Pre Campaign Report Client Profile: DBIT COMPANY, provide IT support and services to a wide range of small-to-medium sized businesses (B2B).

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1 Pre Campaign Report Client Profile: DBIT COMPANY, provide IT support and services to a wide range of small-to-medium sized businesses (B2B). Operating since 1985, DBIT COMPANY are located in West Dublin. The Company have 10 fulltime employees as well as a software development team of 10, based in India. DBIT COMPANY, as Microsoft Gold Certified and Citrix Silver Partners, specialise in; SharePoint 2010 for document management and collaboration, Virtualization with Microsoft Hyper-V, Citrix XenDesktop and XenServer, and CRM software with Microsoft Dynamics CRM and BPA CRM for SharePoint. Other services offered include: network infrastructure solutions, web design and custom software development. The Company operate in the information technology services industry. Although they sell Internet based business solutions (DBIT COMPANY Website-ref), they operate mainly through offline channels. Currently, no transactions can be made via their in-house managed website. Their General Manager indicated that all sales bar one resulted from offline presence, specifically word of Mouth. The company are in a strong financial position. Market Analysis: IT markets are highly saturated. Therefore, competitive pressure is strong. Management indicated the actual amount of competitors is difficult to quantify. This is because across DBIT COMPANY s 100+ current customers, they operate in many different segments (e.g. IT Support, SharePoint, Virtualization and CRM.) This said we have highlighted the following, as current or potential competitors; Version1, SpanishPoint, Storm.ie, Ergo, Thompson CRM, PMI Software, DSS Solutions, Vulcan. At the heart of the DBIT COMPANY sales proposition is their self proclaimed core-strength or selling point. This relates to an ability to identify customer requirements and deliver IT solutions that exceed expectations, on time and in a professional manner. The information technology service industry is not greatly affected by any seasonal demand factors. Current marketing: Management state that their website, alongside their blog, Twitter and Facebook, are primarily used to advertise their services whilst also acting as an educational resource, populated with information re: their IT solutions. A further examination of analytical data (between 5 th March and ) illustrates that the site is likely used as a point of reference by users whom performed a direct search for DBIT COMPANY or DBIT COMPANY.ie. Organic search appears to have contributed 32.21% (30.95 via Google) of traffic. However a further examination of the analytics illustrates that theses clicks rely heavily on the use of DBIT COMPANY in the search query. (Top five performing keywords are; 1.)DBIT Company 2.)Dynamic 3.)Crm DBIT Company 4.)DBIT Company Computer Solutions 5.)DBIT Company.ie.) Excluding the term DBIT COMPANY, this figures is reduced to 14.08%. Furthermore, currently there is little evidence of interactivity, the site does not support any downloads (e.g. no free sample software) and there is no money processing facility in place. In response to our suggestion, DBIT COMPANY have now included a sign up feature, upon which users can avail of a software free trial. Website strengths include; simplicity and navigability. Weaknesses evident include; quite text heavy (and light in keyword density) and a boring theme. These factors may be also contribute to the sites high bounce rate. (Bounce rate was 73.67% with the average time spent on site at 00:11:48.)

