AdWords for the Local Market – A Short Case Study

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Speaking of Google AdWords, we often have to face the objection that “AdWords is an expensive tool that needs months to works properly only if you invest high budgets.”
On the contrary, in my humble opinion, I can say that if you structure your campaigns in an effective way, create a relevant landing page and place your business in the right market, Google AdWords can work really good starting from the first day.

If you are curious to understand how it is possible, go through this short case study.

Case-Study-Local-Marketing

The star of this short case study is a new shop for iPhone repair based in a city of small dimensions in North Italy.

We all know very well that smartphones’ accidental falls are frequent. For their repair, the market’s scenario is pretty defined. Especially when it comes to Apple, the alternatives are:
– Apple’s official repair stores: expensive and quite slow; you cannot find an official store in each city on Italian territory;
– unofficial repair stores: generally low cost, usually managed by Chinese people; they use cheap replacements; quite slow as well; they’re not able in communication.

The shop we promote is positioned exactly in the middle between these two poles. Its services turns to:
a) people prepared to spend a little extra cash for an effective reparation made with original replacements (or 99.9% compatible) in a store managed by polite people speaking an impeccable Italian;
b) people that have the urgency of repairing their iPhones in a few hours (the local store we promote promises its customers to return their smartphones in just 1 hour).
In addition: the store has a warehouse full of replacements and its technicians are all AAA+++; the shop is located in a very central part of the city.

The Marketing Strategy

  1. An effective landing page.
    Thanks to the help of an expert, we created an effective landing page (basically a one-page website) based on a “problem and solution” approach. Through the dynamic keywords for ads, I took users exactly to the solution to their problems. “Is your screen broken? Is your battery completely dead?”…perfect! The local store we are promoting is the answer to your drama. Plus, an effective landing page is also useful to increase ad relevance.
  2. Keywords Analysis.
    For our promotional campaign, I choose keywords accurately. Exact keywords and specific BMM organized on a problem (for example broken screen, broken display, broken touchscreen, low battery, broken speaker etc.). In the process of choosing keywords, I added the negative ones before making the campaign start in order to not waste traffic and money.
  3. AdWords set-up.
    The third step was to create two separate AdWords campaigns: a day campaign (store opening hours) and a night one. In the night campaign, I discouraged the possibility of using the phone to reach the store (both in ads and landing page). Anyway, the store has a voicemail that invites the customer to provide his name and telephone number for recalls.
  4. Attention to communication.
    In both landing page and ads, we gave the customer different possibilities to communicate with the shop: through contact form, through click to call from ad, through click to call from landing page (with Google forwarding phone number), through Facebook Messenger chat.
  5. Social Network.
    We used also a Facebook Pixel: AdWords will always be the principal channel for customers who have the urgency to solve a problem but Facebook can be used to sell additional services or accessories.

Results in 10 days of promotion

The owner of the shop seems to be very satisfied and refers that “a lot of people starts to visit the shop and use our services.” As I said at the beginning of the story, the store is new and has now started to build its own brand. For what I can say by the number of positive reviews of the shop…they work extremely well.

Case-Study-Attivita-Locali-Risultati

In this image, you can see the contact forms’ requests and the calls (>30 seconds) coming from the landing page.

Let’s try to give an estimate of costs. With an effective landing page that works properly and € 68 of traffic, we earned 19 leads (interested people) with a cost per lead of 3.61 €. 10 days is a short period to make a complete evaluation of the project but I’m quite sure that numbers can improve.

What have we learned?

a) A correct business model makes the greatest part of the work.
And then, a good communication. If you position your store correctly on the communication level too, the higher price of the service is not a problem for the customer.
b) An effective landing page makes a conversion possible.
To create it, conceive it, make it usable and clear for the user, responsive (for desktop and mobile). The landing page has to answer to user’s questions: which problem do I have? How can I solve it? Why would I choose this shop? Which advantages can it give me? Try to eliminate any possible resistance to the action. (To learn more about landing pages, I recommend Luca Orlandini’s book “Effective Landing Page“).
c) Data can help you to improve your skills and results.
Collecting data on what happens to your campaigns helps you to do better in the future. The amount of AdWords accounts that I manage which didn’t have an efficient tracking of conversions is huge (and an unforgivable mistake).
d) Profitable campaigns come from experience and common sense.
Creating detailed and careful campaigns since from the first day helps you to predict what can work and eliminates the risk of wasting your customer’s money.

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If you have any doubt, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

One Response

  1. Avatar Valerio Celletti 25/07/2018