What do you do when you have competitors with much bigger marketing budgets than yours? Spend your dollars as wisely as possible, of course. How do you know you’re spending as wisely as possible? When your leads go up while your cost per lead goes down. How do you make that happen? Get very, very granular with exactly when and where you spend those dollars. Here are some of our favorite strategies for getting granular:
Let’s take a look at an (un)Common Logic web hosting client and see what digital marketing tips and tricks we can derive from their success story.
The Environment
Web hosting is a very competitive market, offering commoditized yet highly technical products. There are a few very large, well-known, well-funded competitors and many more providers with smaller budgets. How do those without deep pockets effectively spend their marketing dollars to get customers?
Target the Right Audience
First, we need to understand who their customers are and what they are looking for. Since this is a highly technical set of products, searchers sometimes use broad overarching terms and sometimes complex technical queries when looking for solutions. Our targeting, therefore, had to include both very broad and very specific keywords.
Broad keyword campaigns can quickly rack up costs (see what I did there?). How do we mitigate that? We continuously monitor these campaigns to isolate different matching trends and get rid of those which are unprofitable. For example, people searching for “minecraft server hosting” are likely to be gamers and not part of the target market for this client. By preventing those searchers from matching to our keywords, we remove the costs associated with serving them ads. This allows us to reduce costs and also to hone in on the audience most likely to convert.
In contrast to those using broad search terms, other searchers use very specific, complex technical queries. Those long-tailed queries are more likely to convert. In fact, one-third of this client’s conversions come from single queries: in other words, a searcher was so technically specific that they were the only person looking for those exact server requirements. 
When you can show that you know what that searcher is looking for, they’re much more likely to click on your ad and purchase your solution. Because these single impression leads drive a lot of revenue, we tailor our targeting to reach them.
Our granular account monitoring allows us to identify, separate, and create customized marketing campaigns for both the searchers using broad and specific terms. We even refined our targeting to reach the audience segment that drove BOTH the highest percentage of clicks and the highest percentage of conversions. This drives more marketing qualified leads to the site, leading to more revenue gains.
Our first digital marketing tip is to know your target market and tailor your marketing campaigns to them. Understanding the nuances of how your customers search for solutions and customizing targeting to those searches leads to revenue gains and cost efficiencies.
Don’t Be Afraid to Break the Rules
Because many in the target market use broad general search terms, those queries can sometimes be at the top and sometimes at the bottom of the buying funnel. Knowing this means that this account is structured differently than our usual best practice of moving searchers from the top to the bottom of the funnel using increasingly specific keywords. Sometimes, you have to know when to break the rules. As we do with each client, we created a customized solution for this client based on their business goals and their target market’s behavior.
The second digital marketing tip is to know best practices and be ready to pivot when doing so is the best way to meet business goals. Setting up your account so you can be flexible means you can identify and grab more opportunities.
Always Be Testing
How did we create a customized account structure? By applying another aspect of our philosophy: test, test, test. As one example, for this client we tested bid strategies. Given the limited budget of this client, we continuously search for ways to stretch it: pause ineffective keywords, reallocate resources, adjust bids based on time of day or other cyclical patterns, and more.
The third digital marketing tip is to create and implement a testing plan. Many people say they have a testing plan, not as many follow through. Be one of the ones who does, and you’ll be ahead of the pack.
More Customization
How else do we customize our approach for this client? In addition to tailoring our targeting, we use messaging to filter our audience. Highly tailored messaging will appeal to customers searching for certain hosting features, such as security, or for specific types of servers. Of course, we also use messaging to promote sales which drives additional traffic and revenue.
The fourth digital marketing tip is to use tailored messaging to more precisely target your audience. The more tailored your efforts, the more efficiently you’re spending your marketing budget.
With granular management of audience targeting, marketing campaigns, bid strategies, and messaging, in one year, we decreased this hosting company’s cost per lead by almost 50%. At the same time, we increased their lead volume by 15%. Put it all together and that’s winning using digital marketing.
Contact us to learn more about the (un)Common Logic approach to winning using digital marketing and how it can help achieve your business goals.
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