The PROFILE and PROBLEM
Volunteer2 is a global leader in the area of volunteer management software. Suffice it to say, this client was an AdWords veteran. He had been advertising with AdWords for almost 10 years! It goes without saying that a lot has changed with paid search advertising since 2003. During that period of time, the client’s search network average cost per click had increased by almost 10x while he maintained basically the same average position over the life of the campaign.
With his costs starting to skyrocket, and his uncertainty with regards to the effectiveness and return on his investment, he gladly hired us to clean up his campaign.
Given the client’s experience with PPC advertising, the account was in better shape than many accounts we see, but there were still some glaring structural problems with the account including almost exclusive use of broad match keywords which resulted in lots of clicks for unqualified terms.
THE GOAL
– Free up the client’s time that he was spending actively managing the campaign
– Clean up the account’s structure to prevent keyword cannibalization and ensure that he is paying an appropriate amount for various types of clicks
– Purge the account of the keywords that are doing nothing but wasting the client’s money.
RESULTS
The first task was examining the client’s search query reports to see exactly what types of clicks he was receiving. These findings resulted in the addition of 250+ negative keywords which are saving the client thousands of dollars a year in unqualified click costs.
Our other solutions all focused on bringing the client more qualified visitors, and ensuring that the average cost per click would result in a more profitable advertising campaign.
- 19% decrease in search network CPC (This was challenging given that we were eliminating hundreds of lower cost keywords)
- 124% increase in average time on site
- 34% increase in average pages per visit
- 22% decrease in bounce rate
We’ve also implemented goal tracking to help us determine where exactly the client’s advertising dollars are best invested.
I had many years’ experience advertising with Google. Year after year, as more and more competitors caught on and started doing paid search advertising, managing the account seemed to get more and more complex, and my costs started to increase. I always knew how much traffic I was getting, but truthfully, I didn’t really know the value of those clicks. When Steve at Fidelity contacted me through a mutual friend I was eager to hear what ideas he had for my campaign. Just based on the questions he was asking me about the account, I knew that he possessed a strong knowledge for this medium advertising. As he started to work on the campaign, I was amazed (shocked) as to the kinds of completely irrelevant keywords that were driving traffic to my site. It never would have crossed my mind that the search engines would have matched my ads up to some of the keywords for which I was paying significant money.
As a business owner with a tight schedule who travels globally, simply the time that Steve has freed up for me is invaluable. I used to spend time managing the account, but now I know the account is in good hands.
Tony Goodrow – Volunteer2 Volunteer Management Software
