360Partners Case Study: Paid Search Paves the Way to More Leads

 

“360Partners PPC Management has made a huge impact on our bottom line.  They are able to manage our PPC budget much more effectively than we can ourselves.”

–Kye Duncan

 

Executive Summary

Lead Rival, a top lead generation service for the legal industry, wanted to boost lead flow through their paid search campaigns. Lead Rival had discovered over the previous year that the rising complexity of paid search was exceeding the abilities of their busy marketing team. 360Partners assumed management of their paid search account and, utilizing their knowledge and expertise of paid search tools and technology, dramatically improved the performance of the account.

Results

  • 28% decrease in cost per lead by the 2nd month
  • 300% increase in lead volume by the 2nd month
  • 10% improvement in overall website conversion
  • Senior management time freed up for other activities

 

The Story: 360Partners Helps Lead Rival Gain the Edge in Sales Leads

In August of 2008, Lead Rival approached 360Partners with a request familiar to the manager of any sales department: “We need more leads. Now.”  Marketing and sales executive sometimes find themselves scrambling to provide a steady flow of leads to their sales staff, and Lead Rival was a case in point. Lead Rival, a top marketer of sales leads for the legal industry, was grappling with the effects of a highly successful client-recruitment effort. They reflect that, “We had a large network of clients hungry for leads and we only had a fraction of the volume to satisfy their demand. We were searching for an untapped resource to majorly boost up our lead volume.” The need for more leads was therefore extensive and urgent: though they were already profitable and had a strong market position, opportunity costs were mounting. The company hoped to leverage their underperforming paid search channel to bridge the gap in leads but didn’t have the expertise or tools to do it themselves. Lead Rival came to 360Partners with a tall order: double the lead volume, cut the cost per lead in half, and get it done in a few months. Sound like a stretch goal? It wasn’t.

An Underperforming Search Account

Though Lead Rival had a sizeable budget allocated for paid search each month, they didn’t have the expertise or the company resources to sufficiently deal with the complexity of paid search, nor to make the ongoing campaign adjustments required to maintain the edge against their online competitors. Their paid search account was assigned as a part-time responsibility to a senior marketing manager with an abundance of other marketing activities on his plate. This presented a number of obstacles to effective management of the account:

  1. Inefficient use of company time - time spent weekly to upkeep the accounts was diverting the marketing manager’s time away from other high-value activities.
  2. Lack of paid search expertise - the manager lacked specific paid search expertise and did not have time to keep up with current industry developments and advancements in the technology, which was growing increasingly complex.
  3. Insufficient time for account maintenance - the manager was unable to devote sufficient time each week to repairing inefficiencies in the account.

360Partners performed a deep analysis of their account based on a 101-point checklist of best practices, compiled through 10 years of experience with search marketing. Several major issues were identified:

  • Missing keywords - there were large gaps in the keyword list, resulting in many missed opportunities for high-quality, low-cost traffic.
  • Suboptimal campaign structure - the ad groups in the campaign were not well organized. Many ad groups contained terms that were not closely related to one another, leading to a lower Google quality score. It also made it difficult to write targeted advertisements and resulted in a lower click through rate. This resulted in a higher cost per click and lower ROI.
  • Improper set-up of geography filters - the set-up of the account did not utilize AdWords’ geography filters to target leads from regions where Lead Rival had a large representation of clients. As a consequence, Lead Rival was unnecessarily paying for traffic and leads that they couldn’t service.
  • Suboptimal bidding strategy - bids were managed intermittently, and the bid strategy didn’t best leverage technology to maximize return on investment. The bids were too high on low-performing keywords and too low on high-performing terms.
  • Paid search traffic directed to homepage - there were no dedicated landing pages for the paid search campaigns. All traffic from paid search was directed to the homepage of the site. The burden was upon the user to locate the proper link to the lead form on a page teeming with links and content unrelated to their specific query. This resulted in a lower conversion rate and a high number of users exiting the site.
  • Improper tracking set-up - tracking for Google AdWords and Analytics was improperly set-up, and no one in-house had the expertise to fix it. The AdWords account was not accurately linking traffic from search queries to completion of lead forms on their site, rendering it impossible to judge which queries were most effective and to adjust bids properly.

As a consequence of these issues, Lead Rival was paying a high cost-per-click, was failing to convert many of their paid search prospects to customers, and had a far lower ROI than what was possible. Additionally, the company was missing out on entire segments and categories of potential customers.

Solution: A Sophisticated Paid Search Strategy

The general conclusion was that Lead Rival’s paid search was largely missing out on its potential. Deciding that an account overhaul was in order, 360Partners executed several major improvements to the account:

  • Tripled the number of keywords - through intensive keyword research, large gaps in the keyword list were identified and filled in. The size of the keyword list tripled.
  • Improved organization of ad groups - keywords were regrouped into more closely related ad groups and targeted creatives were written for each ad group.
  • Geography filters adjusted to be more effective - AdWords geography filters were adjusted to target traffic from geographic regions where Lead Rival could service the end customer.
  • Improved efficiency of bidding through automated bid management - 360Partners assigned bidding to a state-of-the-art bid management system, which utilizes sophisticated algorithms to continuously track and adjust bids.
  • Created dedicated landing pages - paid search traffic was redirected to specialized landing pages with a cleaner, simpler design and with information related to the specific search query.
  • Initiated A/B testing - with 360Partners’ help, the efficacy of the landing pages were tested against alternate designs utilizing Google’s Website Optimizer, to continuously improve the conversion rate of the page.
  • Frequent, ongoing account maintenance - the account has been assigned to a 360Partners search marketing expert analyst, who closely monitors the account and reports to Lead Rival each week with a performance review and recommendations for improvements.

Result: A Fast Pay-Off

The gains were not long in coming. The account showed dramatic improvement in lead volume and cost per lead in a very short time. Within 2 months, there was a 300% increase in lead volume and a 28% decrease in cost per lead, as demonstrated in figures 1 and 2:

Figure 1: Lead Volume up over 300%


Figure 2: Cost Per Lead Down 28%

 

Conversion rate also exhibited a marked improvement due to the dedicated landing page and A/B testing: the conversion rate at present is 10% higher than the prior conversion rate (and climbing).

There were additional benefits resulting from the handover of the account. Lead Rival’s time was freed up for other activities. Kye Duncan, a marketing manager at Lead Rival, remarks that, “Having 360 manage our PPC has freed up our staff to focus on other important areas like conversion rate improvement.  With 360Partner’s help we’ve managed to increase our conversion rates by one full percentage point on one of our main websites.”

The most outstanding result has been Lead Rival’s overall success in recent months. The company is currently experiencing a boom in business, to which 360Partners has gladly contributed. Lead Rival is clearly pleased with the outcome, noting that, “Jeff, Jim and their team truly live up to their company name.  They have proven to be key Partners in all aspects of our business.  From PPC, Conversion Rate Improvement, and even Sales, 360Partners has had a tremendous impact on our company’s success.”

 

 

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