Note: A version of this mobile marketing case study appears on the AdWords blog (PDF version).
The rundown
WordStream client Colombo Hurd upgraded its largest AdWords campaign to Enhanced Campaigns in April. Because mobile traffic has tended to be more valuable to the law firm, they decided to ramp up their local mobile marketing investment and increased mobile bids by +25%. As of early May, Colombo Hurd had increased customer conversion rate on mobile ads by a factor of three and reduced the cost of a new customer acquisition by 149% with the new mobile marketing campaign.
The Goals
- Increase conversions
- Generate phone calls to schedule in-person consultations
- Improve sophistication of mobile-targeted advertising
The Approach
- Upgraded largest campaign to EC and monitored results
- Adjusted CPC bid for mobile devices to +25%
- Set up call tracking
The Results
- Mobile ads had higher ad positions and higher CTR at a lower CPC
- The mobile traffic converted at a 3x higher rate for about 1/3 the cost
Founded in 2006, Colombo Hurd is a successful law firm headquartered in Orlando, Florida, with an additional office in Miami. The firm's target clients include corporations and investors that are looking to bring employees to the US, family immigration clients and deportees in need of legal counsel and removal defense.
Colombo Hurd's business is driven primarily from referrals and paid search. The firm spends approximately $10,000 a month on online advertising with AdWords. They currently do not have an in-house PPC manager. One of the law partners works with us to manage the paid search account with the help of our software, PPC Advisor, and a dedicated rep, Erin Sagin.
Prior to migrating to Enhanced Campaigns, Colombo Hurd was targeting all devices across campaigns (no specific mobile marketing strategy) and had not set up call tracking.
Making local mobile traffic count
The team at Colombo Hurd believed that mobile traffic was valuable to its business. However, they had not found the time to enable sophisticated device targeting and other mobile advertising options, such as call tracking. Rather, all the firm's campaigns were set to target all devices, and receptionists accepting incoming calls were instructed to make note of referral sources. This made it difficult to track mobile marketing ROI.
Enhanced Campaigns are designed for a multi-screen world, where people switch seamlessly between desktops and mobile devices, as well as uber-busy advertisers, who can now manage bids across devices from a single, scalable campaign. By setting multiple bid adjustments to target what's most important to your business, AdWords automatically determines the best ad to appear. This helps you reach your most valuable customers and connect with them anytime, anywhere and from any device. In addition, Enhanced Campaigns simplify mobile conversion tracking, so advertisers can allocate their budgets to the channels that deliver the best leads.
Upgrading for more control over device, time and location
WordStream and Colombo Hurd used the Enhanced Campaigns Transition Wizard to transition the firm's largest campaign, increasing bids by 25% for mobile devices. The whole process took less than 30 minutes. To optimize their mobile marketing strategy, they created mobile-preferred ad text for each ad group, using mobile-specific CTAs such as "Call Now." Then they upgraded to the new call extensions – key because the firm's most valuable leads come through phone calls. They elected to track call conversions and took advantage of the call length feature to designate conversions as calls that last longer than three minutes.
In addition, they adjusted time-of-day bids. Because daytime calls during office hours, when a lawyer is available to screen potential clients, tend to be most valuable to the firm, bids were increased by 20% from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Finally, they set up radius targeting – in the form of concentric circles in a 5-, 20- and 50-mile radius around the Orlando office – in order to capture and identify location trends and adjust bids accordingly at a later time.
Capturing the value of mobile traffic with enhanced campaigns
The results so far have been powerful. Colombo Hurd found that a high proportion of its traffic – 42% – comes from mobile devices, so the client quickly moved to mobile-optimize more ad groups and start plans for developing a better mobile site. The new mobile marketing ads demonstrated compelling performance, with:
- A higher average position than desktop ads (1.2 versus 2.2)
- A higher click-through rate (2.88% versus 1.88%)
- Lower cost per click ($13.23 versus $15.31)
Interestingly, desktop and tablet CPCs were almost identical.
The new call tracking feature enabled Colombo Hurd to get a clear picture of the ROI of its mobile advertising spend. The firm found that mobile ads in the upgraded campaign converted at three times the rate of desktop ads (with a 29% conversion rate to customer compared to 10% on desktop). In addition, the cost to acquire a customer from mobile marketing was significantly lower, at $56 per new client compared to $170 for desktop form submits.
Moving to Enhanced Campaigns has really proven the value of mobile traffic to Colombo Hurd's client acquisition efforts. The firm plans to continue migrating its existing ad groups and campaigns into mobile-targeted campaigns and further optimizing its website for those audiences and devices.
This post originated on the WordStream Blog. WordStream provides keyword tools for pay-per click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) aiding in everything from keyword discovery to keyword grouping and organization.
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