Executive Summary

Campaign Overview

The campaign on behalf of "Annoncesweb.fr" included three campaigns:

-  The campaign “Animaux” which was not very competitive (0.09$ CPC)

-  The campaign “Auto/Moto” which was more competitive (0.32$ CPC) but we our ads were displayed at the bottom of the search page.

-  A Google network campaign with a low CPC of 0.10$ because the content network is generally cheaper that the search content.

Several changes were made during the campaign, like increase CPC of competitive keywords and decrease CPC of less competitive keywords (for a better CTR/quality score).

Key results

The campaign goes through 30 conversions. Most of them were acquired during the last week due to a change of strategy in some ad groups. Unfortunately, each change of strategy did not worked as we have expected. The initial campaign permits us to earn some conversion thanks to the "animaux" ad groups. The two other groups were not well optimized. Keywords that were effective are “vendre sa voiture” (16 conversions, CTR around 6%, Avg CPC 0,83$) and “petites annonces animaux“ (2 conversions, CTR around 15%, Avg CPC 0,18$).

- Content: 29990 impressions, 157 clicks, 2 conversions. Campaign’s cost: 13.92$.

- “Animaux”: 70 282 impressions, 1 082 clicks, 8 conversions. Campaign’s cost: 102.44$.

- “Auto/Moto”: 106 929 impressions, 267 clicks, 20 conversions. Campaign’s cost: 84.46$.

Conclusion

We have to face a large amount of competitors which were well settle on the market contrary to our client’s website which was just starting its business. The main difficulties the group have to face has concern the selection of the right keyword which would make the conversion come true, and the fact that we have asked the owner of the website to get a landing page for the content ad group but he had not been reactive to this. In the end, we have realized most of our conversion in the last week, especially concerning the adgroups “auto/moto“ thanks to keyword’s choice and the targeting of those one.

Future Online Marketing Recommendations

·  Composition of teams: choose team members in terms of their skills and strengths in order to make a balanced team. It would be also important to improve the transfer of knowledge between the experienced ones and the newbie’s.

·  Have a customer motivated by the project.

Industry Component

Campaign Overview

For each campaign, we defined different CPC in order to be displayed on the first search page.

The campaign “Animaux” was not very competitive and for that reason, we defined low CPC to our keywords. During 3 weeks, we received 1082 clicks and 70282 impressions. The average cost per click was 0.09$.

The campaign “Auto/moto” was more competitive and the costs per clicks were higher. We received 267 clicks and 106929 impressions. The average cost per click was 0,32$ but we our ads were displayed at the bottom of the search page.

For the Google network campaign, we defined a low CPC (0.10$) because the content network is generally cheaper that the search content. But we received only 157 clicks and 29990 impressions. The average cost per click was 0,08$.

During all the campaign, we made daily modifications to improve CPC and to promote our best keywords. We increased CPC of competitive keywords in order to be displayed on the first page and we reduced CPC of less competitive keywords in order to have a better CTR and to improve our quality score.

Evolution of Your Campaign Strategy

·  Landing page:

At the beginning of the challenge all campaign’s ads led to the same landing page. We understood rapidly our error to measure correctly the effects of our campaigns and conversion and traffic strategy. So during the first week, one landing page per campaign has been created (with one Adwords tag specific to each campaign) in order to measure precisely the conversion rate and the traffic generated by each campaign.

·  Campaign ads:

Our initial strategy was to create two ads for each ad group at the beginning to choose the best one (with more clicks, impressions and conversions). So during the challenge, we changed and adapted the ads with bad results and keep ads which brought more traffic and conversions. Once we had found the best ads the first week of the challenge, we hadn’t made a lot of changes more as we can see on the Adwords graphic below (metrics: impressions):

·  Keywords:

- Firstly during all the campaign we worked almost all days on trying to find new good keywords for our ads principally according to the CPC and the CTR. The objective was still to find keywords leading to clicks but above all clicks with conversions because clicks without conversions made us pay for nothing.

- For the “vente d’animaux” ad group, we decided to adjust the keyword list around the word family “vente” (to sell/selling …) because despite clicks we just made few conversions. On second thought we think that our strategy on this ad group didn’t work very well because we adopted a large keyword strategy.

- Also, CPC budget has been adapted to the real prices. Indeed, for “Animaux” ad groups CPC was too low for some keywords that mean we didn’t appear for our ads with the dedicated keyword budget.

·  Daily Budgets raise:

For the “Animaux” campaign, our budget was too low at the beginning because our keywords generated too much clicks. Once we finally adapt our keyword strategy for this campaign we could decrease the daily budget in order to help the “Auto/moto” campaign which needed more budget to make more results/conversions.

During the challenge the “auto/moto” campaign daily budget has been multiply by two because good keywords for this category were more expensive than for the “Animaux” campaign. The strategy worked and permitted us to obtain few conversions. To follow this strategy the last week the “Animaux” campaign budget has been decreased to let the “Auto/moto” budget increase.

·  Timetable:

The principal change took place mid May. At the beginning of the campaigns we decided to diffuse our ads only during a time slot. Finally we have adjusted the week-ends from a daily time slot to all day in order to have more chance to obtain conversions from people who were not at work.

Key Results

• Overall performance of the campaign and individual ad groups.

Campaigns have begun on May, 8th. The overall budget was totally consumed on Thursday, 28th, 2010. Our Adwords were divided in three campaigns. The three of them were, "Animaux", "Auto/moto" and "Content". The campaign goes through 30 conversions. Most of them were acquired during the last week due to a change of strategy in some ad groups. Unfortunately, each change of strategy did not work as we have expected.

