My final project for Digital Marketing Analytics course. We reviewed the performance of the Google Ads Paid Search campaign and analyzed how we can further improve and optimize it.
2. Table of Contents
1. Introduction
2. Process
3. Campaign Decisions
4. Campaign Outcomes
5. Ad Groups
6. Keywords
7. Challenges
8. Campaign Audience
9. Improvement Opportunities
10. Google Analytics Reports
11. Summary
3. Blog Introduction
We decided to create a blog about
meal kit delivery services because it is
a unique topic and something that set
us apart from the rest of our
classmates. Each of us ordered a
different service and decided to write
reviews about different brands on our
blog. We tried to keep it in a similar
price range, assess the same things
and rate each of them out of 10.
4. Step 3
We spent $100 to
run a 8-day
Google Search
Ads campaigns to
attract more
users and clicks.
Step 1
We wrote 7 blogs
about different meal
kit services and
uploaded them to
blogger weekly.
Step 2
We connected
Google Analytics to
our website to
track view traits
and have a better
sense of managing
our blogs.
Step 4
We analysed and
took actions during
the campaign to
improve CTR and
conversion rate.
Process
5. Campaign
Decisions
Business Goal:
Earn Traffic and Engagement on our blog
Campaign Goal:
1. At least 2 pages per session
2. Clicks
Budget: $12.5/per day and $100 total (running 8 days)
Advertising Type : Google AdWords search ads
Geographical Target Area : USA
Ad Groups: 8
Bid Strategy: Maximum Clicks & ECPC
Keywords: 120+(including 26 negative keywords)
7. Top 3
Ad
Groups
Blue Apron Green Chef Plated
51% of total
clicks
19% of total
clicks
15% of total
clicks
CTR: 4.56%
Conv.rate: 9.38%
CTR: 3.46%
Conv.rate: 8.33%
CTR: 4.86%
Conv.rate: 10.53%
of total
conv.50% 17% of total
conv. 17% of total
conv.
9. Quality Score
[Blue Apron Reviews] 10
Top Keywords
High Quality Score
[Blue Apron Meals]
“Blue Apron”
“Plated Meal Kit”
8
[Green Chef Review]
10
8
8
Match Types
Ad Relevance
Posts Quality
Landing Page Exp.
Ad Format
Decisions
10. CTR
“Meal Kit Review” 33.3%
[Plated Meals]
[Plated Review]
+Green+Chef
6.25%
8.7%
4.56%
+Ad Extensions
+Call-to action
Keywords in URL
Think as Audience
3+ text ads/ group
3.62%
+Healthy+Meal+Prep
Top Keywords
High CTR
Decisions
11. Example: Blue Apron
❏ blue apron career
❏ blue apron customer
service
❏ blue apron glassdoor
❏ blue apron linkedin
❏ blue apron login
❏ blue apron recipe
❏ blue apron stock
❏ blue apron stock price
For negative keywords we included our
brand names in combination with
“customer service, menu, gift card and
careers;” basically words irrelevant to
our blog.
Negative keywords helped us to achieve
higher click through rate by preventing
people who does not want to click in
from seeing our ads, lower spend and
higher conversions. They helped to
increase the accuracy of our ads.
Negative
Keywords
12. Challenge Adjust Keyword Match Type
We used more specific match types like exact
match and phrase match to attract visitors who
are most likely to make a conversion.
Always Testing
Testing allows us to see what works and what
doesn’t. We tested different bid strategies and ad
scheduling to increase conversion rate.
1
Our Solution
How to
increase
conversion
rate?
Improve Ad Quality Score
Google Ads’ ad quality score helps us increase our
ad quality. Our scores were low to begin with but
we kept changing it until we were happy with our
score.
13. ChallengeAdd Negative Keywords
By adding negative keywords, we eliminated those
searches that have low relevance to our blog. People
who see our ads should find it useful.
2
Our Solution
How to
increase click-
through-rate?
Optimize Text Ads
We used ad extensions to increase visibility, added
call-to-actions to motivated customers, and put the
keyword in the URL of the ad to build trust.
Use Ad Scheduling
We went through our data and found during
9am-9pm in a day our ads generate most of the
clicks. So we set the ad scheduling in order to
increase CTR.
14. Challenge
Increase the Bid on Some Keywords
We increased the bid on some keywords in the last few
days for our ad to be shown in a better position.
However, we did not know how to allocate our resources
quite as effectively from the beginning.
3
Our Solution
How to
increase
impressions
at the same
time?
Try to Find the Balance
The most tricky part was to increase impressions and
conversion at the same time because the strategy is
different. It is important to find the balance between
these two.
16. Increase Budget
The budget controls how often an ad is shown, which can increase the percentage of total
impressions if we have higher budget. Some keywords are quite competitive and require
higher bid to show in the first page.
Longer Time Frame
If we run the campaign for a longer time, we will have more time to test different strategies
to optimize the campaign. In addition, we can get more data to analyse and target audience
more accurately.
Improvement
Opportunities
Blog and Posts
If we further improve the quality and quantity of our posts, the landing page experience
could increase and then improve ad rank. Also, we could broaden the topic to other meal
services such as take away services to target more customers. We could also work on the
website’s user experience and design. 16
17. We in total attracted 209 users to our website.
The bounce rate is at 64.75% and each session lasted about 1m 18s.
67.8% of the users visited the website through mobile and 30.5% through desktop.
91.53% of the users were from the United States.
The percentage of female users was greater than that of men.
Blue Apron Review had the most pageviews, followed by Green Chef and then Plated.
Google Analytics Report
Initially users mainly visited our website through direct channel since we were spreading the
word among our friends. However, this traffic channel only lasts a few days and user quantity
started to decline. At this point we started using Google Ads to attract new users, and paid
search became our main traffic channel for the rest of the campaign.
18. USA India UK
Audience Analysis
Paid search:
58%
Direct channel:
13.33%
Social channel:
13.33%
Direct channel:
0.95%
Direct channel:
7.62%
Social channel:
4.76%
Referral:
1.43%
Since our Google Ads campaign mostly focused on user acquisition from the United States, all users
acquired by paid search are from the US. At the same time, the direct channel and the social channel
from the US also have the highest percentage which means that the market has a larger potential to
spread the words of our website.
In India, users visited our website through the direct channel the most, which means that they were
mainly visiting due to the word of mouth. We could also concentrate on media and social marketing
campaign since the social channel acquisition rate in India is also high.
19. Channel A: Paid Search 53.8%
❏ 81.6% bounce rate
❏ 1.38 pages/session
❏ 34 second average session duration
Channel B: Direct 24.3%
❏ 40.3% bounce rate
❏ 2.88 pages/session
❏ 2:37 minutes average session
duration
Channel C: Social 20%
❏ 56% bounce rate
❏ 2.44 pages/session
❏ 1:12 mins average session duration
Channel D: Referral 1%
❏ 33.33% bounce rate
❏ 1.67 pages/session
❏ 13 second average session
duration
Acquisition Analysis
Analysis Conclusion:
Paid search channel is not very much effective.
Though it did attracts most users but it also had
the highest bounce rate.
The most reliable way of user acquisition seems
to be the direct channel.
20. SUMMARY
Overall, we faced challenges due to time and financial restraints. However,
we managed to get a high conversion rate in the short time. There are a lot
of improvement opportunities which we will implement in further study
and work.
