Clickable Product Used: The Clickable Pro Tool
Industry: Financial Services
Problem Solved:
Since 2003, Guidant Financial Group, Inc. has provided innovative financing options for small businesses. When Marty Weishaar joined Guidant as the director of Web Marketing, his goal was to bring in leads at the lowest cost possible. Applying his own experience to the problem, he reduced Guidant's cost-per-acquisition (CPA) by 25%. He wanted to bring it down even further, but had trouble finding the tools he needed: Google AdWords, online marketing agencies and traditional bid management applications didn't provide what he was looking for. Then he found Clickable. After implementing Clickable Conversion Tracking to track performance across networks, Marty used Clickable's Goal Value wizards to set new CPA goals. Within a week, he'd reduced Guidant's CPA by another 10%, and he's continued to find value in the product. "Our campaigns are still better than they've ever been."
Too Much To Manage, Too Little Time
Marty Weishaar is the director of Web Marketing for Guidant
Financial, a job that entails managing all aspects of online
marketing for the company, including SEM - something Marty's been
doing for over 7 years. The purpose of Guidant's search marketing
campaigns is to generate leads for their self-directed IRA
offering. So when Marty began managing Guidant's search marketing
effort, he knew exactly what he needed to do: bring in leads at the
lowest cost possible. Applying his own experience to the problem
yielded positive results.
"I was making changes with the goal of reducing my lead cost." By
making a few important changes, Marty was able to do exactly that.
Within a few months, he reduced Guidant's cost-per-acquisition
(CPA) by 25%. At that point, however, he hit an impasse, and the
recommendations he was getting from AdWords weren't enough help. "A
lot of recommendations I'd gotten from Google were based on my
Click-Through Rate (CTR)." As important as that metric is, Marty's
goal wasn't to improve his CTR; it was to decrease his
cost-per-acquisition (CPA). For that, he would need recommendations
generated outside of Google.
Risk-Free Trials and Short Term Agreements
At first, Marty was hesitant to seek outside help for his SEM
efforts. At a previous company, he'd engaged an agency, though with
little success. "They wanted volume," and Marty was managing
highly-targeted keywords; he was looking to build leads, not just
increase volume. When he turned his attention to bid-management
tools, he wasn't impressed. "I've looked at them, and they're all
kind of the same." Moreover, he was consistently being asked to
make a 3-6 month commitment - until he found Clickable.
When Marty learned that Clickable offered a free 15-day trial, he
signed up right away. He was immediately impressed by the
recommendations generated by Clickable's ActEngine, and he was also
reassured that Clickable would continue to provide value. "The big
reason why we were able to jump in and use the system was the
short-term agreement. You're clearly confident that you can back up
the results for a long period of time."
Bringing Advertising Costs Down, and Into
Focus
When Marty began using The Clickable Pro Tool, he started by
implementing Clickable Conversion Tracking to track his performance
across search networks. Once he had the tools he needed to track
performance, he set his CPA goals using Clickable's Goal Value
wizards. "Our goal for using the system was to decrease our ad
spend - we've had to cut a lot of our spending, and we wanted to
make sure we were spending it all in the right place."
With his goal in the system, Clickable's ActEngine immediately
began generating recommendations to help him meet those goals. Some
of the recommendations he received were the bid and budget
suggestions he was looking for; others were best practices he'd
never thought of before. "Things like
separating exact and phrase match. I would never have thought
about that, nor would I have had time to create phrase and exact
matched versions for every single keyword I have. It's worth my
time if I can do that simply. That's been very beneficial."
Ultimately, it came down to the numbers, and Clickable delivered.
Within a week of starting to use the system, Guidant's CPA was down
by over 10%. "When Clickable came into the picture, we were very
quickly able to reduce our cost per lead." And Marty found the
continuing value he was looking for: "Our campaigns are still
better than they've ever been."