[CASE STUDY] How We Used Google Ads to Increase Sales by over 457% for Three Small Businesses

This is the story of how we helped several clients increase leads and sales through Google AdWords

For those who do not know, Google AdWords is an search engine advertising platform provided by Google to run texts ads on Google (and video/display ads).

Whenever you search for something on Google, you will normally see a mixture for paid ads and organic listings.

We’ve provided an example below to give you an idea.

The listings in the red box are advertisements that businesses pay for. The listings in the green box are free listings that Google provides to show relevant content to its user.

This case study focuses on the red box – search engine ads.

First, let’s address the big question everyone asks us… “Why should I advertise on search engines?”

Here’s why – because search engine marketing is the most powerful form of advertising available today.

You can advertise to people who are ACTUALLY searching for what you have to offer!

Let’s consider a simple example. Imagine that you want to sell bottles of water. You have two options for advertising. You can 1) advertise to everyone or 2) advertise only to people who are thirsty. Which do you choose?

You’re going to choose the people who are THIRSTY. Why? Because you know they NEED water. Now, you just have to focus on offering the best water to earn their business.

With other forms of advertising, you have to generate interest in your product. You have to be interesting, make the receiver aware that they are thirsty, and convince them to take action. This requires more work.

With search engine marketing, you spend your dollars on people who are thirsty for your product or service.

So now you understand what search engine marketing is and why it is the best form of marketing. Allow us to show you proof that this working for clients who are working with us right now!

Case Study 1

A few months ago, a local gym contacted us for advertising services for a new location they were opening.

They were preparing to enter a market where people would be completely unfamiliar with their name. After speaking with one of our marketing consultants, we decided on a search engine marketing campaign that will allow them to advertise directly to people searching for a gym membership in their geographic location.

Then, within 90 days, this happened:

• 15,590 impressions

• 1100 clicks

• 210 lead conversions (20%+ conversion rate)

• $4.33 average cost-per-lead

• Total Ad Spend: $900.00

Case Study 2 – National Brand

Local gym, not convincing enough? Let’s look at another case study in a completely different industry.

A national trucking company sells contractor trucks to landscapers, electricians, etc. Prior to contacting us, they advertised primarily in magazines and trade shows. While this worked, they wanted to do more to acquire customers.

So they contacted us. And what did we do? We showed them the gold.

There were thousands of people in the market for purchasing trucks online. And they left it in our advertising specialist’s hands to develop the most effective campaign for them.

And we did. Here are the results:

• 655,355 impressions

• 7,942 clicks

• 74 conversions

• $178.83 cost-per-lead (trucks sell for $5000-$30,000)

• Total Ad spend: $13,500

While they paid around $175 per lead, search engine marketing proved to be viable source of leads for them. This is because the value of one customer for this particular brand was around $30,000. Therefore, even if they converted 1 out of every 5 leads, they would have spent $1000 to generate $30,000 in revenue. Fair trade?

Secret

Now, here is the secret you’ve been waiting for. For this particular campaign, we did something to dramatically increase our client’s conversion rate. Let’s see if you can find it. Take a look…

One of our campaigns had a significantly less acquisition cost for leads ($30 per lead). Here’s why…

It was a remarketing campaign.

Don’t know what remarketing is? It’s simple… pretty much everyone reading this case study has seen this before. (If not, you’ll see ours soon)

Remember that time you were shopping online, added something to your cart, but did not purchase? Then shortly after, you began to see ads of the exact products you were interested in? If so, you have been remarketed to before.

Remarketing is a powerful search engine marketing technique. It allows you to target display ads at people who recently visited your website or is on your email list. Here is what one looks like.

To be clear, these remarketing ads will not appear on search engines. They will display on websites partnered with Google, which consist of millions of different websites. It includes websites such Forbes, Business Insider, Ask, CNBC, YouTube, and more. For this campaign, we only targeted people who recently visited the client’s website.

We hope you use this secret and allow us to maximize your Google AdWords campaign.

Now, let’s look at some more AdWords campaigns! Next up, eCommerce.

 

Case Study 3 – eCommerce Sales

This case study is for all of our eCommerce addicts who are reading this thinking “show me the money! Show me sales!”

Yes, Google AdWords can work for you too. Even if your product price is low!

In this example, a perfume & cologne brand contacted us about online advertising. They’ve grown through the use of Amazon, but wanted to drive more conversions through their website and develop their brand.

They started to see conversions within the first two months. Here were the short-term results:

• 146,736 impressions

• 2,672 clicks

• 72 conversions

• $12.19 average cost per conversion ($30 product)

• Total Ad Spend: $840.18

As you can see, we also used our secret sauce on this campaign and leveraged remarketing. The cost-per-conversion decreased to $9.38 per sale via remarketing ads. Here is an example of one retargeting ad be used.

