Success Stories

Effective paid search strategies involve more than simply bidding on a wide array of keywords that you think may work and then waiting to see what happens. Unfortunately, for many businesses lacking in time and expertise, that's exactly the "strategy" they have adopted.   Without professional help, the ultimate assessment will be that "PPC doesn't work", and for most businesses, that is simply not the case.

Here are a few recent ppc-Strategies' success stories:

Content Run Amok:

This DIY campaign suffered from Google's default setting for the Content network.  Thousands of dollars were being wasted on poor traffic.

A quick review of the Placement Report revealed thousands of clicks coming from China, Russia, India and many other inappropriate locales.   Simply disabling the Content network reduced ad spend by 90% and freed up budget for targeting more appropriate markets.

Keyword Bullies:

This one Campaign lacked proper architecture and keyword segmentation.  One broad AdGroup and keyword was cannibalizing 80% of the daily budget, leaving little opportunity for more highly targeted, better performing Adgroups and keywords.

Account was completely overhauled with multiple Campaigns and Adgroups designed around the website's categories and products.  Each Campaign was allocated a portion of the budget based upon product margin, and the bully keyword was contained.  Conversion rate and ROI increased immediately.

The Non-Starter Campaign:

This Account couldn't get off the ground - barely an Impression was served.  It was the classic case of trying to do too much with only one Campaign.  While individual Adgroups held tightly themed keywords, the Adgroups themselves were so diverse and unrelated, that the $100 per day budget wasn't enough to gain even 10% Impression Share for the Campaign. 

Multiple, service-related Campaigns were created and Adgroups relocated.  Campaign budgets and bids were allocated according to the demand for each service, and within hours the campaigns were humming and high quality traffic was flowing in. 

Keyword Fruit Salad:

Campaigns appeared to be properly segmented to align with this service industry's website, but Adgroups were a jumble of themes, with both broad and specific keywords competing in the same playpen.  Furthermore, text ad messaging lacked keyword relevance and appropriate destination URLs.  The Google Quality Scores averaged 3/10 to 5/10, resulting in costly minimum bid requirements.

Adgroups were reconfigured with very specific keyword themes.  Text ads were rewritten for continuity of relevance from search query to landing page.  Bounce rates, time on page and pages viewed improved overnight. Quality scores improved to 7/10 to 10/10 and minimum bids dropped from $4.00 to $.40.

Position 1 Addiction:

Client insisted on appearing at the top of paid search for the company's most important keywords and was in a continual battle with the competition for Position 1 dominance.  This resulted in cost overruns and necessitated daily budgets that were unsustainable. 

Analysis of keyword position ROI in Google Analytics revealed that Position 3 outperformed all other positions on the page for all metrics, including bounce rate, time on page, pages viewed, transactions and revenue.  Reducing bids and maintaining a Position 3 target reduced cost by 25% and increased keyword conversion rate by 15%.