyword in the hopes that it reduces costs. It doesn’t. All it does is send unqualified leads directly to your website.

Instead of increasing your website’s conversion rates on visits, you’ll be left wondering why your website has such a high bounce rate. Inexpensive keywords increase costs because they produce unqualified leads. Avoid them entirely and focus your campaign around the most descriptive keywords available.

Choosing the Right Digital Marketing Agency

Not all digital marketing agencies are the same. Some focus on business-to-business (B2B) markets while others focus on consumer markets. Be sure to match your firm to your business model. Review their portfolio and make sure they’ve demonstrated an ability to build brands for similar companies. Finally, don’t go with any firm unable to visit you, speak to you on the phone or provide references.

Tracking Performance and Making Adjustments

Regardless of whether you go at this alone, or opt to work with an outside firm, you must be able to track performance. Define your costs of online lead generation and have periods of review where you can assess what’s working, what isn’t and how best to move forward.

Online marketing isn’t automatic, static or stationary. Its benefits includes the ability to make changes in real-time and analyze results right down to every penny. However, that isn’t possible if you aren’t willing to review performance.

Testing Multiple Layouts and Variables

Testing is a vital part of success. Get used to testing different fonts, colors, images, and videos, while also playing around with your call-to-action (CTA). A/B split testing email campaigns, your website and different online campaigns is an absolute must.

Split testing involves making a single change and then tracking the impact of that change on the number of clicks generated. Split testing is a scientific way of increasing your marketing return on investment (ROI).

When looking for a Miami website design firm, start by outlining the customers you’re targeting and what your end goals are. The right Miami online marketing agency won’t just offer a one-time redesign of your website. Instead, they’ll offer a complete solution, one that helps you reach your local market, while also positioning you as a trusted resource for global customers.

Why is it that some online marketers continually raise the bar while others continually fall short? What is it that the best online marketers do in terms of driving more traffic to their website and converting more website visitors into customers? Answering both of these aforementioned questions comes down to understanding the five habits of successful online marketers, ones who know how to reach their target audience, know how to produce engaging content and know how to move prospects forward.

1. Engaging Content

Success isn’t just about the written word. It’s not just about writing endless paragraphs and inundating users with redundant information. Instead, it’s about combining well-written content with engaging videos and imagery. The best online marketers combine well-placed images alongside infographics, graphs and or excel tables. They combine multiple mediums in order to deliver a clear and concise message.

2. Consistent Content Production

The best online marketers are consistent in how they engage their audience. They make it a point to produce content on a daily basis and they continually raise the bar on how that content is produced. Ultimately, it’s a question of knowing what their customers want and giving them exactly that and more. All of that information comes from taking the time to analyze the website’s analytics. The best online marketers identify what their website visitors and customers want and then they give it to them time and again.

3. A/B Split Testing (Website Visitors, Online Advertising and Email Campaigns)

Those who excel at online marketing don’t merely rely upon assumptions. Instead, they use a systematic approach to maximizing their website’s layout, in addition to making sure they continually increase their click-through rates (CTR) on pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaigns and email marketing newsletters. Success typically involves split testing viewership. This means that the most tech-savvy online marketers will test one website or blog layout with one set of customers, and they’ll test a completely different layout with another set of customers. The goal is to find the optimized layout with the highest conversion rate.

4. Networking

Are you looking to be seen as a market guru? Do you want to be known as a relevant source of timely information? If so, then networking with your market’s biggest players is vital to keeping your company at the forefront of your market. Today’s online marketing professionals must build a substantial network of high-value contacts in order to make sure their company is readily available. Whether it’s from doing guest blog posts, videos, and or participating in podcasts, the best online marketers ensure that their company is always engaging its target audience.

5. Clear Call to Action

Finally, the best marketers know that their call to action must be clear and concise. There is no room for ambiguity. The company must clearly define its intentions, outline its value proposition and give potential customers a reason to act. A clear call to action does exactly that. Make sure your call to action gives your viewers a reason to move forward.

Miami website design firms must incorporate all of these aforementioned habits. Ultimately, you need to work alongside a design firm that can redesign your website while also putting together a content development strategy that reaches your target audience and incentivizes them to move forward.

Local businesses can benefit greatly from online marketing strategies that help to drive traffic through their doors. However, it has to be done with that aim in mind from the start. Many of the technologies necessary to bring foot traffic from an online presence have to be targeted for a local audience, from the search engine keywords to potential mobile customers. Here are a six ways to fine tune your online marketing strategy for local Miami businesses:

1. Target Local Keywords – Every online business must do a bit of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to stand out in their particular niche, but those that want local traffic must also include local SEO terms and keywords in their content. It’s not just enough just to combine a keyword with the name of a city, you also have to get into the mind of local customers who may be adding neighborhoods, beaches, or attractions to their query when they look for the best pizza place near Midtown or a tourist spot.

2. Make Sure You Use Responsive Web Design – Miami website design agencies know that the future is in mobile advertising, particularly for local traffic. Someone searching for an establishment while they’re out and about are usually doing it via a smartphone. If your web design is not responsive, it can be make it more difficult for users of these mobile devices. Plus, the Google is now downgrading sites that are not mobile-friendly as they also understand the ramifications of mobile technology.

