PPC Management – 41% cost saving in 21 days

PPC management is such a satisfying industry to work in as knowledge we have can benefit companies so much with some impressive results even in a short space of time, Following on from the earlier post we did this month HERE about the first 10 days of results from a newly acquired account under Converted ppc management we have just had a look at the last 10 days and there have been some impressive results.

Since we started PPC management at the beginning of the month the overall click through rate as been increased by 59.60%, the cost per click has dropped by 18.10% and the cost per conversion has reduced from £99.52 to £65.27 over a like for like 21 day period (first 21 days of April V first 21 days of May) at the same time as the conversion rate has increased by a whopping 23.80% online and even more so offline which all combined means the company has spent 41.70% less and saved £1,870 in the 21 days compared to the previous month yet still had more sales from their AdWords PPC spend.
During the first 10 days the changes we made were mainly immediate cost saving and quality based ppc management changes, we tightened up the targeting of the keywords with more phrase and exact match use, We also made the adcopy more appealing to boost click through ratios too at the same time as.implementing more negatives to further target and refined the impressions and thus boost the click through rate and thereby the quality score.  We then analysed the search queries coming through and added more keywords, negatives and tweaked the matching and adcopy further.

We created new more targeted adgroups and whilst most PPC management agencies do this they don’t do it to a granular enough level in our opinion, it’s the hard work now that reaps the long term results! so we dig in and really break down those adgroups so they are very tight and focussed on one core theme.

Let’s have a look at the side by side stats for the first 21 days cumulative effects v the first 21 days of last month on their AdWords PPC spend.
A) Clicks, We really cut down the number of clicks, a 28.9% drop in traffic, sounds disastrous right.. 28.90% less traffic.. that’s bad!? Wrong!.. when it’s targeted traffic it pays (or more pertinently in PPC management, it saves!) to be specific, why buy 10 clicks when only 7 of them had any real interest in the first place. We have tried hard to cut out the number of ‘tyre kickers’ with little intention of doing any buying and instead we have taken time to focus harder on those visitors that have more buying intent.

B) Impressions, Same story here too, a reduction due to more specific targeting which is standard operating procedure for us and our PPC management methods. We worked really hard to reduce the number of irrelevant impressions that the ads made, we took it from 101,194 to just 45,144 impressions in a like for like 21 day period, so this is a 55.40% reduction. Which again sounds bad but intent is what counts so whilst ideally in PPC management you want good exposure so lots of impressions however they should only be to the core selection of your target audience in the right stage of the research/buying process in order to maximise profit and ROI. Why show someone your advert when they aren’t at the right buying stage in the process (*sometimes it can be viable and used for PPC brand awareness, but on the whole it’s not always a good ROI move). By cutting down the number of impressions yet not losing the same proportion of clicks we effectively boost the click through ratio from  6.63% to 10.58%, which has great knock on effects for the quality score etc.

C) Click Through Ratio (CTR) this is one of the most ignored factors in PPC management yet where most savings can come from, tighter targeting with phrase matching and negative keywords leads to a higher click through rate so the combination of less impressions yet the same/more percentage of clicks has given us a 59.60% Click Through Ratio (CTR) boost, this is a whopping improvement from 6.63% to 10.58% in just 21 days and we’ve seen quality scores rise as a result which has had on the knock on effect of lowering the cost per click.

D) Average Cost Per Click, (CPC) We have reduced the cost per click by 18.10% overall since starting, this is a direct result of the changing in keyword matching, the removal of under performing keywords as well as the quality score boost due to the click through boost. Far too many people in PPC management focus on the cost per click as the first port of call, they manage the symptoms of a disease rather than treat the cause, we work from the bottom up and use a holistic ppc management approach, increasing the health of keywords, adgroups, campaigns and the whole account then our clients enjoy the benefits of cost discounts on the cost per click of higher quality scored, higher performing keywords.

E) Conversion Rate, The conversion rate is low by industry standards here but they client sells high value items in a specific channel sector so the items you sell aren’t something you would buy every day, maybe once every 5 years if ever so they conversion rate compared to other ppc management clients in other sectors is poor as they convert on average around 3-6% in retail. Despite these factors we still managed to increase the conversion rate by 25.40% in 21 days.

F) Cost Per Conversion (CPA), This is a good benchmark of how things are going, the PPC management changes we have put in place have resulted in getting this down from an average of £99.52 to £65.27 per sale so a whopping 34.40% reduction in the cost per sale for the client.

G) Cost, As a result of the PPC management changes the AdWords PPC spend has been reduced quite dramatically, there has been a saving of £1,780 as the spend has been reduced from £4480.27 to £2,610.93 which is a fantastic saving of 41.70%

So to recap; since becoming a Converted PPC management client, in 21 days they have saved 41% of their advertising spend compared to the previous 21 days and seen an increase in sales and an explosion in the ROI, their click through ratios are rocking, their quality scores have risen and their cost per click and cost per sale have fallen dramatically.

We’d love to show you what we can do with your PPC account in 21 days, you could save even more than 41% on your ppc spend or cut your cost per sale by more than 34% like this client has done so give us a call free on 0800 228 9122 or use the contact page, or call back from for a no obligation chat today.