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Conversion Optimiser Benefits
  • Free feature for AdWords advertisers: No extra fees or new interfaces to learn
  • Increases profits: Multi-dimensional bid management for AdWords better matches ads with customers, increasing conversions while maintaining or lowering CPA
  • Improves branding campaigns: Strategically raises CPA goals for select ad groups to enhance their brand awareness
  • Saves time: Decreases time spent managing CPC bids
  • Easy to use: Spend less time coordinating bid experiments
  • Easy to try: AdWords remembers your old CPC bids if you ever want to turn it off

The Conversion Optimiser: Meineke used Google Conversion Optimiser to reduce cost per acquisition (CPA) by 50%

Challenge

Founded in 1972 and headquartered in Charlotte, NC, Meineke is an international franchise-based automotive service and repair chain, with over 900 franchised service centres. One of the ways the company uses its website, Meineke.com, is to help drive new customer acquisitions for its franchises through the use of coupons.

Meineke defines a conversion as an individual who prints an online coupon, redeemable at one of the company’s car care shops. It uses various media to drive traffic and conversions, including online advertising with Google AdWords™. With the goal of lowering its cost per acquisition (CPA), Meineke turned to its trusted agency partner, Integrated Media Solutions (IMS), for ideas. "In today’s environment and based on our budget limitations, measuring the benefits received from our online ad efforts is key," says Don Rauch, director of advertising, Meineke Car Centers, Inc. "We constantly challenge our agency to provide data on each campaign and recommend adjustments and solutions that allow us to reach our goals."

"We saw the challenge as helping them stretch their marketing dollars by improving efficiency and results without increasing their media spend," explains J.V. Salumbides, director of digital accounts for IMS.

Managing accounts with the addition of Conversion Optimiser is definitely more efficient. We spend less time manually managing bids at the keyword level. Conversion Optimiser does an exceptional job of helping us reach a target CPA. What’s perhaps even more important is its ability to provide instant feedback that helps us keep campaigns on track and ensures our clients that we’re held accountable for meeting their marketing goals."

- J.V. Salumbides, director of digital accounts for IMS

Approach

The Conversion Optimiser is a free AdWords feature that makes adjustments to cost-per-click (CPC) bids based on the likelihood that a conversion will result from each ad auction, helping advertisers manage advertising costs and maximise results. IMS had recently begun using Google Conversion Optimiser and thought that it would prove valuable for Meineke.

IMS used the feature to specify Meineke’s maximum CPA bids. "We configured Conversion Optimiser to set their keywords’ CPC bids automatically," explains J.V. "Not only was it very easy to set up and run for the campaigns, but it also provided instant feedback, which helped us keep Meineke’s campaigns on track. We could easily track conversions and Conversion Optimiser gave us greater visibility into the results of campaigns."

Results

A combination of optimised AdWords campaigns driving traffic to the site and the use of Conversion Optimiser by IMS have decreased Meineke’s CPA by 50 percent.

Since making Conversion Optimiser a standard part of their approach, the IMS team is managing accounts more efficiently. They can spend less time monitoring and editing CPC bids at granular levels, and devote more time to deep dive into account analyses and future media planning.

"We are seeing excellent results with Conversion Optimiser, even with client that have more complex, lengthy customer acquisition processes," says Jessica Mamey, Account Manager for IMS. "Conversion Optimiser has become standard tool in our arsenal. It works well across the board, whether we are using it to manage certain campaigns or ad groups or for specifically targeted acquisition goals."

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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 http://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 on. 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 http://adwords.google.co.uk.

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