Case Study: How I Decreased Cost Per Lead by 87% and Increased Leads 657% in 90 Days

Note: Business names and ad copy have been changed. All data is from Google Ads.

Background/Challenge

Wile E. Coyote Science sells high tech science equipment. In November 2018, their Google Ads account averaged $243 in ad spend per lead at a $4.32 average CPC. This CPC is on par with benchmark B2B CPCs, but poor account structure, missing keywords and incomplete ad copy signaled opportunity for performance improvement.

Solution

Baumer Digital Marketing performed a Google Ads audit in December and created the following 4 step plan to improve CPL.

1. Bid on brand terms and strive for at least 90% impression share for all branded keywords. The account contained a few brand + product keywords (ie Wile E. Coyote Science machines), but it did not contain an exact match keyword with the brand name (ie Wile E. Coyote Science).

The brand’s competitor (Road Runner Science) took full advantage of this over site and bid on the term Wile E. Coyote Science. This means Road Runner Science’s ads appeared above the Wile E. Coyote’s organic search result on the search engine results page, likely funneling leads away from Wile E.’s site to Road Runner’s.

Advertisers frequently ask PPC experts why they should bid on their brand name (“Won’t the free organic result just grab the traffic?”). This scenario is the perfect example of why bidding on brand terms is a defensive strategy and always a best practice (more to come on this in a future blog post).

2. Create the proper account structure to leverage match types. Each match type performs differently, so I always advise splitting ad groups by match type. This way, I can bid more for exact match and less for broad and phrase match. PPC experts call this “stacking the bids” and this technique can result in improved account efficiency (spoiler alert: CPCs decreased 46% after account restructure).

3. Update ad copy to include a call to action (CTA). The first rule of digital marketing – tell people what you want them to do. It may seem like a small detail, but letting a user know what action you want them to take can do wonders for your click through rate (second spoiler alert: adding CTAs helped improve Wile E.’s CTR by 356%!).

4. Add all relevant ad extensions. The Wile E. Coyote account did not include descriptions on sitelinks. Ads without sitelinks take up far less space than ads with fully filled out descriptions. For example:

Ad without sitelink descriptions (before):