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Wednesday, 06 November 2013 09:13

Case Study: Denver Community Credit Union Adwords Campaign

The month of October brought about many new projects to the FiG team, but one in particular was starting an entirely new Google AdWords campaign from the bottom-up for Denver Community Credit Union.

Sure, we had keyword lists from previous SEO and content projects with DCCU, but PPC is an entirely new arena, and with it comes new challenges. The campaign is still ongoing and is producing a large number of relevant clicks-per-day along with a high click-through-rate, but starting a new campaign comes with many decisions that have to be made that can affect your campaign in a big way. There are numerous things to remember when rolling-out a new campaign, but here at FiG we tried to start out by having a solid understanding of three basic PPC concepts before even getting started.

1.       Know the type of account structure you want to implement

Let’s face it, there are dozens of different account structure philosophies out there being promoted by Search Engine Marketers. The key is to find the one that works best for your client or company, and to stick with the structure throughout your campaign. Do you organize ad groups by location? By product category? Maybe by keyword? There are tons of things to think about.  Our recommendation is to build out your campaign in Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet tool beforehand to stay organized.

2.       Have a solid understanding of keyword match-types

Pairing your keywords with correct match-types is an extremely important step to creating a successful campaign. If this isn’t taken into consideration before building a campaign, an ad for the keyword “credit union” set to broad match could get served for a search query like, “union station gift card balance”. This clearly is off base from what Denver Community Credit Union is or does and could cost DCCU money if a person accidentally clicks on the ad.

3.       Link your Google AdWords with your Google Analytics

This is a very important step before turning on your Google AdWords campaign – and one I learned the hard way!  Make sure you properly link your AdWords campaigns to your Analytics.  This is essential because it ties in your PPC efforts with your organic search efforts, therefore showing you how paid clicks are affecting your overall search traffic (among many other things).

Of course these three tips are just a sliver of the pie that calls itself Google AdWords, but with our most recent undertaking with Denver Community Credit Union we wanted to stay as organized as possible - which in-turn will make our lives easier as the campaign matures. Having a well-organized account structure and appropriate keyword match-types will help your campaign run smoothly in the long-run and save your client or company money.

So where does the campaign stand?  Denver Community Credit Union started the month on October 1st with just 48 paid clicks for the day, but with continuous campaign management throughout the month DCCU ended with 119 clicks on October 31st. Click-through-rate stayed steady at around 3.4% throughout the month, and the amount of time spent on the site is greater than regular site traffic. We’re continuing to manage the campaign by sifting through search queries for negative keywords while also adjusting bids periodically to increase ad rank.

So there you have it! If you're looking to start an AdWords campaign or assistance with your PPC efforts, be sure to contact FiG and we can make your life easier by handling your account ourselves!

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