Customer Profile
The company highlighted here is an international manufacturer of medical equipment, a Fortune 500 company with multi-billion dollar revenues. Marketing challenges and goals Hospitals across the nation constitute one of the primary markets for this company. It's a finite market, with limited growth. "You don't see a new hospital popping up on every corner," says the company's marketing executive. "Because our market share goals are aggressive and our market is intensely competitive, one of the primary ways we can increase sales is to capture business from competitors." Taking business from competitors is easier said than done. The company is an innovation-driven company that puts more resources into research and development than marketing. The size of the company's sales force is moderate, and reps are often stretched thin because a large number of influencers—hospital administrators, physicians, IT directors, and others—are typically involved in making purchase decisions. The Google Solution The company's marketing strategy has traditionally revolved around trade shows and print advertising, but the power of the web as a marketing vehicle is becoming more compelling. Several developments have helped the company gain insight into how the web could benefit them. The company implemented an internal lead management system to track campaign effectiveness and a Siebel customer relationship management (CRM) system. In tandem, the marketing team began manually registering the company's web pages with directories (e.g. DMOZ, Yahoo!, etc.), which were not previously appearing in natural searches because the web pages featured dynamic URLs. Once the site started to become indexed with search engines, the number of website visitors driven by organic search on Google jumped from 300 to 5,000 per month. Better yet, the marketing staff discovered that approximately 50 percent of all ‘net new' qualified opportunities were originating from the company's website. "It was a real eye-opener," says a marketing manager. "We were getting half of all net new qualified opportunities without the high cost of trade shows and advertising." 
To drive even more traffic to the website, the company's marketing team first tried Google AdWords search-based advertising in 2005. They bid on the company name and several product names, but soon realized that some products across the company's divisions had the same names. After realizing that they were competing for keywords with the company's other subsidiaries, the marketing team went to corporate to develop a coordinated AdWords strategy. The second time the marketing executive's team tried Google AdWords, Google's Business and Industrial Markets team stepped in. "Google went all out, putting together keywords and campaigns," recalls the executive. "The team was very helpful." Results At first, the low conversion rates for the generic keywords were believed to be related to driving too much consumer traffic to the site. But as soon as the company began selecting unique keywords, like those that identified a particular type of CT scanner, and driving traffic to conversion-oriented sites, conversion rates jumped to a healthy 6 percent. Prospective customers were downloading white papers, registering for webcasts, or visiting the contact us page a significant percentage of the time. According to the marketing executive, all of these conversions can be attributed to natural or paid search on Google 
"A whopping 90 percent of calls into our call center are coming from the website," says the marketing executive. "22 percent of these website calls are "warm" enough to be further qualified, with 87 percent of these leads turning into qualified opportunities for the field. In the last 18 months, we can attribute $87.7 million in revenue directly to qualified opportunities coming from the website." 
The marketing team is now working on search optimization and creation of landing pages to further boost results. They're also integrating online and offline efforts. For instance, the marketing team timed an AdWords campaign around a CT scanner with a major TV talk show on the topic, with the goal of searing the company's brand into the minds of viewers alongside this hot new type of CT scanner. Before the episode aired, the product's microsite was averaging approximately 800 page views and 160 sessions per day. The day after the episode hit the airwaves, traffic to the microsite soared to more than 11,540 pages views, a 1,341% increase, and 1,489 sessions, an +830% increase. 
More importantly, inbound call volume, a source of qualified leads, significantly increased as well – prior to the airing, the call center was averaging approximately 65 calls per day. After the show, the call center volume increased approximately 75% for the duration of the week. 
For the next five months, the traffic increase remained more than double what they had been before the airing – the new average became 1,971 page views and 343 sessions per day. Then, the show reran the same episode. The company increased the budget for AdWords for the following day. The day after the show re-aired both page views and sessions soared to 16,607 page views, a +742% increase over the new average, and 2,155 sessions, a +528% increase over the new average. "Google AdWords is such an integral part of our ability to get traction on the web," says the marketing executive. "The more visitors to the site, the more leads we get in the funnel. And the more inbound calls we get, the higher our revenues – it's that simple." Business and Industrial Markets (BIM) at Google The Business & Industrial Markets team provides dedicated account service to customers across four segments – manufacturers, distributors, service providers & publishers in the following subverticals:
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 precisely target ad delivery to web users seeking information about a particular product or service. The program 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.com. Would you like to share your Google AdWords success story with us? We'd love to hear from you! Return to BIM overview page |
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