Business Challenge:
A major wireless phone carrier was facing increased challenges in conducting a successful Search Engine Marketing program, an arena where it had previously been very successful. The carrier market consolidated and resellers entered the picture, driving keyword search prices up 35% in six months. This made it difficult for the carrier to continue advertising online efficiently.
Search Marketing Challenge:
Because search keyword prices were rising briskly, all aspects of the carrier’s search advertising campaign had to be optimized. Merely adjusting bid prices downward would not help; the carrier would be consistently outbid. As a result, it would get inferior placement on search results pages or no placement at all, and lose market share.
Solutions:
Predictability: Because of Fathom Online’s technically sophisticated infrastructure, the Fathom team proposed a CPA (cost per acquisition) strategy that would guarantee that the wireless carrier would receive a set number of orders at a predetermined cost. This meant that sales conversion rates could be roughly predicted an advertiser’s dream.
Landing Page Optimization: Fathom extensively tested different landing pages and used different ones at different times to capitalize on the best opportunities. This offset rising keyword prices by increasing advertising conversion rates.
Keyword Expansion: Fathom tested multiple keyword ranking strategies, determining which delivered more bang for the buck. It expanded the universe of applicable keywords, largely by adding local searches. This substantially trimmed search advertisement bidding prices and enhanced advertising opportunities.
Partnership Value: Fathom integrated Efficient Frontier’s bid management technology to make an already-efficient keyword bid management system even more efficient.
Results:
In the first quarter of 2005, the carrier’s new campaign strategies produced 72% of the online advertising orders generated in all of 2004. And all orders generated from Fathom were profitable, despite rising keyword prices in the wireless category.
