The e-commerce company previously operated in 12,000 square feet of office space. They began their plan to have a virtual office where every employee worked remotely several years before COVID. (So, in that regard, they were definitely ahead of their time.)
The “marketing department” was completely virtual. The company had already been using an outside marketing agency to coordinate all of their email marketing efforts, direct mail, PPC ads, website updates, and trade show ads. The young agency owner also outsourced everything, using a far-flung remote team of web designers, graphic artists, advertising coordinators, and PPC specialists.
But there was no tracking of results. And the SVP Sales and Marketing complained that he had to spend too much time editing the content.
I was brought in as a marketing strategist – to write all of the sales-focused copy and track results of every effort. I had been a consultant before to companies that used outside agencies. But the client hadn’t told the agency about me – until I was introduced in a meeting.
How did the agency owner react? After the meeting, she and I talked outside the client’s office. “They did the same thing last year to the prior agency, when I was brought in,” she said.
At the time, we thought the challenge was in making all of these remote marketing team members work together – while making sure we had a new focus on results. But, of course, meshing an all-remote agency team with an outside consultant has its challenges . . .
How can you run ecommerce PPC campaigns and not track sales?
When you outsource all marketing tasks, someone has to know what to look for to hire the right resources in each area. But that’s a challenge – unless you require results tracking from everyone you work with (and know what you’re looking for.)
I asked for a results report of the Google Ads campaigns. The “PPC specialist” sent me a spreadsheet of keywords with CTR, clicks, and costs. But no sales data!
For an ecommerce company, “results” of a Google Ads campaign should be sales and cost per sale.
The company sells a service only to a particular industry. But the spreadsheet included keywords that related to the service – but not the industry. The keywords were too generic, indicating the company was paying for a lot of unqualified clicks.
The agency owner didn’t ask for any type of sales results. (“I asked a lot of other agencies and he came highly recommended”, she said.)
Recommendations are a good start – but PPC for an ecommerce company should be all about cost per sale. You want to know how the specialist improved cost per sale for other ecommerce clients.
I asked what we had learned from our Google Ads efforts, how we were testing ads, and which ads were driving sales most cost-effectively. I received a collection of Display Ads (and no Search Ads) from the agency. The Display ads were also incredibly generic and not “flagging” the industry-specific audience at all.
In this case, the agency was likely relying on the PPC specialist to know what he was doing. The agency owner probably didn’t specify to the PPC specialist that the client only sold their product to a single industry. And apparently, the PPC specialist didn’t spend much time with the client’s website to see the industry focus either.
I asked to connect the Google Ads account with the client’s Google Analytics account. The PPC specialist’s reply: “I don’t reveal my proprietary methods, so I don’t share account access.”
(If you ever hear that, you should run quickly in the other direction. As a client, you should ALWAYS have access to Google Ads that anyone is managing for you.)
When I figured out how to see the Google Ads results in the client’s Google Analytics account even without the PPC specialist’s cooperation, I discovered the client was paying about $50 per sale (for sales that averaged $150).
The agency owner suggested that I take over the Google Ads campaigns (which I recreated, in a Google Ads account the client has full access to.)
Now, the Google Ads campaigns have tightly targeted keywords, we focus on Search Ads, and we have “tested our way to success” by identifying exactly which phrases drive sales. Within two months, we were driving sales at $5 per sale!
Constant testing and results analysis drive marketing success
We’ve used what we’ve learned from Google Ads (and other) testing and applied those phrases and messages across all of the client’s tactics.
We supplemented our own testing with industry reports profiling our target audience. We reviewed every blog comment and social media comment the client received. And we did the same for their competition.
And we applied all of these audience insights to the messaging across media.
The client was the first in their industry to initiate a particular service. I suggested we trademark a particular phrase for the service, and that trademark is now part of the name of their flagship product. The company has truly become known for that trademark, and the brand promise continues to grow stronger.
The members of this client’s far-flung marketing team (with some modifications over the years) have each learned to focus on what we each do best. And we continue to drive improved results – completely remotely.
Next time: how we revamped their email programs with testing and results analysis, using a completely oursourced team.
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