This was my experience while working at my most recent client, which offers online coding interview preparation training.
Their courses assist students in preparing for coding interviews with top product companies such as FAANG.
Before hiring me, this startup had a digital marketing agency in place. That marketing firm was squandering a lot of money and, as a result, generating leads. But the problem was that those leads were not qualified, therefore the sales staff was wasting their time phoning irrelevant leads.
The problem statement
When I was hired by Programming Pathshala, I was told to work on Google Ads, analyse the account, and come up with a solution to the problems listed below.
- Reduce the ad spent and get a good Return on Investment.
- Maintaining a high lead count while also ensuring a high lead quality.
My observations
When I began studying their historical data, I made the following observations:
- The agency was completely focused on bringing more and more inquiries.
- They were unconcerned about the quality of leads.
- Bidding aggressively in comparison to the competitors
- Bidding on irrelevant and incorrect keywords.
- The ad copy was consistent across all ad groups and campaigns.
- There were only a few ad variations.
My approach
After reviewing the previous data from Google advertisements, I realized that the agency was primarily interested in proving that it could generate inquiries.
But I understood that generating inquiries was easy, however, generating quality leads was difficult and time-consuming.
Marketing strategies, in my opinion, should generate quality leads rather than quantity.
So I started doing something about it.
- I was able to comprehend the startup’s offerings and write down the USPs.
- I conducted a competitive analysis and created a list of keywords, ad copy, and display ad placements.
- I gathered all of the necessary keywords, including long-tail keywords.
- Set the campaign objectives and began developing the campaigns.
- Created ad copies.
- Designed the display ads for various sizes.
- I started the campaign, expecting it to fail, which it did. After that, I began improving it until I was able to create high-quality leads.
- Kept optimizing the ad copies and display ads placements.
Here is a dashboard
The screenshot below is from the Google Ads dashboard and shows the combined results of search and display ads.
What was the result
Here’s a look at Google’s ad performance over the last five months.
- The total cost of the advertisement was Rs. 4 lakh and 77 thousand INR (I saved around 30 thousand in ad spent)
- The total number of leads generated was 1500.
- Conversion cost: 315 INR (Earlier it was between 400-450 INR)
- Conversion rate: 3%, which is higher than the prior rate of 2.1 percent.
Due to obvious reasons, I am unable to reveal the revenue generated here.
Final thoughts
I’ve realized that studying is crucial before entering into campaigns and advertisements.
Before going into Google ad campaigns, here is my checklist.
- Study the offerings
- Research your competitors
- Invest sufficient time in keyword research.
- Long-tail keywords should not be overlooked.
- Ad copy is incredibly crucial. They should be well-written.
- Utilize ad-extensions
- Landing pages are the most essential aspect in determining whether or not you will receive a lead.
- When capturing a lead, don’t ask too much on the landing page. Serve first, then inquire later. Ask in a gentle manner.
- On the landing page, deliver value.
- Whatever you say in your ad copy should be consistent with what you say on your landing page. Each campaign should have its own landing page.
So that was my experience working on one of the marketing campaigns at Programming Pathshala.