“Put your seat belt on!” We grew up hearing it from our parents, relatives, and babysitters, and now, GASP, we’ve become that nagging voice demanding to “fasten your seatbelt” to the little ones in our lives. A necessary safety precaution that saves lives every day, but still needs to be branded into a child’s head until it become a habit.
But have you ever put thought into the seatbelt industry? Yes, there is actually a niche industry that sells seatbelts to the public, and one of the major players of this niche also happens to be a WordStream customer. Seatbeltplanet.com is the authority in custom seat belt manufacturing, providing a new world in aftermarket replacement products. Seatbeltplanet.com sells US federally regulated seatbelts that can be customized to your liking, “whether you are looking to match the interior of your ’72 Gran Torino for the next show or replacing a worn out belt for your minivan to meet safety requirements,” according the their website, Seatbeltplanet.com is here to meet all your seatbelt needs.
As a seven person operation, Seatbeltplanet.com employees are tasked with juggling multiple responsibilities to ensure the prosperity of the business. Jason Neill, the Operations Manager at Seatbeltplanet.com, oversees all of the company’s marketing efforts, and with his bandwidth stretched thin, Jason turned to WordStream to help with their paid search marketing.
The Seatbeltplannet.com Team
Right off the bat Jason identified areas of growth opportunity and areas where he was wasting spend by not properly structuring his account. Working with one of WordStream’s Senior Paid Search consultants, Jason worked to re-vamp his account and now finds himself spending far less time digging through the trenches of AdWords with his brain on the verge of exploding. Instead he can focus on growing the business through other marketing efforts, while being able to quickly and effectively complete weekly optimizations within WordStream’s PPC Advisor, for both his AdWords and Bing accounts, simultaneously.
So, if you’re struggling to grasp ahold of your paid search efforts, learn from these tactics Jason implemented once he started more effectively managing his PPC accounts through WordStream’s PPC Advisor.
Strategy #1: Splitting Ad Groups to Improve ROI
One major red flag we see with newbies to paid search is stuffing all of their major keywords into one or two ad groups. It’s true, there’s no magical number of ad groups under each campaign that works best, just as there’s no secret formula to structure an account, but if structured poorly results can be negatively impacted.
As Jason began his PPC journey with WordStream, this was one of the first things that his dedicated Paid Search Consultant, Kelsey Halloran, was able to help him with. “Kelsey helped explain the benefits of multiple groups and targeted ads, which was obvious once we heard it,” says Jason. “By breaking our group (yes, group – it was Ad Group #1) into many groups, we have improved our ROI. Our ads are specific to the searches, meaning we’re showing the right ad to the right type of customer.”
Jason also discovered that creating more targeted ad groups allowed him to implement a much more effective and relevant ad strategy. “We’ve created ads by vehicle make so that when a customer is searching for a seat belt by vehicle, an ad shows up that will take them to the right landing page for their seat belt. We’ve seen a big increase in sales for those products since we did this.”
Strategy #2: Target Customers Based on Search History
What are my customers searching for? If you’re doing paid search, you’ve likely asked yourself this question before (or at least I hope you have). I say it all the time, putting yourself in the shoes of your searcher is key to selecting keywords, creating ads, and forming a cohesive and effective paid search marketing campaign, and Jason learned just that when restructuring and revamping his strategy with WordStream.
“Our ad groups are based on what our customers are searching for,” says Jason. “We try to target customers based on search history so that our ads reflect the search terms we see most often.”
What if you’re not quite sure what your customers are searching for? Perhaps you have an idea, but fear that you could be completely wrong. Well, it might not be the best idea to form your strategy around assumption anyhow. This is where WordStream’s QueryStream tool comes to the rescue. QueryStream displays the actual search queries that people are typing into Google to make your ads appear. Along with the queries, it shows additional information such as which target keywords the query was matched to and data such as clicks, impressions, CTR, cost, etc. This gives you an idea on the keywords that you should be bidding on, negatives you may need to set up to block irrelevant traffic, and current keywords that you may be wasting spend on.
“We utilize QueryStream to dig into the search data,” says Jason. “Our goal is to land the customer on the page that has the product they are looking for.”
Strategy #3: More Efficient Account Optimization
Paid search will not work if you set it and forget it. Unfortunately, this is what a lot of marketers end up doing when they're strapped for time. Often it’s unintentional. Perhaps originally you plan to check in everyday or at least two or three times per week, but as the to-do list grows taller and by the time happy hour comes around, the last thing on your mind is checking in on your PPC campaigns. We’ve all been there. It’s not “fun” logging into AdWords or Bing and trying to weed your way through a mass of data to make conclusions on what optimizations need to be made.
WordStream’s PPC Advisor was created to make the optimization process a lot less painful and time-consuming.
Jason has found tools like the 20-Minute Work Week to be a huge time-saver. “When we’re working on our account optimization, we rely largely on the 20-Minute Work Week for the upkeep,” he says. “It’s a huge time-saver. I dig into data, but the 20-Minute Work Week allows me to improve my campaigns on a much more time-friendly and frequent basis.”
Strategy #4: Save Time by Making Changes to AdWords and Bing Simultaneously
Did you know that Bing (and Yahoo – included in the Bing network) accounts for roughly 30% of U.S. searches? Bing is also huge for the automotive industry, so of course Jason wanted to leverage his Bing audience for marketing purposes, but with limited time he needed a solution that wasn’t an extra burden and time-eater. Well, hello there WordStream!
WordStream’s PPC Advisor allows advertisers to pull in both their AdWords and Bing accounts to serve as an all-in-one paid search platform, and users are able to make optimizations to both the platforms simultaneously through tools like the 20-Minute Work Week.
“The ability to duplicate my efforts between AdWords and Bing is a huge time save, since I keep similar campaigns between the two,” says Jason. “WordStream’s software made it easy to create ads for each ad group and then copy those all over to our Bing Ads as well.”
Strategy #5: Utilize the Expertise of a Well-Trained PPC Guru
Here at WordStream, we pride ourselves on outstanding customer service. And I would know, as a former Paid Search Consultant on the Client Services Team, we’re all trained to go above and beyond for our customers. I apologize if I sound overly confident, but I am always impressed by the hard work all of our client success reps put in for their customers.
Every WordStream client is assigned a dedicated paid search expert upon joining WordStream to train them on the software and paid search (if needed). These reps also provide on-going support and advice to improve performance and work towards achievable goals.
“Kelsey is so helpful,” says Jason. “Not only is she knowledgeable about the WordStream product, she is an AdWords guru. She has helped me make big decisions with our ads and groups.”
So fasten your seat belt because if you’re ready to implement some of the strategies that have helped Jason succeed then you’re in for a wildly successful ride.
Do you have a paid search success story? We’d love to hear it! Comment below, and we may even reach out to feature you on our blog!
About the Author:
Margot is a Content Marketing Specialist at WordStream with a background in PPC, SEM, content and digital marketing. She enjoys running and eating ice cream during her free time (not simultaneous although that would be impressive). Follow her on:
Twitter: @ChappyMargot
Google+: +Margot da Cunha
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/margotdacunha
