When Search Marketing Works Quickly Hint-PPC

May 21st, 2010

by Laura Thieme

Often times, I get a new client lead and they tell me they “need help quickly with leads”, which is then followed by the question, “What can you do to help me?”

For some, they think SEO is the answer. But I quickly correct them. That is not the quick way to increase leads. PPC - or paid search campaign management is.

Let me tell you the story of a recent new client who came to me about 6-8 weeks ago.

They’re in the service business. They serve the consumer market. They also have a recent product business, and that business is hurting.

They weren’t getting much previously in terms of leads. They allowed me to review their paid search account in Adwords over the initial phone call. They were a client referral. There was already a level of trust from Day One.

We had the initial meeting. They called me the next morning and asked me to move forward immediately. I “needed to increase leads immediately.”

As of this month, as I looked at their Adwords account, we have brought them 40 accurately tracked leads & online orders, with a lead/online order acquisition cost of approximately $32.

We’re talking next steps about starting a more extensive project for them. So what did we do to increase leads immediately?

1) Pulled data into Bizwatch for historical trend analysis
2) Reviewed and edited campaign settings
3) Changed geo-target settings
4) Changed hours that ads that ran
5) Realized within first couple of weeks that conversions had not been setup accurately; despite their statement they could do it themselves. They made the common mistake of assessing a value with a page view, or a download video. In paid search, there are two real types of conversions, an ecommerce order, or quote request/lead form submission. Not a page view. Define your page views or downloads as Goals in Google Analytics, but not in Adwords.
6) Ensured conversions were tracking accurately.
7) Updated ad copy
8) Reviewed competitors, landing pages, ad copy, pricing
9) Updated ad copy again
10) Reviewed “search query data” in Adwords - LOVE this data
11) Reviewed top converting keywords, with high conversion rates, and lower cost of acquisition (Bizwatch helps with this)
12) Updated keywords
13) Frequent client communication every 2-3 days during initial 3-4 weeks, then weekly after that
14) Measured paid search PPC campaign management success

Results:
1) Went from 1-2 leads per month to 40 quality leads/online orders per month
2) Client has mentioned inventory concerns - ha - love when that becomes the problem - but that is a serious problem we’ve dealt with before - be prepared to handle leads and online orders, and ensure inventory can be addressed rapidly if lead volume increases quickly
3) Cost of acquisition for each lead is very acceptable to the client, but knowing their average online order, I’d like to lower it slightly over the coming months
4) Asking for more business from them - we’re discussing a full contract as a result of our first month of work

Next, we’ll write about what to do when search doesn’t work as quickly as one would hope, or in the form that we’d hope - in terms of lead gen or online sales/ecommerce orders.

Posted in Paid Search Tools, Search Analytics.

 

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