Small and Medium-sized Businesses often face a daunting task, in controlling operating costs, and at the same time striving to clock in more sales revenue. While carefully planned, well executed marketing campaigns can certainly help to bolster a company’s top line, getting the best bang for one’s marketing buck is imperative….and a high-priority item for any business owner.
This case study is about one such business that leveraged Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Ads for its marketing campaign in order to push its initial customer acquisition drive. Having a limited budget for marketing activities it wanted to maximize the return on its dollar spend.
The decision to choose Search as a Marketing channel and engage an agency to strategize, build its web presence more than paid off the investment. The low cost per acquisition for obtaining new Customers provided the much needed Sales Lift within the budget constraints.
A strong sales pipeline coupled with operational efficiency enabled the business to break-even in less than 6 months from its inception. To get detailed overview let’s deep dive into this success story.
Customer Profile
- Name: A1 Cleaning Services
- Location: Singapore
- Industry Segment: Cleaning & Maintenance Services
- Business Background: A1 Cleaning Services, a newly established business provides cleaning & maintenance services to homes, offices, facilities, and commercial establishments. It is a NEA (National Environment Agency) licensed service provider employing a workforce of professional cleaners that are contracted out on full-time and part-time basis to customers across Singapore.
- Number of Employees: 6
- Website URL: http://www.a1-cleaningservices.com
Key Challenges Faced
A1 Cleaning Services is a new entrant in Singapore’s Cleaning Services segment. It started off with 4 employees with Mr. Bryan Goh (the business owner) wearing multiple hats doing Sales, overseeing service delivery and managing the small team of Cleaners on a day to day basis.
Being a start-up, the main requirement was to quickly acquire some initial customers and maintain a steady flow new orders to keep revenue coming in. It also wanted to establish itself prominently in certain market segments identified since the yield there was higher.
As with most other start-ups, the business had limited resources to spend on sales & marketing in order to address the above requirements.
Approach Taken
The Company chose online marketing over other options such as Flyer Distribution, Telemarketing, etc to reach out to potential customers. It hired WebSell Solutions Pte Ltd, a Singapore based Web Design & Online Marketing agency to build its business website and bring online visibility for its services.
After a SEO-friendly, visitor engaging website was delivered; a paid Search Ad campaign was launched using Google Adwords. Since organic search engine rankings with SEO efforts take time to attain for a new website, the need for immediate results was fulfilled using PPC Ad Campaigns.
WebSell Solutions formulated an Adwords strategy with long tailed keyword terms targeting search queries in the Customer’s niche. It bid for these keywords moderately, but ensured high Quality Score for the Ads thereby stretching the given budget for maximum response. The Ad Scheduling, Keyword match criteria and Ad Copy were tweaked on a weekly basis to maximize Click Through Rates (also known as CTR which is the number of times the Ads are clicked vs the number of times they appear for Search Queries)
Campaign Results
To measure campaign effectiveness and see if it added to the bottom line, let’s study the metrics below. These were taken from one of the initial months of running the campaign.
| Daily Budget (Based on monthly Average) :- | SGD 14 |
| Number of Ad Clicks :- | 564 |
| Number of Leads Generated (From Online Form, direct email & Calls) :- | 54 |
| Number of Sales Closed :- | 12 |
| Profit per Sale (Based on Monthly Average) :- | SGD 165 |
To substantiate further some of the figures, below is the Adwords Performance Report for that month.
Note: Conversions shown in Adwords Report only tracks Leads captured through the online form. Total Number of leads (which is 54) is a sum of Online Form, Direct Emails and Phone Calls received
To calculate the Return On Investment (ROI) obtained for the PPC Marketing spend –
Formula: ROI = (Gross Profit – Marketing Spend) / (Marketing Spend)
For our Case Study, this works out to be ((165 x 12) – (14 x 30)) / (14 x 30) = 3.71
That means for every $1 invested into marketing, $3.7 were generated. Giving a 370% return on investment.
Note: This calculation does not include the agency fees that may be incurred for setup or management of the Adwords Account.
Conclusion
Bryan’s Cleaning Services has been able to build a reasonable customer base within a few months of launching the Business. The PPC marketing strategy adopted truly underpinned its early Sales efforts. Going forward, it plans to capitalise on SEO & PPC both to fuel future growth.
For small businesses, Direct Response Marketing is the most appropriate way to generate leads and Search Advertising gives the flexibility, precision and most importantly a quick ROI, if executed correctly.
