The Problem
We’ve done a short analysis to prepare the offer for website promotion in Google AdWords contextual advertising services.
Here’s the result:
- The search engine. 89% of Georgian users prefer Google as a search engine.
2. Competition. High: the first page of Google has 7 ads.
3. The website should correlate with Google’s Advertising Policy.
That’s why we have offered the next changes to the client:
- Add the company’s real address to the “Contacts” section ;
- Change the crediting terms and conditions on the website because we found out that the advertising of the personal credits with the loan replay term of 60 or fewer days is not allowed by Google.
4. Language. Users use Georgian, Latin transliteration, and English.
What did we offer?
After the analysis of the website, the market, and the competition, we have developed the media plan and Google AdWords promotion strategy.
The plan.
- Google AdWords account creation: search campaigns, Display Plannings,
- Setting and testing the Google Analytics goals to analyze and optimize the ad campaigns.
- Setting the ads scheduling according to the user’s activity data.
- The analysis and the update of the ads/applications depending on the traffic value/CTR/ completed goals.
The strategy.
- Creating and managing the search engine campaigns to get the maximal reach during the high competition. Taking the first page positions, including the quality score increasing and lowering the CPC.
- Creating and managing the media campaigns that will reach the issue-related website users and the right customers.
Implementation: problems and solutions.
Here are some circumstances that we’ve faced during the goals completing:
1. Language settings in Google AdWords interface.
The first issue was the fact that you can’t choose the Georgian language in the Google AdWords interface.
But we found out that Georgian users use English, Russian and Latin transliteration of the Georgian language more often than the Georgian language itself. That’s why we’ve selected “All languages” in the Google AdWords interface.
2. Working with two interpreters.
We have decided to work with two interpreters at the same time because we don’t know Georgian. That helped us to decrease the mistake probability because the first interpreter checked the second.
Interpreters and Google AdWords planner helped us to make a keywords list and account structure.
3. Lengths limits.
We found out that one Georgian symbol equals two allowed symbols. We had to change the technical task for the interpreters.
4. Customer’s journey through the conversion funnel for the goals settings.
You have to complete the whole user’s journey through the conversion funnel to track the campaign’s efficiency, check and set up the goals. Considering the need to confirm the phone number, we had to find the real Georgian person:)
Some website performance issues used to come out after all the steps in the user’s conversion funnel. We’ve performed some SEO processes and fixed some bugs.
5. High competition.
Due to high competition and budget limitations, we should have found how to decrease the CPC, including ways to increase quality and CTR without losing the reach positions.
What we did:
- Separated search campaigns into common queries like “Online crediting” and more accurate queries like “how to get microcredit”, to regulate bids and budgets in every campaign separately.
- Analyzed the advertisements, including adding new ones and pausing the inefficient ones.
- Tested the automated bidding strategies.
- Analyzed days, hours and user sessions data for the 01.09.2016 – 30.11.2016 period to schedule the advertising
- Additionally analyzed days, hours, and conversion data. Used the results to edit the Google AdWords schedule.
- Creatives in Google Display Network.
Graphics and adaptive creatives were declined because of “unsupported language”. That’s why we had to use text advertising or English creatives in Google Display Network.
- Georgian Laws.
The State of Georgia regulates this sphere legislatively.
The amendment to Georgian Civil Codex from Jan 15, 2017, fulfilled the Georgian laws with regulations regarding different kinds of credits. It was announced at topsesxi.com
Without going deep into the state’s crediting system, we stopped working on the project.
Results
Despite the early stoppage, we do not consider this experience as a waste of time.
Taking into account that contextual advertising is one of the lead generating sources and influences the KPIs, it is right to analyze general measures with and without considering the contextual advertising.
General site measures with contextual advertising:
- Traffic increased by 64%
- New users increased by 139%
- Conversions number increased by 49%
General site measures without contextual advertising:
- Traffic increased by 54%
- New users increased by 143%
- Conversions number increased by 56%
The percentage of contextual advertising for December 2016 was the 15% of the overall conversions number and increased from 12% to 15% since the contextual advertising campaign started.
The main changes in the contextual advertising for the whole period are the following:
We’ve increased the CTR and slightly improved the average position.
Conclusions
Our work brought the increased conversions number and new users both from contextual advertising and other traffic sources.
Optimized Google AdWords campaigns increased CTR, CPA, and CPC monthly.
We are sure that we would have achieved the goals of the project if we had no trouble with new state laws.