Case study: First steps restructuring AdWords account

About the Project

Our client is a trusted leader in customized identification and large-scale authentication solutions, working with both B2C and B2B customers in the USA and Canada.

Scandiweb successfully performed a migration of their online store from ZenCart to Magento eCommerce platform, including a complete redesign of the existing website.

Tasks

• Take end to end ownership of client’s Paid Search & Display marketing efforts
• Prepare a plan to restructure existing AdWords account
• Identify and manage new online marketing programs (e.g. retargeting)

Process

Background

When Scandiweb started to work with the client, they already were using AdWords and Bing Ads.

First AdWords campaigns were launched in late 2009. Before Scandiweb has started 275K USD was invested in AdWords and 23K USD in Bing Ads. Unfortunately, conversion value was not tracked properly. Due to this fact, investment ROI could not be calculated.

All SEM efforts were split between a client’s internal SEM professional and agency that specializes in Paid Search Management. Internal SEM professional is responsible for Bing Ads, so this field was not touched by Scandiweb. While on the other hand, PPC agency was responsible for AdWords management and it was overtaken by Scandiweb.

Existing AdWords account structure

You wish to restructure an old PPC account (AdWords or Bing), but do not know where to start? Your account is messy, and you are not sure how to clean it up? It is always a challenge to restructure old and running campaigns, not to harm campaigns performance. Overtaking ownership of existing PPC account is difficult as well, since:

• It may be active for many years.
• Most likely it was managed by different people/agencies.
• A lot of removed and paused campaigns/ads/keywords as a result.

But with all these problems in our client account, we also get one huge benefit — historical data for more than 6 years. It is a dream for the analyst, it will help to understand which campaigns worked in the past and which worth our attention.

The first thing we did, is existing account analysis and account structure preparation (campaigns, ad groups, ads and keywords). Why? Take a look at the picture below, maybe it is only us who felt lost in the list of 100+ campaigns and 8800+ keywords.

During the day, we prepared following chart. First step done — we know our client.

Further, we decided to analyze account historical data and focus on running campaigns quality improvement. Only when it is done, we can move forward testing new campaigns and our new marketing ideas.

Existing AdWords account structure

As previously said, existing account gave us historical data for last 6 years. It would be foolish not to take an advantage of this. Throughout the all time, a similar trend has continued. Therefore, we took only certain period of time and listed best performing campaign during this time

Jan 2015 — May 2015 best-performing campaigns

We identified two best performing campaigns — one of them aimed at brand awareness and another one is Google Shopping. It will help us creating new campaigns in the future.

Results

Final touch was preparation of account restructure plan. Account restructure is not one-day task, it should be done gradually not to harm running campaigns performance.

As you can see, primarily it was decided to:

• Make sure running Ads lead to correct landing pages.
• Improve landing pages with the most relevant content (e.g. add Salesforce contact forms to catch new leads easier).
• Add new and improve existing keywords.
• Improve keywords quality score.
• Add new Ads leading to special promotions e.g. promo codes for Google users only.
• Add additional remarketing channel — AdRoll.
• Increase AdWords budget, focusing on Google Shopping and other best-performing campaigns.
• Start working on new campaigns.

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