A Google AdWords Case Study
By Jason Poulos (@TheSaganaki)
For one of our clients the answer is yes, a $500 spend in Google AdWords did yield a 20% (19.5% to be exact) spike in traffic to their website. Here’s how it all worked out.
Background
Our client, a local staffing agency knew that a large nationwide online retailer was looking to build a warehouse in the Richmond Virginia area. As this employer searched for staffing solutions via a search engine, our client wanted to make sure that their site and brand were visible in Google.
Problem
Our client’s website was not optimized for organic search and was not easily found through Google and ranked poorly. Knowing that this online retailer had an aggressive timeline we didn’t have enough time to do a full site audit and proper organic site optimization.
Solution
Time was not on our side, the instant nature and exposure that Google AdWords offers seemed to be a perfect solution. Google AdWords has many benefits but with a minimal amount of time and budget we knew that we could start generating impressions and visits to our client’s website.
Implementation
Our first step was to do some brief keyword research and discover popular keywords relative to our content and to what the employer would be searching for. Not knowing where our client’s potential partner would be searching from, we created two main ad groups that used different location targeting parameters.
Our first ad group focused on a 50 mile radius of the Richmond area. Our goal with this group was to make sure that anyone in the area searching for “temporary staffing” etc. within that 50 mile radius would see our ad.
The second ad group we created targeted searches outside of the state of Virginia. Not knowing the geographic location of where our employer would be searching from we wanted to make sure that our ad would get displayed for a “temporary staffing va” search that originated from New York.
With our keywords researched, ad groups set up, landing page created and bids in place it was time to launch our ads.
Google AdWords Results
Our ads ran for 3 months and generated over 9,000 impressions and over 500 visits to our landing page. Click through rates were around 5% and our ads averaged a 2.9 position in Google. All good metrics in my book, when looking at the website’s analytics, traffic to our landing page from the ad’s counted for almost 20% of the site’s visits during this 3 month time period. So, yes, in the case of our client, a $500 spend in Google AdWords did generate almost a 20% spike in traffic.
AdWords Metrics Screenshot
Landing Page Analytics Screenshot
With a degree in communication design from VCU as well as experience in web development and digital marketing, Jason brings a unique blend of assets to CRT/tanaka. In 2012 Jason helped win 4 awards for his SEO work on PureCanadaMaple.com. Outside of his digital work, Jason enjoys brewing his own beer and restoring his1970 Chevrolet Nova. Jason is a new father and enjoys spending time with his family and his 150-pound English Mastiff.
[...] You get to set your own budget. Budgets small or large can be successful in AdWords. We created a paid search campaign for a local client that utilized $500 worth of clicks and we saw a 20% increase in website traffic. [...]