Comparator website Simply Business (SB) enables businesses to compare, buy and manage business insurance and offers landlord insurance and invoice finance quotes, serving companies with up to 20 employees.
Per-per-click (PPC) has been the cornerstone of SB’s marketing strategy since its launch in 2005, transforming it from obscurity into the UK’s leading business insurance website within 18 months.
Challenge
Against the backdrop of the recession and the fast-changing PPC landscape, the Simply Google campaign had two objectives; to increase the volume of clicks and leads resulting from them, and to improve the return on investment across the overall Google PPC campaign.
Solution
To obtain objective one, SB needed to gain a better understanding of how its customers used search engines to find insurance. A combination of Google campaign management tools and Omniture analysis was used to analyse what customers searched for. From there, new keywords were added to the campaign and a decision made on which ones to focus on for the highest volume.
The best performing and most valuable keywords (head) were actively managed. Tail-end keywords were managed mostly using bidding rules. Each head had its own ad group, with individual ad wording and tailored landing pages to give the Google user a relevant answer to their search query.
To keep volumes high, SB needed to ensure that the wording of the ads generated the highest amount of clicks possible. A programme of testing was implemented against specific keywords and business types. SB also tested display URLs in creatives.
In order to increase leads as well as clicks, it was vital to make sure that the relevancy between search term, advert and landing page remained high and consistent. SB ensured that the landing pages were tailored to expectations of the user and matched the advert they had clicked on.
New Google products were also trialled – the Google Content Network was used to help increase volume. Tightly targeted advertising was conducted with several keyword groups, all with stringent negatives attached. The cost per acquisition (CPA) achieved was 35 per cent less than “normal” PPC, indicating that the avenue merits further exploration.
PPC was combined with natural search listings to help the campaign achieve even more impact. With both listings visible for certain keywords, the quantity of PPC traffic was found to increase by roughly five per cent.
Solution for objective two
To achieve objective two and increase return on investment across the PPC campaigns, a mixture of on and off-site methods were used. Bidding to top position on keywords produced maximum revenue and profit, and weekly and monthly reports were used to optimise positions and weed out underperforming keywords. Keyword lists were extended by analysing logs and search queries, and all PPC leads and sales were tracked back to the relevant keywords.
Page type, page content, call-to-action buttons, design and imagery and other user actions such as typing their own trade into a box were also tested. Meanwhile call centre staff were briefed on the PPC campaigns to aide their sales calls, and landing pages were given a unique telephone number to help track offline sales. When a customer bought offline, the sale was attributed back to PPC and revenue uploaded so that it could be tracked back to ad group and keyword level as well as to the campaign, ad group and keyword. When a sale was generated online it also was automatically attributed to the relevant PPC campaign. Revenue generated from PPC clicks was fed back into the reporting, which in the future will help to determine the ROI and where it can be improved upon.
Results
Tony Deacon, chief executive of SB, says “From the beginning, pay-per-click has been the primary driver of the company’s growth and brand awareness.
Through consistent strategic management of our pay-per-click campaigns, Google PPC accounts for a large proportion of our revenue.”