3. Get the Word Out with Social Networking – If you don’t understand how people in a local area get information via popular social networking sites to make buying decisions, then hire a Miami digital marketing agency to manage your social networking profiles for you. They can reach a wider audience of people within your local area and provide the type of exposure and referrals to your site that can increase your conversions using this strategy. In a way, social networks is an online way for people to find out about local places that please people and many even provide a way to rate local establishments.

4. Facilitate Transactions with Local Strategies – Whether you’re a realtor looking to provide downloadable information for an open house with a QR code or a restaurant making it easy to get repeat customers with an online loyalty program, enabled via smartphones at the time of the purchase, you will have a way to give people reasons to remember you and hopefully visit and purchase again.

5. Publish Content with Local Interest – To make your site more popular with the local crowd, include topics in your blog of items of local interest. This will help to drive people to your site when they are looking up what to do around the area. If you can be a sponsor at some of these local events or spots, you can also tie in your online marketing to it by advertising your URL or including QR codes in your advertising offline.

6. Use Paid Advertising Campaigns to Target Local Areas – You can limit your Google Adwords campaigns to local areas instead of the entire state. You can also create a local business profile for Google Plus for businesses. Or, pay to add your business to Google Maps.

Don’t forget to include your own location information for those looking for nearby businesses. This is normally referred to as your NAP (name, address, phone number). Make it visible on all pages of your site via a footer or header and you will be well on your way to getting local attention.

Among the various business service providers who use the Internet as a platform for marketing and advertising, bookkeepers stand to benefit the most. Unfortunately, few bookkeepers actually take advantage of the full potential that the Internet offers in terms of getting new prospects and keeping their existing clients engaged.

The following three tips can greatly help small business bookkeepers boost their online presence for the purpose of attracting more prospects and staying in touch with their clientele:

Put Real Effort Into Your Website

Unfortunately, many bookkeepers think that a simple template with their contact information and some placeholder text is all it takes to establish their presence on the Web. If anything, prospects who see a very generic website are not going to be very interested in that bookkeeper, and existing clients will not have a reason to return to that site other than perhaps looking up a telephone number.

An ideal website for a bookkeeper should include attractive design, a summary of professional affiliations and major achievements, an engaging blog, and testimonials if they are available.

Use Social Media Accordingly

Some small business owners who are attuned to the world of online social networking skip the website portion of their online presence and choose to run their business from a Facebook or Twitter profile. This is not recommended for bookkeepers; however, being active on social media can go a long way to boost your online reputation.

A good social media practice consists of building a Twitter audience by searching for open questions about bookkeeping topics. For example, searching for the term “single entry” followed by a “?” question mark will return conversations about that topic. If the original question has not been answered, that’s an opportunity to introduce yourself, be of service, link to your website, and gain a new Twitter follower. The best social network for bookkeepers, however, is LinkedIn.

Don’t Forget About Email Marketing

For all the talk about how social media is becoming the Internet as we know it, millions of people still use email daily, particularly for business purposes. Building an email list can be as easy as offering a monthly newsletter that features content that your prospects and clients will not find in your blog or elsewhere.

The key to produce a successful email marketing newsletter is to pick one or two great topics that you know your audience can use and enjoy. For example, one article can be about bank reconciliation, which is not the most entertaining topic to read; however, this is an article that can be made friendlier if it mentions how a celebrity actor or athlete went broke because of poor accounting practices.

Marketing is essential to build a brand whether you are working with an existing company or looking to launch a new business entirely. Understanding a few growth marketing hacks that you can implement today is ideal when you are looking to generate new leads while increasing overall income and sales for your company.

Utilize Multiple Social Media Platforms

Using multiple social media platforms simultaneously is essential when looking to build a following while gaining traction with an online marketing campaign. Using more than one social networking community is a way to quickly communicate with hundreds or thousands of users by implementing trending keywords or hashtags with posts and updates you share.

Create and Use a Genuine Voice

Using a genuine voice that connects personally to your readers and online followers is also advisable when building a brand’s image in any industry online. Having a genuine voice is a way to stand apart from companies who avoid connecting with users and sounding authentic. Standing apart from competition by giving users more individual treatment is a way to gain customer loyalty and to gain additional referrals to other users in the future.

Update With Consistency

Updating weekly, bi-weekly or even monthly is a way to reassure customers of your relevance online. Updating with consistency is a key factor to keep in mind any time you are growing a new business or brand.

Track Online Marketing Campaigns

Analytic programs, tools and software are available to track online marketing campaigns you launch when promoting new products and services. Tracking online campaigns you have running is a way to pinpoint your demographic while getting to know what your visitors and customers are searching for when arriving at your site.

Using a few marketing tips and hacks can ultimately allow you to outperform competition in your market or niche while also building a professional appeal to potential customers or clients. Understanding marketing tactics that are most beneficial today allows you to gain insight into delivering what your customers truly want from your business model.