Abstract

This case demonstrates success with AdSearch’s marketing strategies on Google Ads when the search volume was low and the business operated in a tight niche. The basic metrics during AdSearch’s management are currently $11.70 per conversion, with a 19.23% conversion rate, and 454 conversions. On a comparative basis, AdSearch decreased the cost per conversion 97.9%, increased the conversion rate 2090%, and increased conversions 1227%.

Background

Kelly’s Automatic Gates has been in business since 1975 serving automatic gate repair, intercom service, preventative maintenance, and battery service for residential and commercial automatic gates.  Prior to AdSearch taking over the account on January 15, 2020, the account was managed in house, with the exception of when it was managed by a previous marketing company from August 2017 to June 2018.

Problem

The two main challenges in developing a performing account for this client were. First, there is a low search volume for relevant traffic (despite his services area including a major metropolitan area). That is, before beginning to filter out those irrelevant search terms Google always includes as theoretically relevant, there are only 7,148 searches per month.

Second, the client doesn't provide or install gates but only installs and services the mechanisms associated with automatic gates; such as gate openers, solar energizers, motion detectors, intercoms, etc. 

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To compound matters, there isn’t just an e-commerce crossover that we have to control (because of the distinction between consumers searching to buy the devices and gates and those who only service them), we also have to filter the traffic for all the things he doesn’t do.  Consider that there are nearly 1,500 unique keywords for his service, multiplied by three different match types (4,382 keywords in his account, see below), and yet we end up with a huge breadth of traffic to control, albeit with low search volume.

And we have to control all of it very particularly if we are going to get him enough customers to make this profitable.

Prior Outcomes

A previous marketing company managed Kelly’s Gates from the third quarter 2017 through the second quarter of 2018.  During that time, the average conversion rate was 0.52%, at a cost of $820 per conversion, totaling 7 conversions.

All seven of the previous marketing company's conversions were phone calls from ads.

Subsequently, while the account was managed in-house, the numbers improved to a 1.12% conversion rate, $487 per conversion, totaling 30 conversions.

Overall, prior to AdSearch the account was converting at 0.92%, at a cost of $550 per conversion, with 37 conversions.

AdSearch's Outcome

Moving through the account during AdSearch’s management, the conversion rate increased to 19.23%, at a $11.70 cost per conversion, totaling 454 conversions.

While some of those conversions were micro-conversions (5 minutes on site, viewing multiple website pages; i.e., conversions demonstrating interest and a high-action threshold to purchase, which many times turn into sales later) 330 of the conversions were legitimate conversion actions outside the micro-conversions. Of those 330 conversions, 7 were customers using Google Maps and arriving at the business location, and 323 were form submittals or phone calls.

The value of having micro-conversions in your ads account is that you can (1) remarket to these people and often they will buy, (2) make better adjustments because just because they didn’t buy right away, doesn’t mean you didn’t target the right potential customer (obviously they have interest), and (3) it also helps us determine how the customer interacts with the website so we can optimize the sales funnel process.  

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For instance, we see that most relevant customers will convert by the time they get to 5 minutes on site.  If a particular customer doesn’t get that far we can hit them with remarketing.  And if a particular campaign has a sticking point prior to that we can make modifications on the site; such as adding content to keep them on page longer, increasing conversion actions on the website, etc.

Diving deeper into the timeline, we can see where AdSearch’s innovative new build was launched (all clients were launched on the New Build in the first half of 2020).  From June to the end of August 2020, we can see the conversion rate rise to 31.31% and the cost per conversion drop to $10.03

Additionally, the Auction Insights (Impression Share and Top of Page Rate) present a very good set of metrics for the account, and also the account relative to competitors.  The image below depicts Kelly’s Gates over the last 90 days.

Conclusion

In this case, expectations were clear from the start.  The sales rep expressed uncertainty about whether AdSearch could perform with such a low search volume, but emphasized AdSearch always performs better, and so the customer took the leap of faith.  The results speak for themselves: