As with most businesses affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, Accounting Seed had to rethink its marketing strategy. The company planned to ramp up its marketing at the many trade shows and events it was scheduled to attend in 2020, but with those on hold or going virtual, Accounting Seed shifted to a digital strategy. “We’ve been able to expand our digital efforts, reinvesting the funds we were to put forth toward these events into digital advertising,” says Nick Havrilak, digital marketing specialist at Accounting Seed.
Shannon Cochran, Marketing Program Manager, Accounting Seed
As part of that investment, the company employed Microsoft Advertising to demonstrate the value of its digital advertising solutions during a pandemic. The marketing team built text and search campaigns, display campaigns, and retargeting campaigns to position Accounting Seed as the ideal solution for the accounting and finance woes of businesses transitioning to remote work.
“We had a lot of data to import into the platform, but with the help of the Microsoft Advertising support team, we were able to get a detailed campaign up and running with ease,” says Havrilak.
Combining those campaigns with Microsoft Advertising solutions, including Ad extensions, Dynamic Search Ads, Expanded Text Ads, the Import from Google Ads feature, In-Market Audiences, and the Universal Event Tracking tag, Accounting Seed was able to target business owners, CEOs, and entrepreneurs who were looking to update their financial software during the pandemic. The company’s efforts paid off, with people searching for accounting solutions and clicking on Accounting Seed’s ads.
“We found that during this time, a lot of people were searching for cloud-based accounting software,” says Shannon Cochran, marketing program manager at Accounting Seed. “We saw an increase in sales through paid search because of the need to move to cloud accounting.” The results for Accounting Seed have been significant, with a nearly three-fold increase in web traffic since the organization launched their Microsoft Advertising campaigns last year. In addition, they have seen a 26% increase in new web sessions and a 76% increase in page views per session compared to the previous year.