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PPC Campaign Optimization

Industrial Manufacturing Case Study

Industrial Manufacturer Achieves 100% Increase in Leads Generated With PPC Optimization


Don't spend money on ads that don't deliver. Ad campaigns have long been considered one of the easy ways to make it to the top of search results. As more and more companies jump on the PPC train, that's no longer true. If you set and forget your ad campaigns, you're probably spending money on mediocre (at best) results.


Let's take a look at how support from an expert PPC team took one B2B manufacturer's ad campaign from good to great, saving them money and delivering more leads in just three months.

The Client

The client Evenbound worked with on this ad campaign project is an industry-leading manufacturer of reusable transport packaging solutions. The client develops and delivers packaging solutions — from pallets to boxes and crates — that are designed to fit seamlessly into automated warehouses.


Before they began working with Evenbound, the client's team had a clear sense of their marketing and advertising goals. They knew their customers well and had created a robust paid search campaign that was working to generate leads. When they came to Evenbound for paid advertising support, their campaigns were performing well. 

Existing Ad Campaign Metrics:

  • 3% click-through rate
  • 2% conversion rate
  • $350 cost per conversion


For a B2B manufacturer, those are solid numbers. We know that manufacturing clients are tougher to convert, but when they do convert, their customer lifetime value delivers significant ROI. That said, for a company spending nearly $10,000 a month on ads, we felt we could deliver more leads for the cost by running tests and optimizing those campaigns accordingly.

The Challenge

Lowering the PPC Budget in A Competitive Industry, Without Giving Leads Away

Though the client's Google Ads account was already marginally successful, they knew it wasn't working perfectly. They had a few key concerns they wanted the Evenbound team to address:


Unqualified traffic
Because the client delivers products like pallets, boxes, and packaging materials, they were having a tough time weeding out unqualified consumer traffic that was better suited to a Costco or Walmart result. Another key goal for this campaign was to restructure and optimize the campaign to ensure we were only pulling in the qualified leads that were actually worthwhile to the client.


High costs
That consumer traffic was also driving up the cost of the client's ads. While it's not uncommon to see a B2B manufacturer spending a lot on ads, at $350 per conversion, we knew we could do better. Optimizing keywords, match types, and bid strategy would help us adjust this campaign to help pull in only qualified traffic, driving down the overall cost per conversion.


Long buying cycle
A long sales cycle is a concern that many B2B manufacturers share. We know ad campaigns can work to help shorten that cycle, but the client's existing campaigns didn't have the visibility they needed to really move the needle.


Lead conversion
Our biggest goal for this campaign was to improve the client's conversion rate. Though that's not an uncommon sticking point for manufacturers, we knew we could make improvements. And because this client sees such high ROI from closed-won leads, we knew that any improvement would lead to serious numbers.

The Solution

An Optimized Ad Campaign Built on Hard Data

To address those concerns and reach the client's goals, the Evenbound team needed to know what we were starting with. While we had ideas for improvement, we wanted to ensure that every change or adjustment we recommended was backed by data. So we launched into our research and discovery phase to gather the information we needed. Here's what that process looked like.


Current State Analysis
First up was our current state analysis. We needed to know what we were working with before we began to make changes. The Evenbound PPC team took a look at the client's existing ad campaigns and paid special attention to the performance associated with every product category to identify key opportunities at the micro-level. This analysis helped us determine:

  • Which ads were getting a lot of unqualified traffic
  • Where some of that unqualified traffic was coming from and how we could minimize it
  • How to improve our bid strategy, match types, and keywords to pull in more of the right leads, while minimizing costs.


With a better idea of where the client's ads were sitting, we had the context we needed to start gathering data that would help us optimize appropriately.


Competitive Research
In competitive digital spaces like manufacturer and warehouse packaging solutions, competitive research is essential. The Evenbound team took time to do a deep dive into the client's competitors to identify key ways we could restructure their ads to outperform the competition. We looked at everything from competitors' keywords to spend budgets and even ad copy to see how we could position this client's ads to stand out in a competitive niche market.


Full Team Discovery
With research and data from both our current state analysis and competitive research, the Evenbound team was ready to bring our findings and recommendations back to the client's team. In a discovery session, our teams connected to re-align on goals and objectives. We collaborated to ensure our updated copy and suggestions were on brand for their messaging and style guides, and ask any questions we had about previous testing or ad experiments they may have completed. When the discovery session concluded, we had actionable next steps to deliver, and clear goals by which to measure our success.


Apply Changes and Test the Results
With a solid understanding of what we had, and where we wanted to go, we began launching our updates. As with any great ad campaign, we knew that we'd have to test our results to ensure that the changes we made were delivering the results we expected. In our testing and implementation phase, we:

  • Restructured campaigns to target product categories
  • Removed irrelevant search queries to improve targeting
  • Implemented new keywords based on our research and analysis
  • Overhauled their bid strategy to get more of the right leads, for less
  • Revamped ad copy to speak to new keywords, and to target the needs of buyers in each specific product category
  • Adjusted the budget to ensure that the client's ads were showing up where they needed to, when they needed to, to capture the best-fit leads


And how did our testing go? We're so glad you asked.

The Results

Our client's Google Ad campaigns are seeing some serious results.

62%

Increase in Traffic

100%

Increase in Conversions

50%

Reduction in Cost Per Conversion

In just 3 months, our PPC experts were able to increase their click-through rate to 5%, their conversion rate to 3%, and reduce their cost per conversion from $350 to just $175.


In English? The client is seeing more traffic and more leads, and it's costing them less. By taking a hard look at their existing ad campaigns and making some significant adjustments, our PPC team was able to deliver on the client's goals in just 3 months. And, thanks to our process of continuous analysis and optimization, we plan to see these Google Ads continue to grow in performance as our partnership continues.

The Takeaway

Continuous Optimization Delivers Results

This ad campaign partnership is a great example of the benefits that continuous analysis and optimization can provide. Even though the client came to us with a successful Google Ads account, they recognized that there was room for improvement. They were right. With a little effort, their trust in our paid media team seriously paid off. With a streamlined Google Ads account that our team is continuing to monitor and optimize, they'll only increase leads and conversions from here on out.


Whether you're B2B or B2C, paid search works to bring in more of the leads you want. Any successful digital marketing strategy today knows that paid ads deliver growth. Interested? Our team of experienced, certified PPC professionals can help.

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At Evenbound, we're all about helping our clients grow. We use inbound and outbound marketing strategies to deliver you the qualified traffic and leads you need for serious growth. And we have a lot of fun doing it.

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