2 Currently, the site ranks poorly for our proposed key search terms and its current inherent keywords. Its Google PageRank is 4. SEO is thus a key area upon which improvement is needed. Insufficient incoming links Keywords taken from homepage of website CRM, SharePoint, Virtualization, Dynamics CRM, SP Modules, Custom Software, Custom Solutions, IT solutions, Virtualization, virtual machines, Citrix, XenDesktop, XenServer, XenApp, Microsoft Hyper-V, infrastructure solutions, software solutions, SharePoint 2010, Microsoft Dynamics CRM The offline marketing strategies undertaken have been on an ad-hoc basis. There is little evidence of metrics or other types of marketing control system. In recent years DBIT COMPANY have implemented various offline communication approaches which included; direct marketing, leafleting and personal selling. Conclusion: DBIT COMPANY boast a wide product and service offering. They have a decent website which could be utilised better amongst the marketing mix. As such, these Adword campaigns bid to promote their information technology services business. DBIT COMPANY seek to build sales and market share. Our proposed strategy aligns with that of the clients by focusing on targeting potential customers whom are searching for IT services (by using a combination of refined long and short tail keyword terms.) A further and derived benefit may be that of increased brand awareness. We can also make use of geo targeting by focusing increased attention on searched within Dublin (client request.) During initial research, we selected seven Ad groups, each based on a variant key search phrase, spread across three campaigns. Our focus is to target SME businesses in Ireland, across a wide range of Industries. The selection and acquisition of an IT service provider is of great importance to any prospective client, especially where customisation or tailoring of service is necessary. Therefore, it is our expressed aim that we help increase web traffic to the site. We thus envision an increase in web presence may translate or at least contribute to; an increase in sales. Proposed Adword Strategy We have structured our site into three campaigns; CRM, Sharepoint and IT Services (which is inclusive of IT infrastructure services). We believe that this structure will allow us to give focus to the specifics of the company s product offerings. We have 7 Ad Groups in total; three in CRM, two in Sharepoint and two in IT Services. Campaigns and Ad Groups have been designed with the structure of the website in mind. For instance, the website promotes CRM software in it s Dynamics CRM and BPA CRM offerings. We have therefore created: CRM software Ad Group to target generic searches for CRM software. A Dynamics CRM Ad Group for users searching for Dynamics CRM Trial. The BPA CRM Ad Group will promote the benefits of BPA- cost reduction and integration with SharePoint and its application in the cloud. We have used various sources to find relevant positive and negative keywords. Google s tools- Wonderwheel, Insights and keyword tool have been greatly beneficial. We have also studied the DBIT COMPANY site and indeed similar sites for keywords. We have selected a large amount of

3 keywords in our campaign. We will use the early stages (the first week) to test specific keyword performance/cost. As such, the keywords are ever evolving and we will continue to refine where necessary. Currently the CRM software Ad Group is the largest. We have made careful considerations in choosing keywords that are also relevant to our Ad text. We may tweak these in order to gain greater quality score. Sample text from the CRM and IT Services campaigns can be seen below. We have also selected a number of negative keywords. We have used Google tools as mentioned above to find associated words to search terms but which have no relevance to our campaigns. Such words include open source and torrent software. We had considered using SalesForce as a negative keyword to exclude our ads from users searching for SalesForce CRM products. However we decided that this might exclude our ads from customdbit Company who were searching for SalesForce products but were open to other solutions. In terms of Ad Serving, we will, upon rollout, use a rotation strategy (we have 3 ads for each group.) Upon studying results we may then switch to an optimize strategy, which will see those with higher CTR appear more frequently. The company do not specialize in any particular niche but rather supply companies in need of IT services, across all Industries. While DBIT COMPANY have customers from outside Ireland and Google Analytics shows that the site is getting hits from outside the country, we have decided to focus on Ireland. Management indicated at our initial meeting that; despite the rise of cloud computing and SaaS, proximity is still one of the key criteria for clients in choosing an IT partner. As such we have included Dublin throughout our keywords and accordingly used geotargeting techniques. Clients will feel assured in knowing that their IT partner is close by if any problems should arise with their IT products or services. We will use the first week of the challenge to determine what keywords and ads work best for our client. We have therefore decided to show ads on rotation initially. This will allow us to see what variations of keywords and ads are working well. This allows scope for further optimization, upon gaining such insights. Furthermore, we have decided to set our budget in accordance with our strategy to optimize our campaigns in weeks two and three. Our budget for week one will be $60, which will increase to $65 in week two and $75 in week three. We have split the budget evenly for week one with $2.86 set as the daily budget for each campaign. We plan to modify this within week one based, primarily, on the average CPC and CTR of our keywords and ads. With an increased budget and gained insight we will achieve greater optimization in weeks two and three.

