After writing about the recent analysis of the benefits of coordinating PPC & search engine optimisation, I thought it might be useful to put some of our case studies (previously only in PDF) up here for all to see. First we’ll look at how we helped a gift certificate brand make the most of their traffic.

Challenge
This well-known experience gift certificate client brand was well developed so that front-of-mind consumer recall for its core offerings was strong. Given the disparate range of products on offer, however, it was recognised that a huge volume of prospective customers would not visit the Client as a first port of call. Not only were potential customers being missed but the Client’s opportunity to cross-sell from its huge catalogue of gifts was seldom being exploited.

The Client required, in the first instance, a huge increase in the amount of traffic delivered to its core web site. Subsequent focus was to be on driving conversions and understanding the respective propensities of differing customer types to convert into purchasers.

Solution
A widespread PPC campaign was initiated in the short-term, with a longer term search engine optimisation strategy focused on the high volume, lower competition (and otherwise expensive PPC) phrases.

The rollout plan consisted of the following:

1. A huge traffic drive so that the RoI from key phrases could be analysed across the board; each with a significant sample space
2. Analysis of the on-site conversions from differing products derived respectively through two distinct approaches:
i) by increasing the targeting on listings and lowering the click through rate and
ii) by widening descriptions so that click-through rates were higher
This enabled us to determine the extent to which additional (less targeted) traffic could be converted to alternative products once on-site and whether, in fact, CTR should be driven up or down for a particular product line
3. Combined performance targeting on two groups of products:
i) those products demonstrating high value and high margin
ii) those products demonstrating the highest on-site conversion ratios

All this activity was based on a stringent roadmap agreed by the client and sign-off to subsequent phases was based on the successful achievement of differing KPIs (Key Performance Indicators).

Result
Over a 3-month period we were able to generate:

• monthly traffic increases of 85%
• reduction in average cost per click of 83%
• increase in on-page conversion to almost 2% and
• an overall RoI improvement leading to a full roll-out of the activity

So there you go! More of these to follow soon.

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