73% Reduction In Cost Per Lead For Leading Renewable Energy Firm

Overview

Cinergi is a seasoned team of heating and power engineers based in Southampton, specialising in renewable energy installations. The business had been running Google Ads but was plagued with progressively declining conversions and a misleading cost per lead, which was reported as £305 in April. When brand terms were excluded, the cost shot up to £610.

“The initial audit itself was a wake-up call, revealing issues with our ad structure and conversion tracking that we weren’t aware of.”

Dan, Owner of Cinergi

Screenshot of Cinergi’s old Ad campaign (April 2023) with a cost per lead of £305 (£610 excluding brand terms)

Challenges

Inefficient Ad Group and Campaign Structure

Our first move was to audit the account, where we discovered several challenges:

• Brand Skewing: Brand campaigns were mixed with general campaigns, inflating performance metrics.
  
• High Cost Per Conversion: Removing brand-based conversions revealed a shocking cost per conversion of £610.
  
• Inactive Keywords: Several keywords had no impressions and needed to be either removed or revised.
  
• Limited Keyword Matching: All keywords were set to phrase match, limiting the ad’s exposure and performance.
  
• Poor Quality Scores: Except for the brand keywords, the majority had very low quality scores.
  
• Landing Page and Ad Relevance: Both were evaluated as below average, affecting the ad performance and user experience.

The Strategy

Streamlined Campaign & Ad Group Structure

Adding brand terms to the master negative keyword list ensured all campaigns were not skewed by brand-based conversions. Plans to create new brand-based campaigns are in the pipeline if deemed necessary, but at this point, it was felt the budget would be better spent on search terms higher up the sales funnel.

We also rebuilt all the campaigns from scratch, to ensure these were created with best-practice methods and were aligned with the strategy set out in the 90-Day Growth Generator.

Keyword Optimisation

We introduced a balanced mix of phrase and exact match keywords, with plans to experiment with broad match types in our 90-Day Growth Generator. We also pruned inactive keywords and devised a strong negative keyword list.

Quality Score and Relevance Improvements

We improved the ad copy and worked closely with the client to enhance landing page content. This lifted the Quality Scores for the majority of the keywords, making the ads more competitive and cost-effective.

Landing Page Optimisation

Our CRO efforts were targeted, focusing mainly on the above-the-fold area. We revised the copy and made form adjustments to encourage higher conversion rates.

“Since teaming up with SMEketing, we’ve seen our conversion rates shoot up and our cost per lead cut nearly in half.”

Dan, Owner of Cinergi

The Results

By September, the improvements were striking, and notably, all brand terms were removed from this data:

• Cost per lead dropped from £610 to £159.
  
• Conversion rates leaped from 3.13% to 5.02%.

Screenshot of Cinergi’s new Google Ad campaign (Sept 2023) with a cost per lead of £159

“This partnership has been profitable and enlightening, and we couldn’t recommend SMEketing more highly.”

Dan, Owner of Cinergi

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