4 As the site does not allow for direct transactions with customers, our overall aim and primary goal is to increase traffic to the website. Due to e.g. poor organic search presence, time and budget constraints we will conduct advertising via the content network. The display network will be considered in our next report as a potential means of extending reach in the future. The primary success metric then will be analytic data pertaining increases in quality traffic but also lighter details such as impressions. This may or may not contribute to increased sales and awareness building, but such finance and branding details lie outside of our project remit. We will also monitor and report on: Sign ups to the Dynamics CRM 2011 trial Clicks on brochures for BPA CRM Clicks on brochures for Customised Sharepoint Solutions As discussed, the site suffers from poor organic search performance (receives little in the way of search traffic without usage of the term DBIT COMPANY ) and high bounce rates. Although we are not in control of SEO, we feel DBIT COMPANY can still be represented via SEA. We seek to minimize bounce rate for clicks on ads by placing users at relevant landing pages. We would like to decrease the site s overall bounce rate but this may be difficult as we will be unable to influence web design or organic search. Even with the short time frame and limited budget, we are confident we can make a real contribution to driving quality traffic to DBIT COMPANY. We are ready to challenge ourselves to best communicate the value of search advertising to management, and make the tentative projection that the company will embrace Adwords even after we depart.

5 Post Campaign Campaign overview - This document outlines the recent Adwords campaign conducted on behalf of DBIT Company. The primary goal of the campaign was to increase traffic to the website. The campaign launched on April 7th with three campaigns: CRM, Sharepoint and IT Services. Over the course of the challenge, this expanded to four with Virtualization being the fourth campaign. It was initially proposed to focus solely on the Google Search Network, however in week two a larger audience was sought and the Google Display Network was utilized. Budget allocation in week one was $60. The actual spend was $14.98, this perpetually increased week on week. The challenge concluded on the 28th of April. Key Results - New user traffic to the site increased by 3.18% compared to the same period in March. Visits to the site were up by 45.45% according to Google Analytics. The campaigns achieved 187 clicks over a 3-week period, with a CTR rate of.05% from 386,741 impressions. The CTR was higher on the search network at.31%. This figure was reduced with a low CTR of.08% on search partner websites. The CTR for Google Search was.52%. The overall CTR for the Display Network was.04%. However, 142 of the 187 clicks came from the Display Network. The Sharepoint campaign was the most successful over the 3 weeks. Conclusion - Adwords can be used by DBIT COMPANY as an effective tool to generate new leads, at a low cost. The challenge encountered a high amount of competition and thus high prices for keywords relating to CRM and Virtualization. Overall, the Display network offered superior value. The average CPC for Search was $1.61 while the average CPC for Display was $0.90. A figure of 75% of clicks in the campaign came through the Display Network. Future Online Marketing Recommendations - DBIT COMPANY seek to build sales and market share. It is thus recommended that DBIT COMPANY continue using Adwords. The company should target search but they should also create campaigns for targeting the Display network only. Also highlighted are practical and actionable steps towards search engine optimization. Such recommendations may facilitate a greater organic search ranking. Furthermore, specific recommendations regarding Web Design and Social Media are developed upon. All group members worked rather well together. It was viewed as an incremental learning experience with the outcome being a greater level of Adword competence. Upon completion of the challenge, one member of the team passed both the Google AdWords Fundamental and Search Advertising Advanced exams, thus becoming an AdWords Qualified Individual.

6 2. Industry Component 2.1 Campaign overview: In the pre-campaign report, we had identified an overall increase in traffic as our main goal for the campaign. Such a goal may seem general, however, we felt that this was critical given the site s poor performance in organic search. Therefore, we had proposed to focus on the Google Search Network and not the Display Network.The site also suffered from a high bounce rate. It was felt that Google Adwords could help alleviate this problem by placing users at directly relevant landing pages. Some of the more specific goals included click-troughs to the site s signup to a trail of Microsoft Dyanmics CRM Management, of DBIT COMPANY, had indicated that this was one of the company s most important products. Accordingly, we created an adgroup called Dynamics CRM with a specific purpose to increase signups to the trial. The newly created trial signup page was used as the landing page for ads within this group. The campaign launched on April 7 th with three campaigns: CRM, Sharepoint and IT Services. Over the course of the challenge, this expanded to four with Virtualization being the fourth campaign. Initially we chose to schedule ads on a rotation basis to determine which ads were performing best (had a better CTR). The graphic below (fig2.1) represents the final hierarchical structure of the challenge from campaigns to ad groups. Fig. 2.1 In our pre-campaign we had noted that we planned a budget of $60 for week one, $65 in week two and $75 in week two; the rationale being that we could spend more money in the final week to achieve greater optimization after gaining insight in the previous two weeks. However, we wanted to use week one as a means of testing the account and fine-tuning our strategy. Therefore it was difficult to predict our actual spend for week one prior to launch. We spent $14.98 in week one. After making some adjustments to the structure and budget, spend increased in weeks two and three as seen in fig. 2.2.

