A Google AdWords Case Study Part 2: How we did it.

This Google AdWords Case Study looks at how we increased revenue for one of our clients by 188.66% in 2017. 

We will explain our strategy, its objectives and why it’s so important.

Just to recap… When the client approached us for help with their AdWords campaigns, we had a look under the hood. And, we weren’t happy at all.

We couldn’t understand how over 20,000 products were placed into a handful of ad groups of loosely related categories and brands.

We see this way too often… Whether it comes down to a lack of knowledge, laziness, or the restricitions of Google AdWords plans, it doesn’t really matter… If your AdWords campaigns aren’t set up correctly, they are slowly killing your business.

SO WHAT DID WE DO?

Whenever working with a digital ad marketing platform, you need to ask yourself, “What is the purpose of the platform?”

For Google AdWords, it’s all about making it as easy as possible for people to find your brand, products and services as well as the information they need.

How much easier would it be if people were just sent to the right page in the first place. Come on… they took the effort to find the exact product name, or in some cases the exact product code and copy and paste it. Reward them by sending them to the right page and they’ll probably purchase it right there and then.

Search intent is why someone is searching, rather than what they are searching. You can’t simply put all related keywords into ad groups, press play and think everything is going to be great.

Search Intent is about showing the right ads to the right people

and sending them to the right landing pages.

Keywords need to be broken down into specific ad groups of not only products and brand categories, but also by search intent. ‘Buy Lego’ has a much different search intent to just ‘Lego’ on its own – They don’t belong in the same ad group.

So, how do we put search intent into practice?

If someone searches for ‘Lego toys’ or ‘Legos’ what can we safely assume about our searcher?

1. Lego is new to them – Anyone who knows the brand ‘Lego’ already knows that Lego is a toy – The word ‘toys’ has been added as a safety measure. (They may have heard about the brand name before, but that’s probably about it).
2. The same goes for the search term ‘Legos’ – Anyway familiar enough with lego knows that one Lego = Lego and more than one Lego = Lego… even a million Lego = Lego.
3. They may have been searching for the tomato and pasta sauce brand ‘Leggo’s’.

So, what needs to be done?

1. Put ‘Legos’ and ‘Lego toys’ into a seperate campaign and split test different ads and landing pages. This will allow us to figure out what people searching these terms need to / want to see.
2. Add negative words, such as ‘tomato’, ‘paste’, ‘puree’ and ‘sauce’ to all campaigns relevant to Lego.

People searching for these types of keywords are generally new to the brand and require brand awareness. They fit into stage one of the marketing funnel – brand awareness.

How does search intent fit into the marketing funnel?

• At Stage one of the marketing funnel, Brand Awareness – Let them explore. They don’t really know what they want to buy yet. The longer you can keep them on relevant pages, the more relevant your brand will become to their search term.
• At Stage two, Consideration – Feed them the right information – In the case of Lego: price, your return policy, etc – All those things that will make them consider buying Lego from you rather than your competitors. Convince them to buy, or if not, make sure they know exactly what you have to offer them.
• At Stage three – Here they are searching for a specific product or they have searched something like ‘buy Lego’ or ‘where to buy Lego’ or even a particular product ‘Lego City 60141 Police Station’ for example – Make it as easy for them to purchase as possible– Make sure they land on the right page and make sure your payment system is working without any hiccups.

Campaigns with search intent result in more sales for less cost. On average, our client made $1 in sales for every 3 cents of budget spent. We were able to achieve this by setting up campaigns based on search intent and optimising daily.

Interested in how we can apply search intent to your Google AdWords campaigns?

Let’s have a chat about how we can help.