The Conversion Optimiser: Employing the right tools

Golley Slater Digital and reed.co.uk save time and money with Google's Conversion Optimiser

Golley Slater Digital is a full service digital marketing agency, part of the Golley Slater Group with headquarters in London. Golley Slater encourages a strong emphasis on innovation, new product development and uptake that delivers optimum ROI for their clients.

reed.co.uk, launched in 1995, was the first recruitment site offered by a recruitment agency in the UK. Since then, reed.co.uk has developed into the UK’s leading recruitment site, offering over 200,000 jobs and generating more than 1.2 million job applications a month. Golley Slater Digital began working on Pay-Per-Click (PPC) advertising with reed.co.uk in the Summer of 2005.

Account management before Conversion Optimiser

Golley Slater Digital’s day-to-day management of the reed.co.uk AdWords account included ongoing keyword research, ad optimisation and Cost-per-Click (CPC) optimisation in order to meet Cost-per-Application (CPA) targets. Account performance was measured through CPC, spend and CPA metrics for jobseeker registrations on the site.

The reed.co.uk account is populated with thousands of keywords, ranging from generic to long-tail and from job titles to location-based terms. These keywords are split into sector specific campaigns, with different CPA targets assigned to each campaign. Therefore, without a bid management system, the responsibility of strategically managing the CPCs of these terms on a CPA basis was left to the Golley Slater Digital optimisation team.

This was a manual and time-consuming process, requiring the frequent download of reports, analysis of keyword statistics and, subsequently, the adjustment of keyword bids to ensure that target CPAs were met. Once keywords with unmanageably or unprofitably high CPAs were identified, they had to be paused, their bids reassessed or ads optimised.

Step 1: Implementing Conversion Tracking

Golley Slater Digital implemented Google Conversion Tracking across reed.co.uk’s campaign in August 2007, allowing them to obtain the number of conversions directly from the Google interface, as opposed to having to match AdWords reports with a 3rd party tracking tool.

Once Conversion Tracking had proved itself as a reliable and effective tool to measure jobseeker conversions, Golley Slater Digital felt comfortable initiating the Conversion Optimiser on one of reed.co.uk’s biggest campaigns containing their top keywords.

Step 2: Implementing Conversion Optimiser

Golley Slater Digital implemented the Conversion Optimiser on reed.co.uk’s account in February 2008. Their main campaign contained reed.co.uk’s most competitive generic and top performing keywords that required regular micro-management in order to bid effectively and competitively.

The results - conversions inrease by up to 31%

Once the ad group cost per acquisitions (CPAs) had been entered, Golley Slater Digital let the Conversion Optimiser run without making further changes so that the system could bed in. Within a few weeks the benefits were clear, with conversion numbers increasing by as much as 31%.

Coupled with this, the agency estimates that they "save 8 hours per campaign per month on CPC optimisation which [they] now spend on more rigorous keyword research, ad optimisation, analysis, benchmarking and recommendations".

As Florian Grouffal, Head of PPC at Golley Slater Digital says "Google’s Conversion Optimiser has been critical to reed.co.uk’s PPC campaign success and has ensured that Golley Slater Digital and reed.co.uk have consistently met and exceeded our ongoing campaign objectives. It’s quite intuitive, easy to use and has delivered significant time saving on high-cost laborious tasks that has enabled us to dedicate our resources to more strategic and cost-effective tasks. I would recommend it to anyone looking to increase their ROI in an effective way.”

The agency have found that day-to-day management of reed.co.uk’s AdWords account is easier as conversions and their optimisation are all on one system. They have been using the tool for nearly three months now and have seen a 200% increase in the number of conversions, whilst cost per conversions have fallen by over 10%.

The impact

The agency are now able to reinvest the money being saved into further strategic and innovative optimisation of reed.co.uk’s account, allowing them to compete more aggressively by bidding and ranking higher in a competitive recruitment marketplace.

Ultimately, Golley Slater Digital find the Conversion Optimiser a more efficient way of achieving their CPA targets for reed.co.uk, encouraging further investment in PPC. Grouffal says, "I view AdWords not only as a marketing medium but as a sales one too."

Mark Rhodes, Head of Marketing at reed.co.uk, says: "Winning the battle to attract the best jobseekers is key to reed.co.uk’s success. By using Google’s tools to their full potential, Florian’s team at Golley Slater Digital continues to optimise our campaigns, ensuring we attract the right candidates at the right cost. Ongoing initiatives with Google and Golley Slater Digital will help us to extend our reach and further cement our position as UK recruitment’s most responsive job site.”

AdWords Conversion Tracking

Google AdWords Conversion Tracking is a free tool that measures the cost-effectiveness of your campaigns. With Conversion Tracking, you can see how many AdWords clicks actually lead to sales on your website. This allows you to make more informed decisions about your keywords and whether you should be bidding more or less on each click. For more information on Conversion tracking, please vist http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=gb&answer=86269&hl=en_GB

About Conversion Optimiser

The Conversion Optimiser is an AdWords feature that manages your advertising costs around specific conversion goals. Specify a maximum cost per acquisition (CPA) bid and the Conversion Optimiser manages your CPC bids for you, making adjustments based on the likelihood of a conversion in each ad auction. In addition to saving time in monitoring and managing your CPC bids, Conversion Optimiser advertisers may see better performance than manual bidding alone because it factors in different conversion rates such as search query, user location and conversion history of particular sites for each CPC bid. For more information about Conversion Optimiser, visit https://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=60150&hl=en_GB.

About Google AdWords

Google AdWords is currently used by thousands of businesses worldwide to gain new customers in a cost-effective way. AdWords uses keywords to target ad delivery precisely to web users seeking information about a particular product or service. The programme is based on cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, so advertisers only pay when an ad is clicked. Advertisers can take advantage of an extremely broad distribution network and choose the level of support and spending appropriate for their business. For more information on launching your own campaign or getting expert help, visit https://adwords.google.co.uk.