7 Fig Evolution of Campaign Strategy: The major change that occurred during the campaign was our decision to start targeting the display network in week two. We were unhappy with the impressions and clicks we were receiving in week one. We refined our keyword list within the Adwords in this week, deleting low quality keywords and modifying other keywords to increase their quality score. However this had minimal impact. Figure 2.3 displays the performance of all campaigns in week one. Fig. 2.3 It was decided that we needed to reach a larger audience and this could be achieved through the display network. We also felt that we needed to increase the budget of each campaign to improve our ad rank within auctions. The immediate impact of these changes was the dramatic increase in impressions. Our CTR decreased, however, we had expected this as ads on the display network typically have a lower CTR. Our primary concern was to increase the number of clicks to the website. We were willing to suffer a decrease in the CTR to do so. Figure 2.4 illustrates the impact these changes had on the campaigns. Fig. 2.4

8 Fig. 2.6 Clicks increased from 15 to 39 in week two. Impressions increased 23 times over to 92, 000. CTR decreased from.38% to.04%. The decrease in CTR was primarily due to ads running on the Display Network. There was a small decrease in CTR on the Search network, decreasing from.66% in week one to.58% in week two. We created a fourth campaign in week two for Virtualization (on April 17 th ). We felt that this approach was more appropriate to the structure of the website. Initially, the IT services campaign contained two adgroups: virtualization and IT Support. However, the virtualization received few impressions and the majority of the clicks were for the IT Support. We felt that with its own budget and a more granular approach that included an adgroup for both Virtualization product types (Citrix and Microsoft Hyper- V), we could gain more success. DBIT COMPANY also created a dedicated page for its IT services during the challenge. Previously we had use the websites homepage to advertise the company s IT Services offering. With this in mind we felt it appropriate to have the IT Services campaign to have IT solutions as its sole focus. 2.3 Key Results: Our campaigns achieved 187 clicks over the 3 weeks, with a CTR rate of.05% from 386, 741 impressions. The CTR was higher on the search network at.31%. This figure was reduced with a low CTR of.08% on search partner websites. The CTR for Google Search was.52%. The overall CTR for the Display Network was.04%. However, 142 of the 187 clicks came from the Display Network. Figure 2.5 provides an overall review of the campaign over the 3 weeks. Fig 2.7 The Sharepoint campaign was the most successful over the 3 weeks. Ads in the campaign accrued a number of clicks and impressions from the Display Network. The below figure (fig. 2.6) illustrates the proportion of clicks accrued across ad groups.

9 Almost half of the clicks accrued occurred on the Sharepoint Custom Solutions Adgroup. 54% of clicks occurred from ads within the Sharepoint campaign. 95 clicks of the 101 occurred on the Display Network. Figure2.7 reveals some interesting insights into the campaigns performance on the Display Network. 79 of the 142 clicks from the Display Network came form adsenseformobileapps.com. 72 of these clicks were for Sharepoint Custom Solutions adgroup. After looking up this website we discovered that this site is actually a reference to mobile apps on ios and Android devices. Considering the overall CTR for Display ads, there was an impressive CTR of.60% on these apps. There was over 37, 000 impressions for ads on G-Mail but these ads had a low CTR of.02%. Virtualization was the least performing campaign. Overall, the campaign accrued 7 clicks. However, the campaign was created at the later end of week two. We found this campaign to perform poorly network with a CTR of.01% from 60, 131 impressions. We therefore stopped running Virtualization ads on the Display network during the third week. IT services performed well on both networks, achieving 20 clicks on the Display Network and 26 on the Search network. The CTR on Search was.29% form 9,059 impressions and.02% from 73,959 impressions on the Display network. The CRM campaign accrued 32 clicks, 10 on Search and 22 on the Display network. The CTR for the Search Network was.37% and.02% on Display. CRM Solutions was the best performing adgroup, accruing 17 clicks. We carefully monitored keywords throughout the campaign. We had built up a large bank of keywords from our research prior to the challenge. We found that in the first few days that a number of these were performing poorly, suffering from a low Quality Score. In terms of keywords on the Search network, Computer Services and Computer Services Dublin were particularly successful with a CTR of.29% and.12% respectively. It is more difficult to assess the impact of individual keywords on the Display Network as Adwords assesses an adgroup s entire keyword list in relation to the Display network. The term.net development achieved in the Sharepoint Custom solutions adgroup achieved 724 impressions but did not receive any clicks. 2.3 Conclusions Our initial goal was to increase traffic to the site through advertisement on the Search Network. However, as the campaign progressed we veered towards opportunity in the Display Network. Over 75% of clicks in the campaign came through the Display Network. We do not see this as a failure as we were able to provide

