Tel: 208-914-1248
ONLINE MARKETING
& PAID SEARCH
Project Category:
Company Type:
Online Marketing / Paid Searches
Private Equity Backed
Operating Cost Savings:
Increased Valuation:
$1.1 million per year
$8.8 million
THE BACKGROUND
This is a private equity backed company that was undergoing a restructuring in order to save expenses. They were bleeding cash and were on pace to run out within six months.
They acquired customers primarily from outbound calling and online paid searches. However, the costs of acquiring customers via paid searches exceeded the benefit.
We were retained to analysis the paid searches to see if we could reduce the customer acquisition expenses. If not, they were going to discontinue paid searches altogether.
THE PROBLEM
The company retained two separate vendors to help with paid search. Each was over a different line of products.
We immediately discovered that the keyword, ad, and campaign information was being passed into the landing pages, and through the webforms and into Salesforce as Leads. However, when Leads were converted to Accounts in Salesforce, all of the lead data was lost. Therefore, there was no way of knowing which keywords, ads and campaigns were converting--making it impossible to track ROI.
Without having an ability to track which campaigns, ads, keywords were most profitable (or least profitable)--it was impossible to make informed decisions. The two outside vendors were simply using the data available via Google Adwords and Bing to make decisions. But drawing conclusions from the number of searches, ad position, and clickthrough rates without knowing the ROI is like leaving a baseball game after the fourth inning.
THE SOLUTION
In order to make informed decisions, we took the steps necessary to determine the ROI of each campaign, ad, and keyword. These steps included:
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Dismissed both outsourced vendors
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Took over control of the website from a different outsourced vendor
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Removed reliance on third-party webforms, phone routing programs, and landing pages
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Ensured all ad tracking information was properly passed from Google all the way through to the sale (conversion) in Salesforce
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Created an ROI dashboard with visibility down to the ad and keyword level
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Triaged the ads by eliminating the biggest losers immediately, doubled down on the winners and tweaking those in between
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Continued to make small adjustments to ads, keywords and landing pages based on the data
THE RESULT
The changes we implemented drastically improved performance. In fact, new customer acquisition from web leads turned profitable in the very first month of acquistion. More specifically, these improvements decreased operating costs (ad spend) by over $1 million per year--which increased company value by about $8 million (given an 8x multiple on EBITDA).