PPC Search Engine Marketing Case Study – Shutter Designs

PPC Search Engine Marketing for Plantation Shutter Company

Shutter Design is owned by Chris and Nicola Kevane. They supply and fit high quality interior window shutters to homes in the North of England. 

Zelst Online Marketing were approached in Summer 2007 by Chris who was setting up in business on his own account, selling and installing his own sourced range of Plantation Shutters. Chris had worked in the industry for a number of years and was experienced in the marketing tactics used by the main companies, which tended to rely on events, such as Country Shows and Home Exhibitions and Newspaper and Magazine Advertising as well as Internet Marketing, which Chris believed was becoming increasingly important. From the outset Chris was sure that the Internet would be a significant channel and that Search Marketing would play a key role in developing his business. In addition to this Chris planned to attend a number of Country Shows and Home Events and advertised in the Yorkshire Post and Yorkshire Life.

Chris commissioned a simple website from Webdesign4you (with Zelst Online Marketing providing some input into the design and content) and discussed with Zelst Online Marketing the marketing plan for his business, the target market, catchment area, industry background and main sales proposition. Chris also provided a list of keywords that he thought would be important. 

Zelst Online Marketing then developed a campaign based around the initial keyword list, though much expanded. The campaign was geographically targeted around the Yorkshire Area, with a range of advertising focused around the main customer benefits that his business offered, using a simple range of landing pages reflecting the various messages.

Because of the competiveness of the market, click costs were considerable to achieve prominent rankings, in many cases in excess of £2 per click. Because of this, it was essential to ensure that only quality traffic was targeted and correct keyword identification and advertising copy was vital. In addition, it was crucial to ensure that the traffic that arrived at the site were provided with the right user experience and were encouraged to complete the required objective, i.e. to request an appointment or arrange for someone to measure up.

To monitor the effectiveness of each click and also measure what each visitor did once they landed on the site, both from the PPC Campaign and also as a result of Shutter Design's other marketing activity, Zelst Online Marketing installed both Adwords Conversion Tracking and Google Analytics.

As Zelst Online Marketing have optimised the campaign over the last 30 months, eliminating non-performing or non-converting activity and expanding and developing the activity that has been bringing results, the campaign has got better and better. Click Through Rates (CTR) have regularly exceeded 10% and many keywords and phrases achieve CTR's of over 50%. Conversion rates and cost per conversion have increased and decreased accordingly and overall position and cost per click have continued to improve, especially relative to the increasing competition within the market place.

By constantly learning from previous activity and improving targeting, the Bounce Rate has been reduced significantly and is now in the mid-20% range. Despite the site being relatively small, average page views per visitor are over 7 and the average visitor spends over 3 minutes on the site.

When Chris Analysed the performance of his various marketing activities, to his surprise the Search Marketing Campaign had not only delivered the most cost effective results, i.e. at the lowest marketing cost per order but had achieved also the highest absolute number of orders, despite more money being spent on the other activities. In addition, again contrary to some opinion, the leads from the Internet were of a higher quality, converting at a much higher level than offline leads and the Average Order Value from the Internet leads was significantly higher.

As a result of this Chris has significantly increased his online spend on a continual basis, as his business has grown and grown, and in January 2010 received his highest number of leads ever, all directly from the web.

In the autumn of 2009 Shutter Design commission a new website, allowing more information to be provided to customers and potential customers, in light of the feedback from Zelst with regard to their SEO programme. This SEO programme integrates with the PPC campaign to increase overall exposure of the company and reduce overall click cost. Visit the Shutter Design website here.