Download - Google AdWords Post-Campaign Report
Texas Rock Gym Google Online Marketing Challenge
Grace Goetze Amber Chang Blake Wade
Jeffrey Beseda Michael Jones
Will Allen
1. Executive Summary
Campaign Overview
Since 1996, Texas Rock Gym has been serving the Houston area as a provider of
indoor recreation and fitness. To increase sales and revenue for the business, a Google
AdWords Campaign. The four campaigns that were created at the beginning of the time
period were Parties and Groups, Healthy Living, Family Activities and Brand. At the
beginning of the campaign period, the budget was divided evenly between the three
weeks of the project with $83.33 for each week. As the competition period went on, the
budget was adjusted to accommodate for changes to the campaigns. Ads were tested to
determine CTR, how often they were being shown and position on the page, and changes
were made to improve these numbers. Geo-targeting was used to reach customers in
Houston and the surrounding areas. Campaign goals included achieving 10,000
impressions and having a CTR of 1.5%. The ultimate goal is to increase visitors to the
website which will lead to more first time customers and more people booking events. In
addition, we would like to see more people visiting the physical location. Online booking
is available for parties and events as well as the after school program at the rock climbing
gym. For individual climbers, online waiver registration is available but payments must
be made at the physical location.
Key Results
Initially, we began with four campaigns: Parties and Groups, Healthy Living,
Family Activities and Brand. We ended up stopping the Brand campaign entirely
partway through the campaign, because no impressions were being made for the
campaign. Our Healthy Living campaign was most successful in terms of CTR at 4.33%
as well as the lowest average CPC at $0.50. The lowest CTR for our campaigns was the
Parties and Groups campaign with 1.13%. Excluding the stopped Brand campaign, the
Healthy Living campaign had the fewest number of ad groups but did the best overall.
Future Online Marketing Recommendations
Looking forward, we have certain recommendations for our client to implement.
We first recommend that Texas Rock Gym continue to utilize AdWords but on a larger
scale. With a larger budget and more diversification of different campaigns, the reach can
expand and grow the traffic even further. Some of the more successful ad groups used in
our campaign can serve as a starting place for our client to develop campaigns of their
own. Additionally, sticking with the geo-targeting strategies we implemented would
benefit Texas Rock Gym. To go along with an increased budget for AdWords, they
should include some online only promotions. These promotions would help make the ads
more desirable to those searching and would help drive traffic to the site. They should
also implement SEO on their webpage in order to best capture search traffic. Another
area to explore further would be social media, our recommendation is to introduce an
Instagram account. This Instagram account would allow them to highlight different areas
of their gym through pictures and short videos. This in turn could drive traffic to their
website and their physical location.
2. Industry Component Campaign Overview
Major Campaign Goals and Initial Strategies
Our initial campaign goals were 10,000 impressions over the three weeks as well
as have a CTR of 1.5%. The overall goal of the campaign was to increase visitor traffic to
the website which will drive first time customers. In addition, the increase of visitors to
the website will lead to an increase in events and after school programs being booked
online. Because Google AdWords was relatively new to our group, our initial strategy to
approach these goals was to create campaigns, groups, and keywords and leave it
untouched for a week, then re-strategize based on the first week’s results.
Operational Details
At the beginning of the campaign period, the budget was divided evenly between
the three weeks with the expectation that adjustments would need to be made. This
resulted in a budget of $83.33 per week, which was then to be split between the four
campaigns. The total amount of money spent over the campaign was 248.66. Broken
down by campaign, this is $57.69 for Healthy Living, $91.70 for Family Activities,
$99.27 for Parties and Groups, and none for Brand. One of the first major changes that
we made was to pause the Brand campaign. In the first week of the campaign, there was
not a single impression or click. Since this campaign was performing quite poorly, the
decision was made by the group to remove funding from that area and focus on the
campaigns that were showing more positive signs in terms of impressions, clicks, and
click through rate.
