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Paid Search Success Story

Google Ads Case Study

google-ads-management-case-study

Interested in learning if Google Ads (formerly Adwords) is right for you? You’ve come to the right place!

Many of our Indianapolis web design clients have tried Google Ads before, without much success. As a Google Partner Agency, BoxCrush works closely with you, and with Google, to make sure your Google Ads account delivers.

BoxCrush has designed and executed Google Ads campaigns for a variety of clients, including industrial suppliers, national employers, and local retail chains. For every client, we identify meaningful conversion actions and focus our efforts on bringing in qualified traffic to drive those conversions. 

Case Study: Local Retail Chain Increasing Online Presence

Case Study: National Employer Recruiting Campaign 

Background:

An industrial client (name withheld to protect data) had been internally managing an AdWords pay-per-click advertising account for over a year. They were early adopters of the AdWords program in their industry and had experienced success with their advertising.

Challenge:

Their competition began advertising on AdWords in increasing volume, and our client’s on-page ad positions began decreasing. With higher competition for key search phrases, our client’s account was becoming far more expensive and providing a poor return on their investment.

Prior to BoxCrush managing the client’s AdWords account, Ad impressions were high, but the number of clicks was low. Many people were seeing the ads, but few people were clicking on them. (The blue line represents the number of impressions – or views of the Ads – and the red line represents clicks on those ads).

Solution:

BoxCrush rebuilt the customer's AdWords account from the ground up, splitting it into meaningful campaigns that targeted specific demographics. BoxCrush built Ad Groups within each campaign and created ads targeting audiences within each group. As a result, Ad engagement began increasing, which lowered the cost-per-click for the client’s Ads.

Managing Costs, One Click At A Time

 One common misconception is that Google AdWords is prohibitively expensive. Each industry has its own definition of expensive, but Google AdWords is unique in that the bids for keywords are set by those doing the bidding. Keywords that don't have a lot of competition can have a cost-per-click of less than $0.20. Popular keywords in some industries are more expensive, but good campaign management can help control costs. The CPC will drop as the click-through rate improves. When ads are targeted, relevant, and have a good CTR, Google rewards them with a lower CPC price.

 

How We Did It:

The client’s premiere product had its own campaign from the beginning, but it was time to refine the campaign and improve its CTR. 

The more relevant an Ad is to a user’s search, the more likely that user is to click-through. For example, when a user searches for “Widgets Price,” they will most likely click on an Ad with the title “Widgets Price.” When a user searches for specific widgets, the “Widgets Price” Ad may not be as appealing because it isn’t exactly what the user is looking for.

We took our client’s “Widgets” campaign and expanded it from three Ad groups to six. By making the Ads relate more to specific keywords, the click-through rates started improving immediately. 

Targeted Ad groups, focusing on particular aspects of this company’s widgets, provided a much higher CTR. As the CTR improved, Google rewarded our client by lowering the CPC.

In comparing the first month of running the six ad groups to the month before, the CTR increased from 2.41% to 3.89%, and the CPC decreased from $2.24 to $2.17.

Refining over time

The original campaigns and Ad groups have evolved over time. Our client still enjoys a meaningful return on investment on both their Google Ad spend and their Microsoft Ads spend (reaching Bing users). Today, their average search campaign CTR is 4.47%, and the average CPC is $2.21. Our client also uses Google Ads conversion tracking to determine how many form fills and phone calls their Ads are generating.

For the past nine years, we have managed this client’s account and continued to provide value. We continuously work to refine strategies to support the client’s AdWords goals. 

Interested in learning more? Read the short addendum below!

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Measuring Success The AdWords Way

In AdWords, there are several metrics by which to measure a campaign’s success:

CTR – An Ad’s click-through rate, or the number of times an Ad is clicked on in relation to the number of times that Ad is shown to a user (remember, those views are called impressions). 

CPC – Cost per click, which is the actual cost a business incurs each time a user clicks on an Ad. Google rewards well-written ads that are clicked frequently, regardless of the budget of the advertiser. The better the CTR, the lower the CPC. 

Here’s a comparison of a client’s campaign performance during the first month we began managing their Ads, to the same period three years later: 

We were able to improve the ads to target a more relevant audience, which actually lowered the number of times the Ads were seen. Even with 11% fewer impressions, the AdWords campaign resulted in 20% more clicks and 49% more site visits, at a CPC 36% lower than it was when BoxCrush started managing the account. 

In the following graphic, the blue line is the average CPC, and the red line is the number of clicks for this particular client. As clicks increase, the CPC decreases. The lower the CPC, the more clicks a client is able to get each day with its daily set budget.


As a Google Ads Certified Partner, BoxCrush blends the principles of traditional advertising with Google’s targeting capabilities to deliver only the most relevant messages to specific audiences. Interested in increasing the traffic to your website, or improving your Google Ads return-on-investment (ROI)? Contact BoxCrush today. We can’t wait to meet you!