We Cut Our Client’s Cost Per Lead by 57% AND Improved His Campaign in Every Key Metric

Background Info

Our client approached us with a problem. Although his business was having success overall and he was marketing effectively on multiple channels, he’d been unable to generate a positive ROI through Google AdWords. He had success in SEO and organic marketing, so he knew people were searching for his services online. Yet he was unable to capture leads profitably through pay-per-click. He spent thousands of dollars for a small return and wasn’t breaking even.

His Business

His niche is birthday parties for kids. Parents hire him and his team to throw epic, unforgettable parties for their kids and pre-teens. He offers bubble soccer, nerf wars, slime parties, and more.

He has a unique business that he puts his heart and soul into, and his clientele raves about his services in testimonials. Needless to say, we were excited to work with him.

Initial Audit

The first thing we did was to conduct a free audit of his current campaign. This is something we gladly do for anyone running their own AdWords campaign or having it managed by another company. As a side note, we’ve yet to find one we couldn’t improve.

When we looked at his campaign, we could see RIGHT AWAY that it was performing very poorly. It was generating few leads for the amount he was spending, and it was well below target in many statistical measures. In fact, our client was wasting more money on irrelevant clicks than it would cost to have us manage his campaign professionally, so it was a NO-BRAINER to have us take over.

We went back to the basics and focused on improving two key metrics: his click-through rate and his conversion rate.

Here’s how we COMPLETELY turned things around.

Click-Through Rate – From under 3% to OVER 10%

A click-through rate (CTR) is the number of people who click on an ad relative to the total number of people who see it. If your ad shows 100 times and 5 people click on it, you have a 5% click-through rate.
Before signing up with us, our client’s click-through rate was abysmal. Fewer than 3% of people who saw his ads were clicking on them to give him a call or visit his website.

 

Why is this important? It contributes to a poor quality score, which results in a higher cost for each click. This meant our client was spending more than necessary for the clicks he was getting. We knew this was something we would have to address in order to make his campaign successful.

We were able to improve his quality score by 3 TIMES. How did we do it? With better keyword selection and a more organized campaign.

Due to poorly selected keywords, our client’s prior ads were showing when people were conducting Google searches that were completely irrelevant to his business. Searchers only want to click on ads that are relevant to their searches.

Some of the keywords that were triggering the ads were way off.

Here are some examples of clicks he was paying for:

Here’s another example of a bad keyword that wasn’t quite as far off, yet still wasn’t right for our client’s business.
As we mentioned earlier, our client only puts on kids’ birthday parties. When we took a close look at the keywords that were triggering his ads, we saw he had paid for 6 clicks for “50th birthday party ideas”. Of course, this is something people will search for who are NOT looking for our client’s services. Furthermore, this search is informational. The searchers are looking for ideas rather than a company to provide a service. His campaign was littered with many other examples like this:

 

When we took over his campaign, we refined his keyword list to make sure his ads were ONLY showing to people who were searching for a company like his. This improved his click-through rate DRASTICALLY.

We also selected keywords based on searcher intent, choosing only the keywords that searchers were likely to use when they were ready to contact a company for their services. This prevented our client’s ads from showing when searchers were just doing research and gathering ideas but hadn’t yet made up their mind that they wanted to contact someone for a party.

The second thing we did was improve how his ads and keywords were organized. Our client offered several different types of birthday parties, such as nerf wars, bubble soccer, and slime parties. When he was managing his own campaign, he had all the ads and keywords lumped into one ad group. This meant when someone searched “kids slime birthday party Los Angeles” or “nerf war birthday party Los Angeles”, they saw the same general ads used for all of his services.

By creating different ad groups for each service that he was marketing for, we ensured that the ads reflected the specific keywords the searcher was using. This meant when someone searched “nerf war birthday party Los Angeles”, they saw an ad specifically crafted for this service. Seeing a more relevant ad for their search meant a higher percentage of searchers clicked on the ad.

Through these two measures, we BOOSTED our client’s click-through rate from under 3% to OVER 10%. Which meant he benefited from a better-quality score AND a lower cost-per-click, which means MORE clicks, BETTER quality leads at a BETTER price!

 

Conversion Rate – More Phone Calls and Emails for Our Client

A conversion rate is the rate at which clients who see the ads follow through with a transaction. Increasing the percentage of people that clicked on our client’s ads is a start, but how did we get those searchers to contact our client for his services? In some prior months, our client was spending hundreds of dollars without generating a single conversion.

 

We needed to significantly increase the quality and number of leads the campaign was generating in order to make it profitable.

Our client was making a very common error that leads to a poor conversion rate: sending people who were clicking on his ads to his home page, rather than a dedicated pay-per-click conversion page.

Home pages are great for people who are browsing but nowhere near optimal for conversion. For example, if a searcher who uses the term “nerf war birthday party Los Angeles” lands on the home page, they’d see that our client offers dozens of different kinds of party services, and they’d have to scroll and click past tons of services before finding what they want. This creates a lot of resistance. Each action a searcher must take before finding what they’re looking for decreases the likelihood they convert.

By creating dedicated conversion pages for each service, we make sure everyone who lands on our clients’ site IMMEDIATELY knows they’ve found what they’re seeking. Not only that, our conversion pages include all the information the searcher might need to know before calling our client or sending them an email. The pages are loaded with captivating selling points, enticing promos, testimonials, and of course, a clear and convincing call to action (CTA).

We created unique conversion pages for each different service we were marketing. When a searcher was looking for a nerf war party, they would land on a page that contained information about nerf war parties. It contained information about his different nerf party packages, testimonials from thrilled parents, and pictures of kids having a blast at one of his nerf parties.

The conversion rate SKYROCKETED. His phone started ringing, and his email inbox filled up with people inquiring about his services. In some months, we spent the same amount that he had been spending but got up to 10X the number of conversions!

 

Final Tally

Before signing up with us, our client had spent over $7,000 in a few months and had only 21 leads to show for it. Once our changes took effect, he was getting leads for less than HALF THE COST (including our management fee). He was so happy with the results he decided to increase his ad budget and upgrade to a more aggressive SEO package.

This kind of story is what gets us excited to come to work every day. We love doing well for clients who love their businesses. We did our thing so our client could focus on what he does best.

If you have an existing pay-per-click campaign and you would like us to take a look at it, click here to schedule a free, no-obligation audit.

If you’re not yet doing pay-per-click marketing, but you’re ready to grow your business and crush your competition, click here to schedule a consultation with one of our marketing experts.