• Performance of the initial campaign and changes in performance following your optimization efforts.

The initial campaign permits us to earn some conversion thanks to the "animaux" ad groups. The two other groups were not well optimized.

Though, those conversions were still low and we had to make some change. Therefore, the first changes that have been made were especially concerning the CPC of each keyword. The principal mistake was to have a low bid comparing to the opponent, especially for the "Auto/moto" group. The second change had concern the keyword, most of them were inappropriate were the targeting was not well optimized. Concerning the "animaux" group, two campaigns have been launch with a topic too close so the keywords were almost the same. Then, we face competing campaign.

• Keyword combinations those were effective and ineffective.

The most effective keyword combination was those concerning the long tail. Although, the competitiveness of the market and the niches did not allow us to extend this strategy as we would have wanted. As we were targeting the whole France, we did not wanted to target country by country because we thought that putting an advert on a website does not need to be geo located

Keywords that were effective are:

- vendre sa voiture (16 conversions, CTR around 6%, Avg CPC 0,83$)

- petites annonces animaux (2 conversions, CTR around 15%, Avg CPC 0,18$)

• Your success stories and quick, but clear references to failures you experienced.

For some of our ad groups, we got a lot of impression, this is due to the fact that some keywords were large targeting and did not match well with the internet user's needs. One of our most successes stories is the fact that we managed to reduce impression while conversion were growing. One of the most failure we have experienced concern the content campaign which only allow us to get 2 conversions for a cost of 6,60$ per conversion.

• When discussing performance, refer to metrics such as:

Content

- Impressions 29 990

- Clicks 157

- Click through Rate 0,52%

- Average Cost per Keyword 0,08$

- Total Cost of Campaign 13,19$

- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions 2 conversions with a conversion cost of 6,60$

Animaux ==> Don

- Impressions 66 490

- Clicks 942

- Click Through Rate 1,42%

- Average Cost per Keyword 0,09$

- Total Cost of Campaign 81,64$

- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions 6 conversions with a conversion cost 13,61$

Animaux ==> Vente Animaux

- Impressions 3 792

- Clicks 140

- Click Through Rate 3,69%

- Average Cost per Keyword 0,15$

- Total Cost of Campaign 20,80$

- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions 2 with a conversion cost 10,40$

Auto/moto ==> Auto

- Impressions 75 484

- Clicks 88

- Click Through Rate 0,12%

- Average Cost per Keyword 0,71$

- Total Cost of Campaign 62,22$

- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions 19 with a conversion cost 3,27$

Auto/moto ==> Moto

- Impressions 31445

- Clicks 179

- Click Through Rate 0,57%

- Average Cost per Keyword 0,12$

- Total Cost of Campaign 22,24$

- Other metrics provided by the client, such as conversions 1 with a conversion cost 22,24$

Conclusions

Through the whole campaign a lot of things happened. We have to face a large amount of competitor which were well settle on the market contrary to our client’s website which was just starting its business

The key project of the campaign was to get conversion from internet user making them posting some advertisement on the website. The main difficulties the group have to face has concern the selection of the right keyword which would make the conversion come true. So we had to include some words that were meaningful due to internet’s user.

Once the right keywords were found, the targeting of some keywords just does not seem to match our expectation. Although our landing page was not optimized as we would have wanted to. For the content ad group, they were not landing page that would have matches our expectation. The fact is that we have asked the owner of the website to get one but he had not been reactive to this. So we thought we have suffered from this. In the same way, some bugs have been change during the campaign while some tools were not well configured since the beginning.

In the end, we manage to correct a lot of mistake that have been made before and during the making of the campaign. Those mistakes were mainly concerning the keyword’s choice and the targeting of those one. To prove, we have realize most of our conversion in the last week, especially concerning the adgroups “auto/moto“.

Learning Component

Learning objectives and outcomes

We had a very heterogenic team some individuals had a strong experience some other were newbie’s on the Google Adwords platform.

Our first conversion lead by the Adword campaign will be the outcome that all the team will remember. Our experience was not relevant concerning our content campaign that didn’t lead any clicks. We were very disappointed about this result. We couldn’t find out why this campaign didn’t work properly.

Group dynamics

In our team there were two members who had difficult relationship. That fact rose individual tensions in the team. This two people wanted to get off our team and quit the project. After mediation and the establishment of new organization the persons concerned agreed to get back on the track for challenge.
Pragmatically we split the team in two sub team, each working day on days on a specific campaign with a meeting all the weeks to report and decide the actions to do.

Our team mate who introduce us the business for who we were running the campaign had also a hard position. As client manager he had the client facing role. Due to the difficulties we had with our client regards to our request, we overcome this problem adding a second client manager complementary with the first one.

We have tried to better organize work and empower people.

Client dynamics

We had trouble communicating with our customer.
Before the launch of the campaign we made recommendations to improve SEO and user experience on the site. These recommendations have been made with anticipation to give enough time to our client to implement them. Our recommendations implementation has not been effective despite our numerous requests to the client.
The set up of the conversion Tag either was an issue, we had to ask several time to have conversion tag installed and we finally had 2 out of 3 working properly.
Our client hasn’t at any time express his gratitude neither for the opportunity provided by the challenge nor for the work done.

Future recommendations

Our recommendations on the composition of teams would be to choose team members regarding their skills and strengths in order to make a balanced team. It would be also important to improve the transfer of knowledge between the experienced ones and the newbie’s.

For the client dynamic in a Google Challenge context the choice is very important, he has to be as motivated as the team. In a consulting business context I think that the client have a complete different behavior due to the fact that he is paying for a service and want the best ROI as it could be.