Google AdWords

The Conversion Optimizer

Who they are
What they needed
  • To save time
  • To grow their customer base
  • To improve the effectiveness of their AdWords campaigns
What they did
  • Started with Google AdWords in 2006
  • Set up a campaigns on Google’s search and content networks
  • Used the Conversion Optimizer to adjust CPC bids
What they accomplished
  • Grew business: Increased the unit profit margin by 150%
  • Lowered costs: Decreased CPA by 25 percent
  • Saved time: Moved from daily to weekly campaign management
  • Improved performance: Campaigns show on top web sites

Playing to win

Bingo Card Creator used the Google Conversion Optimizer to increase profit margins by 150%.

More than across and down

While working as an English As a Second Language (ESL) instructor in Japan, Patrick McKenzie noticed vocabulary bingo was popular among his students. The only problem was that it took 45 minutes to create enough bingo cards to play. To save time, Patrick decided to write software that would automate the card-creation process, and Bingo Card Creator was born.

While Patrick envisioned his main market to be educators – and the majority of the company’s customers are elementary schools – others have used Bingo Card Creator in ways he’d never imagined. “A Fortune 500 company used Bingo Card Creator to create an icebreaker activity,” Patrick says, “and a health-related government agency used Bingo Card Creator to help educate senior citizens on the importance of a healthy diet.”

Sole player

Patrick’s marketing efforts are focused on getting new users to download and try a free trial of Bingo Card Creator. As a sole proprietor, Patrick can’t dedicate all his time to marketing, so he relies on organic search results and Google AdWords™ to drive traffic to the Bingo Card Creator website.

During his first year using AdWords, Patrick was pleased with the thousands of leads generated by his campaigns. He also tried running ads on Google’s content network, made up of millions of high-quality news pages, topic-specific websites, and blogs. However, promoting and developing his product, he quickly realized that it can take significant time to optimize content network campaigns so they run only on sites that generate high conversion rates.

Game on

To reduce the amount of time it took to monitor his AdWords campaigns, Patrick decided to try the Conversion Optimizer, a new AdWords bid management feature. “It was just what I was looking for,” he explains. “I can specify how much I want to spend to acquire each new customer, and this feature will adjust my cost-per-click (CPC) bids, based on the likelihood of a conversion resulting from each of my AdWords ad auctions.” The Conversion Optimizer predicts conversion rates based on factors including the search query and the conversion history of particular sites.

Right away, the Conversion Optimizer had a positive impact on Patrick’s business. In just the first month, it helped Bingo Card Creator decrease the Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA) by 25 percent. Today, the company’s unit profit margin is up more than 150 percent, increasing from $5 to $13 per unit.

Bingo!

”I’ve been particularly impressed by how the Conversion Optimizer has improved the performance of my ads on the content network,” notes Patrick. “For instance, a Bingo Card Creator ad was featured on a Halloween party games webpage on About.com, a Google content network site.”

And Patrick no longer has to spend as much time managing his AdWords campaigns. “I’ve cut down my involvement with the content network from a very stressful, mandatory daily session to a leisurely, weekly session, which I can skip if I want to,” he explains. “[The Conversion Optimizer] algorithms take care of finding the gems and discarding the trash without my intervention. I really can’t stress how powerful this is for a time-pressed small businessman.”

Because of the success Bingo Card Creator has enjoyed using the Conversion Optimizer, Patrick has increased his company’s AdWords budget five-fold. “It might not be obvious that I should be happy when I spend more on advertising,” he says. “However, if ROI continues to stay positive, you naturally want to spend as much as possible as long as it maximizes absolute profits.”

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About Conversion Optimizer

The Conversion Optimizer is an AdWords feature that helps advertisers manage advertising costs. Advertisers simply specify their maximum cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bid, and the Conversion Optimizer sets all their keywords' cost-per-click (CPC) bids automatically. The Conversion Optimizer makes adjustments in CPC bids based on the likelihood that a conversion will result from each ad auction. In addition to decreasing the time advertisers spend monitoring and managing CPC bids, the Conversion Optimizer can help improve AdWords campaign performance. For more information, visit http://adwords.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=60150.

About Google AdWords

Google AdWords™ is a performance-based advertising program that enables businesses large and small to advertise on Google and its network of partner websites. Hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide use AdWords for text, image, and video ads priced on a cost-per-click (CPC) and cost-per-impression (CPM) basis. Built on an auction-based system, AdWords is a highly quantifiable and cost-effective way to reach potential customers. For more information, visit http://www.google.com/adwords

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