How to promote reinforced concrete products — 2500 leads per month from the search ads

I would like to describe cooperation with one of the best clients, show it as an excellent example of trust between the agency and the customer and as a result of real synergy.

The client launched a new business in 2018 for the sale of concrete products with delivery within Ukraine. Since even in such a rather conservative business niche, everything goes online, we decided to abandon cold calls and focus on advertising on the Internet.

This required a landing page. We compiled with the client information about the company, formed a story, USP, packed the offer into 8 blocks on the website and launched advertising in search.

We wanted to stand out, so we made an air flight on a quadcopter over one of the client’s factories, then using this video we made animation on the website and content for advertising and social media networks.

We decided to stick to the standard structure of the site in order to inspire confidence and convenience for users, but the feature with parallax and video on the main page was left.

main page parallax video

From the very first days, the landing page showed a conversion of more than 4% per visits to leads. But we also added call tracking, chat and callback forms, which together give a conversion rate of almost 10% visits to lead!

Next came the process of setting up advertising campaigns. We have worked out the list of keywords by products categories. To do this, we requested an up-to-date and complete price list for all the products, we took their SKUs and based on them we made ad groups for the shopping campaigns by SKUs and product titles.

From there, we took the categories, then using the Google keyword planner, we collected all possible search queries manually for each category and put it all into a campaign with ad groups of keywords in exact match type. Thus, we collected 8215 exact match keywords, all of which do not have the low search volume i.e. they gather impressions and traffic. We managed to do this due to:

1. Manual gathering of search queries using Google keyword planner;
2. Search queries report analysis, adding search terms from there;
3. Translation of all keywords into Ukrainian and their addition to ad account;
4. Iteration of all variations of search terms using our script developed by us and subsequent deletion of search terms with the low search volume status.

After the launch of the ad campaigns, we are waiting for the proper statistics to be gathered enough in order to switch to Google smart strategies with a target cost per conversion or Traget ROAS. When we successfully moved to theses strategies and there is not much use anymore in analyzing the search term report, since all the major keywords have been already added, negative keywords also added (it took us 3 months), then we decided and added ad groups with keywords in phrase match type. Immediately there was more work, daily analysis of search terms, adding new keywords and negative ones. However, we significantly expanded the semantic core and increased the number of visits by 30% without increasing the CPL.

The next step was to set up audiences for banner campaigns. We have created the following audiences:

1. Remarketing by product category in the context of the ad groups;
2. People who entered the search terms active in our ad account;
3. People who have visited sites containing information (keywords) added in our ad account;
4. People who have visited competitors’ websites;
5. Multiple from Google’s intent audiences list.

banner ad campaigns and audiences

In addition to banner campaigns with manual targeting, we also launched a smart banner campaign. We launched Discovery banner campaigns with similar targeting. A lot of work has been done, but to be honest, our media campaigns have not worked well, no matter how hard we try. Therefore, in the end, now only a smart banner campaign is kept active. It has learned based on conversions, it gives inexpensive leads, but the volume is not big compared to search campaigns.

Also, on the advice of the Google manager, we launched a smart search campaign, but when we analyzed the search report from it, we made sure once again that we have all of them as keywords in standard search campaigns.

google smart search campaign search term report

When the client decided to increase the sales department, due to the increased number of leads from advertising, we faced the task of further increasing the volume of leads, but at the same time not increasing bids and CPL, but expanding the coverage. We took a chance and added groups of keywords in the broadest (without modifier) ​​match type (just before a couple of months broad modifier disappeared). To be honest, we do this in very rare cases, but in the certain case, we had excellent statistics, a lot of conversions, we switched to data-driven attribution model, i.e. we had a perfectly configured ad account and campaigns.

So we took a chance and added all the keywords and groups in broad match type. Immediately we were preparing for the fact that spam would come, despite the auto CPA campaigns strategies. But, to be honest, everything was not so scary, yes, some irrelevant search requests appeared, but even on the first day after the launch, due to the excellent working of other groups, our efficiency did not drop much. In addition, we added all cross minus keywords:

1. In ad groups with keywords in phrase match type, there were all keywords in exact match from the account with the active status;
2. In ad groups with keywords in broad match, all words in phrase match type from an ad account with a active status were added.

In addition, we had a dynamic search ads running for a long time, by which we added all new keywords and negative keywords before.

PPC traffic and conversions growth month over month

As a result, after all these actions mentioned above , we doubled the volume of leads, while the cost per lead remained the same.

Then, at a certain stage of the analysis, together with the client, we found out that leads from the Eastern part of Ukraine are easier to convert into sales than leads from the Western part.

sales dep. conversions report

At first, we decided to fix this by using bid modifiers at the geo targeting levels (regions), but modifiers do not work with auto strategies and therefore we had to split & duplicate the campaigns in the search. Left running the campaign on the East in the running campaign, so as not to lose efficiency there, and started a new campaign targeting the West of Ukraine. We were very worried about how the new campaign would learn and gain conversions, but everything went relatively smoothly due to the high conversion rate of the landing page, and after 7–10 days the campaign was performing no worse than when it was part of an overall large search campaign targeting the whole country.

To further increase the volume of leads and get on all advertising spaces in the search, we decided to launch an e-commerce shop together with the client.

concrete products e-commerce main page

We uploaded the main types of products to the online shop, on each product page, you can select products of the desired size and place an order. If you wish, you can immediately pay for them, but since the product is oversized, it is best to clarify all the delivery details while calling with sales dep. manager and then choose a convenient payment method and delivery option.

Now winter and the period of holidays have come, so the demand for building materials has decreased, but we are sure that in April, at the peak of the season, we will reach new records and increase the volume of leads to 3000 monthly, again without increasing the cost per lead, how we managed to that before.

Conclusions & summary:

1. Always start advertising with keywords in exact match type, this allows you to properly train the advertising account / campaigns, collect conversions data, and form a portrait of the target audience both for you and for Google auto strategies.
2. Analyze the search terms report and add new keywords and negative keywords. Yes, it’s a routine and time-consuming process, but very rewarding in the first few months or when launching new ad groups and campaigns. At the same time, try to add negative words in broad match type and not the entire search term as a whole, but a specific keyword that will be repeated in similar other search terms. Often we see a picture that other agencies or PPC managers simply copy specific search terms from the search term report copy-paste the list of them, and it turns out that they added 100 similar phrases instead of excluding them all with one common negative word.
3. Try to launch keywords in phrase or broad match types, if you are not afraid, only after you have already effectively configured campaigns in exact match type and our recommendation is to add new types of keywords in separate groups, with adding cross negative keywords list, in the same running campaign and not launch new campaigns and retrain them.
4. Display campaigns are great, but not for all clients. In our case with reinforced concrete products, a very small number of people can be interested by your creativity and make them get distracted from browsing, go to the website and suddenly leave their contacts for floor slabs for example ;)