Bob Douglas Van Hire – Google Ads Campaign
The Brief:
Bob Douglas Van Hire based in Basingstoke, providing both retail and trade van hire services with high quality vehicles and 24 hour drop off.
In our first meeting with the client we discovered that they had an existing Google Ads campaign built by an agency two years ago as a one off. The client didn’t want to actively manage the campaign so was looking for someone else to manage it while getting more sales enquiries for their investment. At the time they got an automated report from Google each month and watched the money leave their account but no other insights on the monthly performance.
The client’s budget with Google Ads was restricted to £220 per month but he was willing to pay more if the sales came through. We showed the client that they were currently paying an average of £7 per sales lead so 26 sales leads per month. We both agreed it was on the expensive side based on the profit margins for each van hire. The client was willing to spend more but only if the cost per sales lead was lower.
We left our client with a clear agreed brief of reducing the cost per each sale below £7 (known as Cost Per Acquisition or CPA in Google speak), whilst maximising sales and if proven to work, increasing the budget up to £600.
This was an industry we hadn’t worked in before so we offered a reduce fee for a 3 month trial period on agreement that if it worked well we would continue managing their campaign but if we couldn’t get it to work we would part ways. So customer invested 3 months of our reduced fee and we took a reduced fee to account for our learning curve.
From 25 enquiries to over 100 enquiries per month from the same Google spend!
Month 1
Involved us analysing the existing campaign for what was working and adjusting keywords, ad text, ad extensions, distance ads would appear from the client’s premises, changing bid prices and strategy.
Result
In the first month we made a modest reduction to the cost per lead of £0.50 and generate an extra 15 leads for an extra total cost of £40. So great to get more sales and reduce the cost per lead but not enough to cover our fee.
Month 2
Each day we check the campaign performance and amend bid prices creating separate ad groups for comparable topics that are working whilst injecting new ideas to isolate whether they work or not.
Result
We had achieved a cost per sales of £3.19 less than half what the client was paying before we got involved. This resulted in a +276% increase in sales leads at half the cost per lead.
Month 3
Involved building on the previous month’s success to ensure it wasn’t a one off whilst also seeing what competitors had changed to react to the campaign changes done for our client. At this point we also increased the budget per month (in agreement with client) as we had met the first objective of reducing the cost per lead.
Result
In the final month of the trail we generated +138% in leads at a cost per lead of £4.41
Summary
We made sure we understood the client’s objectives and set about optimising the campaign to achieve those goals. We both agreed to a 3 month trial which is long enough for us to test the strategies but short enough for a client not to waste lots of money on agency fees.
Final Outcome
Over a 3 month period we delivered a 73% increase in leads a 35% reduction in cost per lead resulting in a near 70% increase in profit for the client once our management fee is taken into account. The last two months were extremely good and we will now work with the client to build on that success to help the client increase their fleet.
The clients own calculations then factored in how much profit they made from each sale to see whether the improvement covered our agency fee… and the answer was a definite yes!
If you would like to chat with us to see if we can do the same for your Google Ads campaign then give us a call on 01256 517473 or use the contact form.