PPC Lead Case Study (Reduced Cost Per Lead By 69%)
In this PPC lead generation case study, we will show you how we took an existing campaign, dropped the lead cost by over 69%, saved our client thousands in ad spend, and 8x’d the monthly lead count.
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Background
Our client offers modern project manager software designed to help people bill faster.
The website is set up for collecting leads, with all types of features listed. Because this is such a competitive market, most people will do research before signing up.
They came to TuMos for some help in reducing their customer acquisition lead cost, as well as delivering them a higher volume of leads while maintaining lead quality and signups.
The Audit – Huge Opportunities Uncovered
As we all know, Google Ads is sort of an open field with thorns everywhere.
With minimal competition in search, Google Ad platform is by far the most powerful marketing solution on the planet, but also has become too complex for the average user.
Google is a business designed to make money and works against you in most cases, you need to create strategies that bit the algorithm to your advantage.
…and that’s where we come in to produce tangible and scalable outcomes.
The first thing we do in our process is a complete audit of the client account.
Why?
We’ll evaluate….
Your accounts data to gain insights on whats working and what’s not moving the needle.
Check for structural errors or setup that lead to poor conversions.
100% of the time, when we audit an account, we discover opportunities for substantial improvements.
To set the baseline, here’s what the account looked like when it was handed to us, before any work was done:
Cost: $4,095
Conversion Rate: 0.44%
Conversions: 12
Cost Per Conversion: $603
Pretty easy to see the conversion rate is low and the Cost per conversion is not sustainable. Here are a few things we did right away to get this campaign driving in the right direction:
Properly Track Conversions
Campaign conversion tracking and data is the foundation of a properly setup digital campaign.
Without it, you can’t find out what campaigns are actually performing, so you’ll never be able to make decisions about what to keep, cut, or scale to improve performance.
The problem is that unless you’re a digital marketing or PPC expert, it’s easy to set this up incorrectly (or not set it up at all!)
In this client account, we found conversions like “All Page Views” and other settings like “Count Every Conversion” were setup. These setting and conditions, led to a lot of false advertising data for years.
Clear example of a disastrous tracking situations; with the “Count Every Conversion” setting, if you click an ad once and opt in 3 times, it is counted all 3 leads when in reality we only have one lead. This is OK for purchase conversion campaigns, but not great for lead gen.
You see? There are landmines like this all over the place.
How we fix it:
We setup all new triggers and tags inside Google Tag Manager which then sent the data back to Google Analytics and Google Ads with more accuracy, since we’ll be targeting a specific conversion page or value after an action has been taken on the clients website.
We use Google Tag Manager in every account we touch so that all data is going to one place and then being properly sorted.
With Google Tag manager, It is very easy to find any tracking issues, and we only have to put one tracking code, “Google Tag Manager” into your pages.
Increasing CTR With Streamlined Ad Groups & Ad Copy
In Google ads, you have “ad groups” which include a set of keywords that you are bidding on, and the ad copy that will be displayed when people use those keywords in their searches.
When users search for a certain keyword, they’re looking for something very specific and want the solution.
But when a generic ad pops up, it won’t necessarily match exactly what they are looking for, and that can increase your costs since your CTR (click-through rate) is too low.
In this account, we found that a lot of the ad groups were using the same keywords and generic ad copies across all campaigns.
Structuring your campaign ad groups is key here, 1 ad can’t show the differences in each product, highlight benefits, or characteristics of the specific service or product.
How we fixed it:
We created all new ads with headlines & descriptions that included the specific set of keywords in each one.
This is one of the most important steps to a high-converting campaign because of how valuable the user experience is.
You don’t want someone searching for “hair salon near me” and an ad for “nail salon near me” coming up.
It is completely irrelevant and won’t generate a lot of traffic and clicks to your site.
Making this change not only increased the ad relevance score but also made the user experience seamless for what they’re searching for.
From these major optimization steps and our daily management, these are the results we saw by the end of November 2019.
Cost: $2,971
Conversion Rate: 1.22%
Conversions: 7
Cost Per Conversion: $324
Just with these few strategies, you can see that the cost per conversion dropped over 50% since the beginning.
But we’re were not done yet in optimizing this client’s account.
Increasing Conversions With Specific Landing Pages
Running profitable campaigns takes a multi-faceted approach. It’s often not just what is set up in the account, but also what happens after the ad click takes place.
A common problem that we see is that people often are driving traffic to their website, but that website isn’t as optimized as it can be for the conversion they want to achieve.
When you have a lead generation campaign going to your website, it’s often crowded by all sorts of distractions like navigation menus, content, and it’s not clear what you want them to take action on.
In reality, it takes seconds to capture a quality lead or interest in your offerings, when a visitor lands on a web page, you have to make it extremely clear what you want them to do, and eliminate all other distractions.
To make this extremely clear what actions you’ll like your visitors to take, that’s where landing pages come into play within your campaign dynamics.
A landing page is a page designed specifically to get conversions from an ad is click…
…and it can make an enormous difference in overall campaign performance!
A good landing page has one primary CTA (Call To Action), the page copy is written around the customer persona and the exact keywords you’re bidding on in your search ads, there are no links to other destinations on your website.
In our clients’ case, the account was sending traffic directly to their website’s homepage, with a vast array of strategies for conversion rate optimization we determined landing pages will be key to greater success.
How We Fixed It
We decided to make the decision of them creating a landing page based on our recommendations.
Over the last few years at TuMos we have run millions of dollars in ad spend and one thing is for sure – most people are FLAMING CASH 💵= 🔥 by not using high-converting landing pages.
We recommended a simple but direct headline, a well-written benefits section, and a clear Call-To-Action, with a beautiful modern breadcrumb form field landing page.
The results?
Cost: $1,670
Conversion Rate: 1.84%
Conversions: 60
Cost Per Conversion: $76.60
Conclusion
By setting up proper tracking, optimizing the campaign with our specific process, and implementing a focused landing page, we were able to drop their CPL (Cost Per Lead) by over 69%!
If we generated the same amount of leads we did in November for the same price, we would have spent an average of $14,906, vs the $1,670 on ads. See how we can get you started on the right path to success!