As far as the budget is concerned, changes were made on different dates to help
increase exposure and the likelihood of clicks. Until the date of April 2nd we had the
campaign running on auto bid. On that date we took the campaign off auto bid and onto
manual bid. We raised both the Parties and Groups and the Family Activities
campaigns to $4.00, which was just around $.50 higher than the auto bid. We also raised
the budget for Healthy Living to $3.00. This increase in bid provided the steady growth
in clicks in the campaign. After a decline set in from April 6th to April 7th, we raised the
budget of each of the three previous mentioned groups an additional dollar to put them at
$5, $5, and $4 respectively. This action paired with some tweaking of the ads themselves
helped cause the steeper incline seen in the below graph. As the last day approached we
had some money to spend and raised all of our budgets to $10.00. This gave us the last
little jump that is illustrated below.
Evolution of Campaign Strategy
At the beginning of the campaign, our group opted to use automated pricing and
to only use the Search Network instead of the Display Network. We added geo-targets on
April 2 to narrow down our geographic location for the search. We also changed the
pricing for all the campaigns from automatic to manual at this time. We kept adjusting
the budget manually periodically for a few reasons. The first reason is to maximize the
use of our budget. Second, we adjusted the budget in order to increase exposure for the
campaigns that were doing well. The third reason for this was to work to improve the
position of where the ads were shown on the page.
One of the major changes we made was to cease the Brand campaign. We paused
the Brand campaign on March 31, because after a week of having it active, it had zero
impressions and therefore, zero percent CTR. Other major changes included editing
initial keywords on March 28th to stop the decline in impressions. This strategy was
successful and the campaign continued on an upward trend. The peak at April 4th was
brought about by creating several new adds, upping the budgets as mentioned earlier, and
fine tuning the geographic area we were targeting. The success from this push was short
lived as a small decline in impressions occurred. The remaining growth in the campaign
came mainly as a result of raising the budget per campaign, which ultimately concluded
with us maxing out the bid price for our ads. With these major changes and shifts in our
strategy we were able to run a successful campaign as summarized in the section below.
Key Results
Overall, the campaigns did very well. The overall CTR was 1.44%, which was
close to the goal that we set before the campaign began. We nearly tripled the number of
impressions that we had set as a goal.
Our most successful campaign in terms of CTR was the Healthy Living
campaign. It had a CTR of 4.33% and also had the lowest average cost per click out of all
the campaigns at $0.50. The lowest CTR of any of our campaigns was Parties and
Groups with 1.13%. This was likely due to the fact that the average position was 4.8. We
struggled with this campaign and bringing that position lower.
The initial campaign was performing decently however we saw improvements
when changes were made. These changes such as adding ads that better targeted the
consumer and adding keywords that were more aligned with the ads lead to an increase in
performance. We did notice that a number of our keywords were very expensive and so
to combat this issue we tried to find different keywords that would fit our ads and would
come with a lower cost. As our group learned the science behind Google AdWords and
how to manage the performance, our campaigns continually improved. There were times
when our numbers dipped a bit but the campaign overall had an upward sloping trend.
Success Stories
When reviewing our AdWords campaign, we were happy to find a few areas
where we were able to improve our efficiency. First, we looked at our current keywords
and added more based on how our current ones were performing. One of the most
successful keywords we added was the long tail phrase “Rock climbing gyms in
Houston.” This particular phrase generated an overall click-through rate (CTR) of 25%.
Another addition we made after letting the campaign run for a couple of weeks, was our
revision to our geotargeting settings. These revisions included the addition of six cities
and a county that contained multiple small towns. Our geotargeting alterations led to
some improved CTRs of up to 50% in some areas. This trend can be observed in the
above graph.
Failures
Our Brand campaign was simply not getting the clicks that other campaigns were
due to the fact that there were virtually no impressions either. For this reason we decided
to drop this campaign and focus our resources on the other three.
Conclusions
One of the biggest takeaways from this project was the need to manage costs per
clicks and keywords frequently. In order for the ads to perform well and achieve high
CTRs, key words must be effectively matched with ads. The highest performing
campaign was Healthy Living with a CTR of 4.33% so this campaign should be
continued in the future. When there are campaigns that have high costs for each keyword,
these ad groups must be monitored closely to manage costs and keep position high. This
was an issue that was encountered and challenged the team during this project. Along
with this, we have concluded the high importance of relevant, timely ads.
