Generating Quality Leads for Individuals Using Google Adwords

About the Client

Metadata Training, a company based in London, UK, has been delivering training in business analysis, systems development, agile and project management for over 25 years. They are a huge company, and they’ve worked with giants the likes of JP Morgan, Thomson Reuters, Vodafone, Reed Elsevier to optimize their staff’s workflow and output.

With Metadata’s services, thousands of professionals have gained professional certifications from accredited bodies.

The Challenge

The purpose of using any paid digital marketing platform is to get instant results. More importantly, perhaps, is to make the most out of the budget you have at disposal. Using Google Ads is no exception to this rule.

Metadata’s account wasn’t bringing as much ROI as they hoped for. The whole trick into using Google’s PPC platform is that it is easy to set-up, but difficult to optimize. And, the way the company’s campaigns were initially set-up was a prime example of this. Google wants to make it easy for you to spend money on their platform. But, without optimizations, the ads will cost much, much more than what they in all realities should.

To keep a long story short, the company was already spending a pretty big amount of money and were getting barely enough to cover their costs back from it.

The main goal of our effort for Metadata training was increasing the sales in the specific courses they provided. It was obvious that with the budget they had, they could get at least get much more conversions than what they had.

• Increase in the booking of specific courses
• Generating quality leads for individuals using Google Adwords
• Generating B2B leads for their apprenticeship program from their current customers and online
• Generating B2B leads from business analysis managers/leads from their current customers and online

The Solution

With clients that have already used the Ads platform, our first step is always to check their previous efforts. The purpose is simple – find what can be salvaged, what needs scrapping, and what can be improved. After an overview of the previous Google Ads efforts the company had, the conclusion was that there wasn’t much to salvage. The account wasn’t structured optimally, and it was less work to just scrap everything and start all over.

Our goal was simple – review the website for potential landing pages and create a bespoke PPC strategy to generate at least 10% more leads and conversions.

This goal was met and surpassed.

• Increase in the booking of specific courses
• Generating quality leads for individuals using Google Adwords
• Generating B2B leads for their apprenticeship program from their current customers and online
• Generating B2B leads from business analysis managers/leads from their current customers and online

The Process

1. Overview of the Google Ads Account Setup

• The Ads Account wasn’t set-up properly – it had keywords grouped per campaign purpose, not per topic. This meant that different topic keywords were present in the same ad groups.
• This set-up was the main culprit why the Quality Scores of their ads plummeted.
• The low Quality Scores were leading to increased Cost Per Click (CPC), thus making the clicks more expensive than what they actually could be

2. Overview of the Website

• We analyzed the website and what became apparent that the website was created to encompass each topic on a separate page.
• Because PPC landing page creation was not an option, we decided to use this layout for our ad groups.

3. Reworking the Google Ads Account

• The final decision was to pivot the Google Ads efforts and rework the campaigns. Metadata’s website was structured to enable single keyword ad groups (SKAGs), so the next step was defining them and linking them to the separate landing pages on the website
• We created the SKAGs with initial ad copy
• Then, we employed a Display Network campaign to promote the courses for black Friday
• We A/B tested the ad copy to further crunch the numbers

4. Setting up a Google Display Network Campaign to Generate Leads

• For the upcoming Black Friday, we decided to set-up a lead generation campaign, backed up by a Remarketing List
• We outlined the creatives for the campaign
• We created the creatives for static Display Network ads (listed below)
• We A/B tested Call to Action buttons & ad copy on the creatives

Results

• It’s needless to say that with the new SKAGs, the Quality Scores of the ads went up from 3/10 and 4/10 to 8/10 and above. The result was getting more “bang for the buck”, as the company ended up with many more clicks for the same budget. Below are the most notable improvements.
• The Black Friday campaign was a huge success, filling up the remarketing lists, which were then retargeted with high-intent ads
• OVER 19% Increase in sales in the first few weeks
• OVER 300 New high intent leads in the first few weeks from the Search Campaigns
• OVER 1030 New leads from the Black Friday Display Campaign in only 4 days
• UP TO 15 Times increased the return on ad spend (RoAS)