account structure: business needs & cutting waste by susan wenograd

#SMX #23B @SusanEDub

Account Structure: Business Needs &

Cutting Waste


Favorite SEM answer:IT DEPENDS!

“How Do You Restructure Campaigns?”


• Don’t do it just to do it• Identify where structure is holding you back, and fix

that• Preserve what exists when possible to capitalize on

history• Launch in parallel with current setup• As new setup cannabilizes old, turn off

But Seriously: How We Approach Restructures


A New Client Came To Us

There were…obvious structure problems.

But there was also a business problem: their leads for a free trial, weren’t becoming paying customers.


And Their Results Were “Meh.”

…11 paying customers

$84k estimated lifetime value (2 years)

Meh.


First, How Is Structure Hurting?Client had 3 Campaigns: Brand, Competitor, and Non-Brand.Each targeted 4 geographies – red flag #1.


First, How Is Structure Hurting?Non-Brand had a similar issue: high-CPA Ad Groups were stealing budget from the lower CPA ones


First, How Is Structure Hurting?

All Match Types were in every ad group, so Broad just ate everything. They also a lot of keyword permutations, some of which should have been separated out more.

Match Type Sum of Impressions Sum of ClicksBroad 39979 882Exact 266 9Phrase 225 0Grand Total 40470 891


Get The Idea?The client asked if we had any thoughts.


But THEN!Surprise!“We want to stop focusing on SMB and move the business model to servicing mid-size/enterprise level users.”


This Required More Thought• Average customer value of different terms• Likely search intent (freebie-seekers vs. serious

buyers)• Further control over matching• More control over budget allocation


So We Made a Quick Plan – Month 1• Campaigns by Country• Evaluate Non-Brand for budget allocation

opportunities• Make Ad Groups tighter• Launch new build and run with old build to coax

traffic transfer


Conversion Rate Went Down!

….but their paying leads increased to 31 in the first month. Lifetime value: $192k.

Quality > Quantity because the larger clients are fewer but worth more money. We WANTED less immediate conversions if they were wasteful.


Then We Built Out the Plan More – Month 2• Create a Campaign for big time winners• Identify the early high-performing search queries

and house their exact match version in a single keyword ad group

• Don’t forget to add it as an exact match negative to other setups.


Messaging By Ad Group• Ad Copy Revamps were easier due more granular

contents• Removed “free trial” call-outs• Added in qualifying information about client size ($

amount processed per month, how many orders, etc.)

• Created two new Campaigns off two major keyword themes that had a handful of SKAGs in each


…It Worked Again

30 converted to paying customers – same as previous month but they were worth a lot more: $263k in lifetime customer value


What About B2C?

Glad you asked.

Client: App-based service offering, optimizing towards utilization. Healthcare field.

We started at the beginning again…what is the structure hurting?


What Is the Structure Hurting?

Basically everything.

Query matching was a mess.



Merged search query theme performance never seemed to be analyzed:


Basically.



Brand queries were being matched to non-brand, skewing the brand vs. non-brand reporting.


What Determined Structure Moving Forward?

• Importance of Brand vs. Non-Brand• Keyword fencing galore• House high-performing exact match in their own

setup to allocate the most budget there first.• Create “feeder” campaigns of broad match to help

us find new queries (exact match winners as negatives)

• All tests tightly controlled in individual campaigns with assigned budget


How Did It Do?


Determining Structure

What is limiting you in current structure at a Campaign level?• Budgeting• Control over bid modifiers (day parting)• When a geo should have its own Campaign vs. a bid mod


Determining Structure

What is limiting you in current structure at an Ad Group level?• Major differences in match type performance• Ad copy needs based on user intent (note this especially

for RLSA where it’s not its own Campaign)• Inability to add negative keywords that have to apply to

some terms, but not others• Again, budgeting: if one is eating a ton of money, it might

need to go from Ad Group Campaign


Is There Anything Worth Keeping?

• Things that aren’t hurting, they just may not be the way you like to do it

• Lower-volume instances where it has taken awhile to accrue data/results

#SMX #23B @SusanEDubSEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX!

THANK YOU!

account structure: business needs & cutting waste by susan wenograd

Marketing