Google Ads Case Study – How We Cut Our Client’s Cost Per Lead by 82% in 30 Days!!
Client Background
Our client is in the auto salvage business. He purchases old junk cars and sells the used parts.
Like all our clients, he has major ambitions for his business. His goal is to become the biggest junk car buyer in his region.
Prior to working with us, he had been managing his own Google Ads campaigns with assistance from Google representatives. He was a bit skeptical that we’d be able to outperform Google for Google Ads, but he was willing to let us take over even if all we could save him was the time he was spending doing it himself.
As you can imagine, he was extremely happy when we blew his old campaign out of the water!
Some Issues We Found with Our Client’s Previous Campaign
When we looked at our client’s campaign, we discovered four problem areas that were inflating his costs. We knew we could shore these up and cut down on his cost per lead.
The four main problems we needed to address were:
- Poor quality scores
- No conversion pages
- Bad keywords with the wrong match types
- Too few negative keywords
Here’s How We Fixed Them
Better Quality Scores for Lower Costs
One of the main reasons our client’s cost per lead was higher than it needed to be was due to poor quality scores. For Google Ads, Google gives quality scores from 1 to 10 based on how relevant your ads will be to the searchers who see them.
Like with its regular, non-paid search results, Google wants searchers to see ads relevant to their searches. A searcher who clicks on an ad and finds exactly what they’re looking for is going to be happy to continue using Google. That means Google will charge advertisers less if they create relevant ads and overall good experiences for Google searchers. Having high quality scores means less cost per clicks and vice versa.
In our client’s case, his previous quality scores were very poor. After we took over, they shot up significantly. That meant he paid a significantly lower cost for each click. Google charged us less because we created ads that searchers were sure to love.
We can’t give away how we did it, but here are before and after pics showing his former quality scores vs ours:
And here’s a comparison of our average cost per clicks:
A Custom Conversion Page Optimized for Collecting Leads
One common pitfall when it comes to Google Ads is directing traffic to a site’s home page rather than a page that’s built specifically to convert leads. Home pages are great for browsing but far from optimal for conversion.
At LinkNow, we create custom conversion pages with one goal: maximize the leads you get from your Google Ads. We’ve conducted countless tests and collected mountains of data, and we’ve found the conversion formulas that work best for each industry we service.
Our conversion pages encompass:
- A pleasing design
- Selling points related to your business and services
- Testimonials
- Photos
- And more
To see an example of the conversion page we built for this client, click here.
Having our beautiful conversion page set up helped the campaigns for this client drastically outperform their previous ones. Dedicated conversion pages make a significant difference when they’re optimized for specific services. That’s why custom conversion pages are included in LinkNow’s Google Ads program.
A Killer Keyword List and the Most Advantageous Match Types
Our client’s previous keyword list left a lot of room for improvement. When you’re paying for clicks, every dollar counts. Our goal is always to have zero wasted ad spend for our campaigns and show our clients’ ads at the most opportune times to collect leads. That means we have to be razor sharp with our keywords and match types.
One example of a bad keyword our client was using was a phrase match for “we buy junk”. That meant he was bidding whenever searchers included this three-word phrase. This left him exposed to spending money on clicks that were completely irrelevant to his business. Remember, our client’s business is junk cars. If someone searched “we buy junk refrigerators”, his ads could show. This search would be from someone who was interested in a service he doesn’t provide. This poor keyword selection, among others, racked up a lot of wasted budget.
When we rebuilt our client’s campaigns, we carefully chose each individual keyword. We analyzed every selection based on searcher intent and made sure to only bid when searchers wanted to use our client’s services. Eliminating wasted spend from bad keywords helped drive down our client’s cost per lead.
Super Savings with a Robust Negative Keyword List
The negative keyword list is one of the most powerful tools for maximizing the return on investment from a Google Ads budget. Unfortunately, in our client’s case, it wasn’t being utilized.
A negative keyword is a phrase that prevents your ads from showing. Our client needs to show his ads to people searching for a company to buy their old junk car. Naturally, his campaigns will include keywords centered around the phrase “junk cars”. Importantly, there will be many searches related to junk cars that our client does not want to show ads for, such as “how are junk cars recycled”. These searches have informational intent (bad for our client) rather than transactional intent (good for our client).
With the negative keyword list, we can virtually eliminate instances of our clients’ ads showing at inopportune times. We think ahead to weed out searches we know we don’t want, and then we carefully comb through every search term that results in a click on our clients’ ads to find opportunities to refine our negative keyword list even further. We start out with hundreds of negative keywords for each client and continuously add more.
Staying on top of your negative keywords is extremely important. If the negative keyword list is neglected, a campaign will waste money on the same bad clicks repeatedly.
Our client had just 14 negative keywords in his initial campaign. When we got through setting up his new campaign, he had several hundred, and we’re still adding more to this day. With a meticulously crafted negative keyword list, we further cut down our client’s costs. This was the final reason our new campaign performed so much better than his previous one.
Conclusion
Right out of the gate, our new campaign performed significantly better than our client’s former one. After just 30 days, his cost per lead was down a whopping 82%!
Despite our client putting in a lot of time working on his ads with Google representatives, there were some glaring weaknesses in his campaigns. By focusing on our client’s keywords, using our tried-and-true conversion page formula, and creating a great experience for Google searchers to attain very high-quality scores, we created significant savings that went directly into our client’s pockets. He was ecstatic with the results.
Schedule a Consultation with One of Our Experts
Having your Google Ads campaign professionally managed can save you time and make you money!
If you’re managing your own Google Ads campaign or curious about getting started, schedule a consultation with one of our Google Ads experts to find out more about our services.
We’ll even do an in-depth audit of your existing campaign for free!
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