Future Recommendations
Our team would recommend that Texas Rock Gym continue to use Google
AdWords in their marketing efforts. Through this campaign, we have been able to not
only show the value of this tool to the client but also educate them on how to manage
their campaigns. Additionally we have provided them with the knowledge they need
about keywords that are impactful or not and the metrics that they should be expecting in
terms of CTR, CPC and average position. Geo-targeting will also be a beneficial tool for
them to ensure that they are marketing to their key customers. We also recommend to
them that they utilize SEO for their website in order to take full advantage of organic
search traffic. Lastly we recommend that they continue and grow their current use of
social media. They currently have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a Google+ page
and we suggest that they implement an Instagram account as well.
3. Learning Component
Learning Objectives and Outcomes
We understand how vital it is to embrace the digital world that we live in. Our
team viewed the GOMC as a great opportunity to gain hands-on experience while
providing our client with marketing guidance that would be beneficial for their company.
Our goals were to gain a better understanding on how to choose appropriate keywords to
implement in our campaign as well as be able to set and manage our budget and
campaign goals. We also hoped to learn how to maximize click through rates and manage
costs-per-click. By achieving these goals it would enable us to apply our knowledge to
produce useful insights for our client while ultimately increasing their ROI. As a whole,
we came out with a greater understanding of the Google AdWords Platform and how to
maximize the results from campaigns. One of the biggest outcomes from this campaign
was all of us understanding the complexity of online marketing but the importance it
plays and will continue to play in our lives. Before this competition, we all
underestimated the skill it takes to successfully implement Google AdWords and did not
expect to learn so much from this project. We expected to be challenged in our
knowledge of online marketing but we were pleasantly surprised to be taken out of our
comfort zone and gain understanding about a vital piece of today’s online world.
Group Dynamics
Each member of our team worked to overcome obstacles so that we could come
together and succeed. We had a set of diverse yet complementary skills among the group
that allowed us to effectively collaborate our knowledge in online marketing and apply it
to our campaigns. To begin, our team met to figure out what direction to take and what
campaign groups to implement that would reach the goals we set out to achieve. We
chose one team member as our point-of-contact for our client who would constantly
ensure the goals we had set for the campaigns aligned with our goals. Each member
monitored the clicks, impressions, CPC, CTC, and budget to make sure our results were
improving. Since each team member was monitoring the campaign, an unexpected
challenge we experienced was being able to manage our different schedules and address
any issues as a group. To combat this, we made sure we stayed in communication with
one another while also trusting that individual decision would be in the best interest of
our goals. Services such as Google Drive and GroupMe helped us communicate and stay
up to date even when we could not physically meet. We were all able to learn from each
other and rely on the strengths of others in order to complete this campaign.
Client Dynamics
Our client was very willing to work with us and give us the information and
feedback that we needed to properly conduct our campaigns. We expected that our client
wouldn’t be very familiar with Google AdWords and how campaigns are implemented
and run. This was true and we worked to update and explain to our client what we were
doing periodically along the way. Our client was very accepting of all that Google
AdWords can do and is looking forward to utilizing this tool in the future.
Future recommendations
Looking back, there were certainly steps or directions that we could have taken in
order to improve multiple components. In regards to the strategy of the campaign, each
individual ad group could have been fine tuned if we had the time and could build off of
what we achieved so far. Deeper analysis of successful pairings would be beneficial. On
the whole we feel we were able to do an exemplary job on this but there is always room
to improve. In terms of the learning experience, much of what we learned came through
trial and error. Gaining more background information about both the Google AdWords
platform and what makes a successful ad may have better prepared us. Even with trial
and error we were able to quickly learn what worked and what did not. With group
dynamics, we were quite pleased how well the team was able to work together. The
struggles faced were mainly scheduling conflicts due to the large group. With a group of
six, finding time when each member of the group could meet was difficult. Additionally,
communicating a united vision on how we wanted the campaign to run was challenging.
With six people having access to the campaign with different ideas about how it should
be run the campaign could have easily gone off track and failed. We were able to work as
a team to set some goals for each other and run a united campaign.