• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, May 30, 2012

Paid-search audit tools identify failing campaigns, allowing marketers to quickly make changes and optimize content. But small businesses don't always have access to these tools. So this week iProspect made available a set that enables marketers to review paid-search campaigns in Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter.

Companies can sign up to use the tools either one time or as an ongoing service to identify gaps and opportunities in campaigns, and then provide insight into recommendations to improve performance.

The one-time audit supports a 30-day option that identifies overall best practices and efficiencies -- advertising copy and landing page testing recommendations and optimization --  as well as new keyword suggestions and negative keywords. For an ongoing engagement, iProspect will upload data and provide more details on opportunities for growth, especially as consumers head into the summer months.

Auditing paid-search campaign performance for small companies will become more important as national brands continue to invest in local strategies. eMarketer points to research from Balihoo that suggests 88% of national brands in North America invested a portion of their budget in local marketing in April. Some 29% allocated between 1% and 5% of their overall marketing budget to local strategies, while 21% invested a quarter or more of their total budget on local.

Audits also can help identify potential audience segments that marketers may not have considered. Take travel, for example. Finding an audience for warm-weather products that consumers can take on the road while traveling could attract new customers. Add a map to the paid-search ad landing page on a mobile site to guide them in.

About 79 million Americans visited Google Maps through their browser in April -- making it the top brand in the Travel category, according to Nielsen.

Overall, 210 million Americans spent 29 hours on average browsing the Web in April, according to Nielsen. The company released stats last week on Web traffic for travel-related sites for the month. Google remained the top Web brand in the U.S., with 171 million unique U.S. visitors, and more than half of Internet users visiting travel Web sites, such as TripAdvisor with 13.2 million unique visitors, Expedia with 12.9 million, and Priceline Network with 12.2 million.