New Campaign PPC Case Study
Goal: Focus on building a new campaign with the intention of driving conversions for a product and service company
Overview: We are onboarding a new client with a fresh PPC campaign. They sell products and provide a few services to their local area and would like to reach more customers. With this customer, they were very skeptical at first but when the calls, increased foot traffic and leads started coming in. It was a startling revelation. There were many people who desired their products and services this whole time that never knew about them!
Background
The client has never run ads before on Google and was nervous about potentially tossing money into a black box with no promise of a return on their investment. We discussed the client’s goals and from there we started formulating a strategy that would begin slowly to prove to the client that there was an opportunity before we turned up the budget.
In our experience, one of the biggest concerns from clients is that they will lose their investment. Part of seeking out a digital marketing firm such as Mass Division is that we have many years of experience running Google Ads and we understand the paid search marketing landscape. You can be certain that we will not risk your precious ad spend dollars unless we feel there is ample opportunity to see a positive ROI.
The Beginning
Google Ads is the most powerful advertising platform in the world. It intercepts people who are asking for a solution and presenting results to the individual. With Google Ads, the ad placement is positioned above and below the organic listings allowing for a small business or new business to be competitive against those who are more established and who have ranked higher with their SEO campaigns.
Data is the foundation on which we build our campaign. We start with research, looking at keywords. Volume, competition, and cost per click. We also look at the competitive landscape. We want to understand how much competition we will be up against with our campaign as it I can directly impact the cost per click and how hard we will need to work to go beyond them to show our ads in more premium positions.
We started by performing an audit of the account. At Mass Division we have done many of these audits and created a checklist as we work through the account.
- We look at current data for trends and insights. What has worked and what has not?
- We look for mistakes in the account that can lead to poor conversions.
Pretty much 100% of the time we find opportunities that can be improved. Sometimes minor adjustments or changes are enough, but other times things need to be reworked from the ground up.
Below is the data from the last month of the campaign under the previous marketing company.
Cost: $16,800 Per Month (at the end)
Conversion Rate: 4.63%
Conversions: 974 (at the end)
Cost Per Lead: $17.20
The Work
Keywords
The keywords were beyond extensive. There were many very broad keywords that were soaking up a lot of budgets but not generating leads. There were many keywords that had low to no traffic at all. There were some keepers in there, but this keyword list definitely needed some optimization. We did some keyword research using both our own Keyword tool and Google’s Keyword Planner and selected keywords that were more lower funnel. This means people who were searching in a way that reflected they were more ready to make a purchase.
There was no blacklist in place so many irrelevant searches were making associations against the previous keyword list. Thankfully we had a lot of data and were able to compile a good negative targeting list to help prevent wasted ad spend and increase the efficiency of the campaign.
Ads
In Google Ads, ad groups have sets of keywords that are being bid on, and then the ad copy that will be displayed when people search for those keywords. When a user searches for a specific keyword, they are asking a question and looking for a specific solution.
If a very broad or generic ad is presented, it will not be presenting the solution that the searcher is looking for and thus the Click Through Rate or CTR will be low. As a result of this, costs will increase due to the lower relevancy score.
When we did our initial evaluation, we found that the ads were generic and plain. They did not embody the business or deliver an answer to the question the searcher was asking. This was a big opportunity for improvement.
We created all new ads with fresh headlines and descriptions that included specific seed keywords. You do not want to search for a “puppy” and see an ad for a “kitten”. It is not relevant to the search that is being made and will not generate a lot of traffic. This change also increased the ad relevance score and click through rate.
Extensions
The extensions on this account were lacking. There were no site link extensions, no call out extensions, no structured snippets, and the location extension was not integrated. There was a lot of opportunity in this section alone. We added any and all extensions that made sense for this business.
Sitelinks are a fantastic way to offer alternative links that may help searchers find what they are looking for. Callout Extensions are great to highlight specific things about your business, products, process, and more that puts you above your competitors. Structured snippets are wonderful to provide insight into your products, offerings, and more. Location extensions are a great way to tie your Google My Business profile to your ads account and which in turn places your address, phone number, and a map marker.
All of these extensions help ads perform better. It increases the real estate of the ad which is always a good thing. It offers the searcher more information which can help attract them to click on the ad and thus bring them through to your business. In the case of the location extension, it can also help bring people into your brick and mortar locations.
Targeting
The original campaign was targeting a 10-mile radius around the location of the store. This is a prime area for targeting, but it is very limiting in terms of reach and available impressions. Traditionally, a very close radius to a brick and mortar store will yield very good results. However in the case of this business, people were willing to travel much further.
Using 10-mile increments, we increased the targeting radius to 40 miles and watched to see if people were willing to drive that far. We were pleased to see that people were sending inquiries in from as far as 30 miles away. We were getting inquiries and people traveling from 40 miles, but it was much less often. It seemed that 30 miles was the sweet spot. Having done this, we opened up a whole new source of ad inventory for this client’s advertisements.
The Results
Cost: $6,000 Per Month ($200 per day)
Conversion Rate: 7.5%
Conversions: 1,390
Cost Per Lead: $4.38
Conclusion
The client was very pleased. We were able to reduce the cost per lead by 75% maintaining and even slightly improving how many average leads were generated monthly, while reducing ad spend cost by over $10,000 a month. This allowed the client to re-invest this money back into his business.
This was accomplished by doing keyword research for recent data on search keyword trends. Putting in place a solid blacklist to ensure that Google does not make irrelevant associations. Creating high converting ad copy with a variety of for google to serve and optimize with. Building out the ad extensions portfolio to increase information presented to the searcher and increase ad real estate. Increasing the targeting radius to increase the pool of potential customers.
When the client is ready to scale to more volume, we can help him do so, all while maintaining a healthy cost per lead.