10 visitors to DBIT COMPANY site from new sources. Data from Google Analytics had shown that many of the site s visits from Search had come from people who were already familiar with the company (given that they included DBIT COMPANY in the search term). The data from Figure 2.7 reveals an interesting insight into where potential leads can come from. During the campaign we had used automatic placements to target the Search Network. Greater success could be achieved on the Display Network using managed placements, which allows for the selection of websites upon which ads can appear on. Data from this challenge would suggest that mobile applications and fixya.com would be worth considering as managed placements. After setting a relatively small initial budget, we achieved greater success in weeks two and three after increasing the budget considerably. We attempted to gain value for clicks, however to target relevant traffic we found that including some of the more expensive keywords was an imperative. There is a high amount of competition and thus high prices for keywords relating to CRM and Virtualization. Overall, the Display network offered better value to DBIT COMPANY. Figure 2.5 shows the average CPC for Search to be $1.61 while the average CPC for Display was $ Future Recommendations Overall we believe that DBIT COMPANY can certainly gain a great deal, in terms of branding and perhaps more importantly driving sales, from Adwords. Management can accurately measure and track the quality of their advertisement spend. The advantage then lies in gaining extensive reach, whilst the marketing spend is focused and measurable. DBIT COMPANY may need to address some of its problems in terms of SEO before investing in Adwords. This is not to say that the site must be prominent among organic searching rankings before investing in Adwords. However, an increase in organic visits could also reveal some key information in how customers find DBIT COMPANY, which could prove to be of benefit in a paid search campaign. Within recent weeks the site appears to have addressed some of these problems with creation of a dedicated page for IT services. The site contains a sitemap, which are generally useful for SEO purposes. However, clicking some of the links, such as Network Infrastructure solutions, on the site map reveals a 404 error. This could be negatively affecting the site s SEO ranking. We urge DBIT COMPANY to invest in Adwords. Furthermore we make the following recommendations. The company should target search but they should also create campaigns for targeting the Display network only. The data suggests that Internet users find the company s custom solutions offering particularly interesting. Creating a Display only campaign would allow DBIT COMPANY to control a specific portion of the overall budget on Display advertising. Managed placements should also be used as this will give DBIT COMPANY greater control over who sees their ads and where. The placement tool can also be used to assist in targeting websites. Web Design; the company has a wide product offering, However, DBIT COMPANY must ensure that each product or service has a substantial presence on the website. One of the links on the sitemap makes reference to expertise in web design but there is no section of the site for web design services. However, as mentioned, DBIT COMPANY have modified the website in the past weeks which will help in this regard. The website uses images poorly, and this can lead to slow loading time. Management should also improve indexing and meta-tags, this is a practical step which will better allow search engines crawl their website. Other

