How Analytics + PPC Saved $34,527+ Yearly in Ineffective Paid Media Spend

Challenge

During one of our ongoing analyses we discovered an odd discrepancy between traffic being driven by Paid Search and their resulting interactions on site.

First we noticed that Paid Search traffic drove a low volume of our desired conversion: demo requests. In addition, we found that returning users who first landed on this page from PPC during this two week period did not drive any conversions BUT they did drive 212 logins.

If overall, only a small number of users submitted a conversion that landed on this page, it’s unlikely that these same users would then drive 212 logins within the same two weeks. This indicated to us that the users who were actually landing on these PPC pages are already customers—meaning they wouldn’t convert.

Approach

Targeting existing customers through Paid Search was losing marketing dollars, so we now needed a plan for how to exclude existing customers on an ongoing basis.

Execution

The team was already excluding an initial list of customers from PPC campaigns, however, our recommendation was to exclude current and new customers on an ongoing basis. After a discussion with the client we decided to get an updated customer list from the client on a quarterly basis and build on the exclusion list so as not to target current customers.

This simple, quick solution had a big impact.

Results

Excluding customers on a rolling basis (on top of additional paid search optimizations and added spend) led to a significant change in performance—a 9% increase in conversion rate and a 9% improvement in the CPA in Adwords. Looking at saved spend through the course of a year overall, that amounts to over $34,527 of media spend that can now be put towards gaining converting customers and growing the company’s audience base.

*Increase determined using Google Analytics data, comparing time frames 11/7/16–5/7/17 to 5/8/17–11/5/17 before and after the update.