Paid Search Case Study: Importance of Keyword Research

Our strategy for capturing relevant traffic was to find keywords searched by pool professionals with minimal overlap compared to keywords searched by private pool owners, and to write ad copy that spoke to professionals while dissuading personal consumers from clicking the ad.

The client was primarily interested in advertising for the brands of the products they sold, and only secondarily interested in general professional pool service terms. We suggested running both branded and general pool professional terms, as our keyword research suggested there was acquired sales volume in both keyword markets. Given their small initial budget, they opted to run only ads targeting keywords for the brands that they sold, despite our advice. We ran only branded keywords for several months before the client increased their budget to accommodate the non-branded pool service keyword list.

After running both branded supplier terms and general pool service professional terms for several months, we saw significant differences between the 2 categories. The general pool service terms had a slightly higher CPC, but also a significantly increased conversion rate, click-through-rate as well as a lower cost per conversion. In general, the professional pool service campaigns performed 2x as well as the branded terms.

Based off the results below, we recommended allocating all available budget to the non-branded campaigns, as they were all limited by budget and significantly outperforming the branded campaigns. Good keyword research is essential for starting any new client, and in this case, it helped us find a keyword market that was outside what the client thought their customers searched for. Targeting this new market helped reduce costs and grow the business.