11 simple steps could be: increase inbound links and increase interactivity (perhaps through the DBIT COMPANY blog.) Social Media; has been described as the next marketing frontier. An active presence on social network websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter will allow for highly targeted and accountable marketing communications. This may also allow for further driving of traffic to the website. 3. Learning Component 3.1 Learning objectives and outcomes The key project objective was based on optimizing the $200 spend to drive an increase in quality traffic to the DBIT COMPANY website. We thus believe we have achieved our project objective. As a team we hoped to learn how to efficiently plan, operate and monitor an Adwords campaign. We believe we have also achieved our learning objective. Incremental improvement towards the team learning expectation can be represented by the increased performance, as the campaign progressed. The main key outcome the team can extrapolate from the campaign is in the critical importance which the keyword selection represents, particularly in attracting the relevant potential customers to the website. With a limited budget, we also noted the importance that monies are distributed wisely throughout the challenge. 3.2 Group dynamics It was found that group participation had a direct relationship to the ultimate success of the campaign. Each team member offered a variety of different ideas and inputs. On occasion, the team experienced countering opinions for some group decisions, such as budget allocation. To resolve any potential problems, we asked each member to back up decisions with relevant evidence to better validate an insight. For example we decided it was best to target the Display Network as we targeted traffic from new sources. This group had previously collaborated together and as such were confident the group outcomes would feature little complications and excellent communication. Furthermore, it was expected that our adgroups and keywords would be highly searched within the industry DBIT COMPANY operate in. As a group we sought to optimize the campaign. It was initially decided to focus solely on the Search Network, as it was expected a superior source for traffic to the website. After deciding we wanted a larger audience, we began to also focus on the display network. Despite a decrease in CTR, the newly featured Adwords on the Display Network were generating a significant increase in clicks. The group members communicated differing opinions on how to react. There was a split between removing the search network altogether or simply scaling down its budget allocation. The group concurred the need to focus more of the remaining budget on the Display Network. Ultimately, given the limited time and budget remaining we opted to focus a proportionately larger budget allocation to the display network. Yet this unexpected group dilemma did prompt a recommendation for future campaigns, to create a display only campaign. 3.3 Client dynamics The group enjoyed meeting the client and relished the opportunity to help grow the business. The first issue which arose was the lack of a call to action function on the website. Some competitors allow an instant downloadable trial

12 of the products. Had such an offer been made available it may have aided the campaign in terms of measurement, but would also allow for the use of more actionable keywords and ad text. For example; download free trial now may entice a higher CTR than the DBIT COMPANY signup for free trial ad text. Also, the client s biggest priority seller was that of Microsoft Dynamics CRM and thus was assigned its own adgroup. This product category was highly competitive and keywords were expensive. As our primary aim was in driving traffic to the website, we optimized the campaign by targeting another product category; Sharepoint. The issue that arose then was in adequately explaining the various dynamics which made it more difficult to feature in the competitive CRM results. The most apparent problem which was encountered was where the website crashed for two days. The client took appropriate measures to remedy the situation. This occurred at the beginning of the campaign, where budgets were set quite low. The group were able to pause the campaign and resume relatively unscathed. The group made several informal recommendations about web design infrastructure and SEO to the client contact upon the initial meeting. We were somewhat surprised and satisfied when the client took note and stated that such points would be actively investigated. 3.4 Future Recommendations Were this group to run this campaign again we would again seek to focus approximately forty-five minutes per day actively analyzing the analytical data. We would however dedicate more time and emphasis to the pre-planning stages. It is believed the group would be more effective as we are now familiar with the Adwords interface. Any mistakes made to date will serve as a foundation for future success, this campaign thus constituted an excellent learning opportunity to see how to fully optimise an Adwords campaign. With regards client dynamics, we would explain more clearly to clients exactly what Adwords can offer them, whilst seeking to avoid overselling its merit. We look forward to using Adwords again to help us create more value for our clients. In a related recommendation we suggest DBIT COMPANY consider using what has been described as the Google Trifecta. This includes three packages and would complement the above mentioned, actionable recommendations. It has been noted that search engine marketing could offer DBIT COMPANY an excellent opportunity to grow the business. The search engine advertisement merits have been discussed, yet so too should search engine optimization. Firstly, Google Webmasters tools. (Simply using these tools doesn t have any effect on optimisation, however they can be used to identify SEO issues and would offer DBIT COMPANY an opportunity to better control how Google interacts with their site. We suggest DBIT COMPANY continue using Google analytics to e.g. learn how visitors reach and behave on the website, understand which content users view most and to measure the successes of SEO and indeed SEA techniques. Finally, DBIT COMPANY could begin to use the Google Website Optimizer. This would allow management to experiment with various alterations and choose which will best facilitate optimisation.