46% Decrease in Cost-Per-Lead: Coastal Carrier Moving & Storage‍‍

Coastal Carrier, a prominent white-glove moving company operating in the Carolinas, faced a significant challenge in their digital marketing efforts. Prior to engaging with Encipher, Coastal Carrier was investing heavily in Google Ads, with monthly expenditures of approximately $10,000. Despite this substantial investment, the lead quality was poor and cost per lead remained steep at around $127.

The Problem: Poor Quality Leads

Coastal Carrier was struggling to bring in quality leads through paid channels - They needed a way to improve the quality of their paid leads.

In the past, they were using another agency who was bringing in steady lead volume, however the quality of leads just was not on par with what they were looking for.

Intending to remedy this issue, Encipher performed an audit on their Google Ad account and found issues that were causing this poor lead quality:

1. Branded Keywords: Coastal Carrier was spending money delivering ads to people who were searching for their name directly. This meant they were paying to show up with an ad when someone was already searching for their name, and furthermore, paying to acquire a lead that already wanted to contact them and would have done so organically.
2. Competitor Keywords: Inside the ad account, we found a significant portion of the budget was being spent on competitor keywords. Although this is a common strategy to bid on competitor keywords, this did not align with Coastal Carriers strategy. After diving into call data, we listened to call recordings and found that through competitor keywords, customers were calling Coastal Carrier, thinking they were actually calling someone else. These calls ended up being very short with the lead ending the call upon realizing they were not talking to the company they were originally searching for. ‍
3. Account Goal Settings: Encipher also discovered that the ad account goals were set to include many goals that were not relevant to their business such as app downloads.

Solution - Encipher's Intervention

Upon partnering with Coastal Carrier, Encipher introduced 5 pivotal changes:

1. Optimized Keyword Strategy: A critical part of our approach was refining Coastal Carrier's keyword strategy. We removed branded and competitor keywords, ensuring that Coastal Carrier did not incur costs for ads when potential customers were already searching for their company name or competitors. This fine-tuning not only saved unnecessary ad spend but also improved the overall efficiency of their advertising campaign.
2. 'Call Only' Ads: By adding focus to 'call only' ads, Encipher targeted a more direct form of customer engagement, reducing extraneous costs associated with traditional ad formats.
3. Optimized Account Goals: This setting in Google ads is often overlooked, however it is vital to have the proper goals set in your ad account and campaign settings. By optimizing these goals for only calls and quote form submission, the algorithm can better predict who to place ads in front of.
4. Performance Max Campaigns: Encipher deployed Google's Performance Max campaigns, optimizing Coastal Carrier’s visibility in search results and, crucially, on maps. This approach was particularly effective given the nature of Coastal Carrier’s business, where local visibility is paramount. We also implemented negative search terms into this campaign to further ensure that they would not show with ads for branded or competitor searches.
5. Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads: Encipher also leveraged Meta ads for retargeting and marketing to an audience who recently visited Coastal's website or listed their homes for sale to bring in additional leads in a cross-platform strategy.

Results

• Reduced Cost-Per-Lead: Despite implementing changes that may normally cause CPL to increase, within the first month of working with Encipher, we saw CPL drop by 46%.
• Improved Lead Quality: Since refining the keyword strategy, lead quality has improved.
• Reduced Ad Spend: Encipher’s targeted approach halved Coastal Carrier’s advertising budget, demonstrating significant cost-efficiency.
• Maintained Lead Generation: Despite the reduced spend, lead generation remained robust, affirming the effectiveness of the new strategy.
• Enhanced Map Visibility: As a moving company, local visibility is vital. Performance Max campaigns show up in Map results, resulting in more inquiries from people searching for 'movers' and similar terms on maps.