No matter what type of business you own, turning profit is a top priority. For moving companies, that can seem nearly impossible at some points of the year. Whether you are in a crowded market, too small of a market or in the offseason, finding leads for your moving services can be difficult in the best years. There are various options to market your company in these circumstances. From content marketing to PPC, there are plenty of services and outlets to choose from.
Nevertheless, Google Adwords has proven to be one of the most profitable strategies a moving company can take. With the ability to target individuals who are actively searching for your services, Adwords offers some of the best conversion rates in digital marketing.
However, advanced Google Adwords techniques can be difficult to learn. Whether you are outsourcing your Adwords management or doing it in-house, you still need to understand what the service is offering and how to take advantage of it. In this blog, we will take you through the most helpful Adwords tips that can be used for your moving business.
1. Don’t Jump the Gun
Just because you signed up for Adwords does not mean you have to start running your Google ads immediately. In fact, we would suggest waiting a little bit. Digital marketing is not as cut and dry as it was five or 10 years ago. There’s a lot more fish in the sea, and if you are not efficient with your strategy and money, it could go to waste.
Before you take your campaign live, do research on everything Adwords has to offer. Find out how to make an ad group and play around with the Adwords Keyword Planner. Understand what makes good quality scores for ads and the different ad extensions available to you. You can choose to learn on the fly, but you’ll be wasting money while you catch up with the rest of the advertisers.
2. Track Your Keywords
Starting out, you will have a general understanding of which keywords you want to bid on. One of the more helpful tools that Google gives you is the ability to track the performance of all your keyword ideas. Every week or so, take some time to look at which keywords are performing best for you. You can pivot your campaign to spend more on those keywords or take time to optimize an underperforming ad group.
3. Take Time Writing Ads
Writing a successful Adwords text ad is vital to making sure you get the clicks you need. Showing up on someone’s search results isn’t even half the battle. By creating different ad groups around different keywords, you need to make sure your ad tells the consumer exactly what they need. Be considerate when you are creating each ad. Provide details on the specific services you are offering.
A helpful tip is to create your ad group structure to mimic your website structure. Funnel your ads down to your different services (local moving, long distance moving, office moving, piano moving, etc.). This way your ads will seem personalized towards the needs of the person making the search.
4. Lots of Negative Keywords
The last thing any business owner wants is a bad ROI. If you are not careful and meticulous with your Adwords campaign, this is a real possibility. As amazing as Google is, they cannot fully calculate a person’s intent when conducting a search. How are negative keywords different from other keywords? They let Google know exactly what you don’t want to show up for.
As you track your keywords and conversions, you will start to see yourself show up on queries you want no part of. If you have a keyword for “moving company”, you don’t want to be spending money to show up for searches like “how to start a moving company” or “moving truck rental”. Using an extensive list of negative keywords provides a safeguard for unwanted results. Google will even let you compile a negative keyword list that you can apply to all your ad groups.
5. Use the Sitelink Extension
Google’s sitelink extension feature is a useful tool for any company, but especially for moving companies. It allows you to put links to other pages on your site directly below the main ad. Movers offer a lot of unique services that the general public is not aware of. If you have an ad for the keyword “Detroit moving companies”, you might want to link to your local moving, long distance moving, and office moving pages below your ad.
Another useful industry tool is putting a link to your customer reviews. With so much weight being put into testimonial advertising, people are more nervous than ever to trust a service. Linking potential customers to success stories will help ease a lot of the stress that they have.
6. Take Advantage of All the Ad Extensions
Google offers plenty of other abilities to run your Adwords campaign. Not every extension will be right for you, but there will be a few. Callout extensions will add a separate line of text in your ad, almost like a bullet point of your company’s services. This would be a place where you can say “Fully licensed and insured”, “A+ BBB rating” or “Offseason rates.” You can choose to add a call extension and even a click to text extension. Choose the review extension to show customers your Google review rating right in your ad. They are all optional, but they will give your ad a higher quality score if used properly.
7. Location Settings
In order to capitalize on your target area, you need to ensure your ads campaign is not showing to the wrong audience. When setting up your location settings, go to advanced settings and change your target audience to only people in your targeted location. Google will automatically set itself to target people who are in, searching for or visiting sites about your target location.
It is a helpful way to weed out the less serious searches and target your audience that is actively searching for your services. Search terms and search queries are not an absolute science but ensuring the right location for your services goes a long way in achieving the best ROI.
Other Important Adwords Tips
We have just scratched the surface for all the features that Google Adwords offers. The Google Adwords Keyword Planner is another great tool available to businesses. It provides keyword ideas and suggested phrases accompanied by their search volume. Remarketing Adwords allows you to target your ads to individuals who have previously visited your website. Remarketing campaigns can be very useful for any company. As the old adage goes, the best customers are repeat customers.
In order to take full advantage of Google Adwords, you will need to have a full understanding of everything it has to offer. This list will increase your efficiency as you get your campaign off the ground, but it will take more work than that. The Google algorithms are constantly changing. In order to consistently convert people who visit your site, you have to be diligent in your keyword planning and ad copy.