Are you sold on search engine marketing yet?

These 3 examples prove that no matter what type of business you have, you can be successful through search engine marketing. We’ve shown you an example of a local brick-and-mortar, a national B2B company, and an eCommerce brand. Regardless of what industry or niche you are in, there are more-than-likely thousands of people searching for a product like yours.

Truth is…

Success at search engine marketing is not easy. Many companies contact us in pessimism because They’ve wasted thousands of dollars in Google ads already and are not seeing results

They have no strategy or idea what they’re doing

They have no analytical insight and cannot improve their efforts

To be successful, it takes time, experience, and knowledge. However, there is one thing that appears to be a common trend in the search engine marketing campaigns. Strategy.

We want to help you with this. And in order to do so, we want to disclose some insight into our strategy development process to provide transparency in our service. Whether you hire us or not, you need to make sure you have this in place.

• Phase 1: Research of Customers, Keywords, and Competitors

• Phase 2: Development of Advertising Strategy

• Phase 3: Implementation of Advertising Strategy

• Phase 4: Measurement and Reporting

• Phase 5: Optimization Lifecycle

Let’s start at the top and work our way down.

Phase 1: Research of Customers, Keywords, and Competitors

Every marketing campaign should start with research. We need to know who your customers are and what they are searching. We often ask our clients “if you were searching for a business like yours, what would you search for”. This helps our clients to place themselves in the shoes of their customers and really think through their sales cycle.

The better you understand your customer avatar (customer demographics, interests, behaviors, etc.), the more successful your search engine advertising campaign will be. And, our advertising specialists will work with you on this to nail this down.

Now, let’s talk about something that will make or break your campaign – keyword research.

Keyword research is the process of identifying the most relevant keyword phrases for your business. We use a handful of different tools and software to analyze thousands of words and nail-down the best for your business.

As a part of our research, we will analyze your competition for the keywords we’ve selected. We are able to measure the competition levels, estimated cost-per-click, and see how much your competitors are spending in advertising. Our goal is not to copy your competition’s efforts, but to analyze their efforts and help you develop a winning strategy to beat them.

Phase 2: Development of Your Search Engine Advertising Strategy

Each search engine advertising campaign in this case study had a defined advertising strategy. This strategy consists of:

Campaign types
Ad funnels
Ad messaging
& more!

It is critical that you are using the optimal campaign type, ad funnel, and messaging to deliver the most results. In some of the projects we’ve been hired on, we’ve seen some of the worst campaign structures, which has delivered less-than-desirable results for our clients.

Phase 3: Implementation of Advertising Strategy

Now it is time for implementation. In this phase, we develop a timeline for execution, set benchmarks, and setup the search engine advertising campaign.

We will do all of the technical work – ad extensions, bid strategies, frequency capping, experiments, custom audience setup, conversion tracking, and more.

Don’t know some of this is? Don’t worry… just know that our ad specialists are taking all of the proper steps to implementing a winning campaign using best practices. Implementing a successful campaign is requires technical knowledge and you need to make sure you have someone who understands this… or waste a ton a money on a fundamental mistake.

Phase 4: Measurement and Reporting

Should you increase or decrease your ad spend? Is your advertising dollars being optimized?

These are questions that measurement and reporting will help you answer. We have a suite of analytics tool that will break down conversion-tracking, cost-per-conversion, highest performing ads, and more. This will allow you to see the areas of your campaigns that are performing the best, versus those that are not.

Metrics should guide your decision-making in search engine marketing. We provide our clients with this to make informed decisions. If a campaign is optimized and producing substantial results, we increase the budget. If not, we continue to A/B split test until we find the sweet spot.

Phase 5: Optimization Lifecycle

What is A/B split testing?

A/B split testing is the process of making small variations to your ad campaign to see if it will positively impact results. This could consist of tweaking the ad text, graphics, targeting, and much more. We’d rely on the data to make good judgment on what we should and should not tweak.

This is just another reason why it is important to have someone who understands search engine marketing optimizing your campaign.

Now what?

Hopefully, by now you understand that you can grow your business through Google AdWords. 

But, there is one problem…You probably do not have the time or experience to run an effective campaign. And even if you do, your time is probably best spent working on your business and delegating this.This is why we exist – to offer an affordable and reliable solution to help you grow your business.Here’s what to do next:
1. Complete the form the below
2. Schedule a call with one of our sales consultants (online)
3. Show up for your meeting
4. Request and review your custom proposal 
5. Review and sign contract

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