Comments on: Skycasters Assists Marketing Students through AdWords

By: Andrew J Baney

Andrew J Baney — Fri, 08 May 2009 13:05:31 +0000

From: Andrew J Baney
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 2:46 PM
To: Mike Kister; Gregory Alan Rich
Subject: RE: BGSU Healthcare Team Analysis

We have appended the paper below. Thanks for all your help this semester!!!

Healthcare Team

Skycasters Post-Campaign Summary

Aaron Neal, Andrew Baney, Carolyn Nesline, Lindsay Squier
(Healthcare)

Skycasters Post-Campaign Summary

Campaign Overview

Our overall goal for our campaign was to drive traffic to the Skycasters website ultimately increasing the company’s customer base. We specifically targeted potential clients in the healthcare industry that qualify for federal grant money to either update or backup their current internet service. Before beginning our campaign, we set several performance goals that we hoped would help us achieve this goal. These goals were to receive 500 clicks with a click-through-rate (CTR) of 5 percent. We constructed a total of 10 ad variations that included campaign relevant headings such as ARRA Healthcare Grants, Broadband Connectivity, and Satellite Broadband. These ad copies would be tested on the first day of our campaign to determine the which ones we should use for the remaining three days. The keywords that we chose for the campaign we believed were also highly relevant to our target audience. These included healthcare terms such as “electronic medical records” (“emr”), “electronic health records” (“ehr”), and keywords related to the grants available through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

Campaign Results

Following the completion of our first day Ad Copy test, we paused 4 of our 10 ad copies. These were the poorest performing ads because they were not relevant to the content of our landing page, which resulted in a higher overall cost per click (CPC). On day two of our campaign we adjusted the maximum CPC of individual keywords to ensure that our ads appear on the first page of each relevant Google search. We also turned off the content network to try to reduce unwanted clicks that had caused our bounce rate to be 80% on the second day. The keyword “emr” was performing poorly the first two days and we decided it was not worth the $9 minimum CPC so we paused it. On the third day of our campaign our bounce rate was reduced to 44.44%. We believe that this reduction was directly related to turning off the content network. To optimize our campaign after the third day, we paused an underperforming ad copy that had bounce rate of 83.33%, and also adjusted our max. CPC to meet first page estimates. On the fourth day of our campaign we received the most impressions and also the most clicks. Our click through rate increased to .21% however our bounce rate did increase to 56.25%.

The overall campaign totals for our campaign included 29,128 impressions and 56 clicks resulting in a click through rate of .19%. We spent a total of $244.49 and our final bounce rate was 64.29%.

Future Recommendations

Due to the short duration of time our Adwords campaign for Skycasters was performed, we realize that simply do not have enough data to see any significant trends in our ad copies, keywords, or landing page. However, we feel that for the sake of this project we will make these recommendations based on what little data we have. We will make recommendations on the three main variables in an ad campaign, landing page, keywords, and ad copy.

Even though we only used one landing page, we feel that our data supports Skycasters altering their landing page in an effort to increase its relevancy to our target market, our keywords, and our ad copies. Our keywords and ad copies generally had a CPC of over $4. We realize that on a larger scale campaign a CPC that high could cut into Skycasters budget in a very significant way. That is why we need to focus on increasing Landing Page relevancy to bring the CPC down. The one obvious flaw in the landing page that our team created is that it fails to mention the terms EMRs and EHRs. These terms are in almost all of our ad copies and they are important keywords in our campaign as well. In fact the CPC rose so high for EMRs during our campaign that we reluctantly paused the keyword. Our second suggestion for the landing page is to add a conversion metric on the Contact Information and the Service Plans links on our page. We feel this will help your company measure the success of the landing page more effectively in the future. Currently, the landing page is judged mostly on its bounce rate and time on page, the problem with this is we cannot tell if our customers are not bouncing because they are interested in contacting Skycasters or if they are not bouncing because the landing page was not relevant to what they are searching for so they are trying to find a page on the Skycasters website that does contain the information they seek. A conversion metric will clear up this confusion.

During our testing, we did have one relatively successful ad copy that outperformed the others. The ARRA Healthcare Grants ad copy had a relatively low bounce rate, a strong time on page, and a CTR that was above our campaign average. For these reasons we recommend that Skycasters continue the use of this ad and also test different variations of this ad. We recognize that the data on this ad does have room for improvement, which is why believe Skycasters should make several slight variations to the ad title and body content and test those variations to determine if there is a better combination available.

Overall, our team was fairly disappointed with our keywords. However, after some evaluation, we feel that we can learn from our mistakes and make general recommendations as to how to build successful keywords in the future. One way to create more finely targeted keywords is to use the exact match function. Additionally, creating high targeted and extremely specific phrasing will further increase the effectiveness of the keywords and ultimately improve their quality score. A high quality score is imperative to keeping your CPC down which in the long run will save Skycasters a great deal of money.

By: Olivia L Szilagyi

Olivia L Szilagyi — Thu, 07 May 2009 17:14:02 +0000

From: Olivia L Szilagyi
Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2009 11:00 AM
To: Mike Kister
Subject: RE: BGSU: AdWords: Education Team

Dear Mike,

Attached is a copy of the power point and paper. Thank you so much for giving us the opportunity to work with you.
Best of luck!

Sincerely,

The Education Team

Post-Campaign Strategy
Skycasters, LLC.
Ann Criqui, Todd Chiarelott, Megan Svat, Olivia Szilagyi

Executive Summary

After working closely with a local business in Bowling Green, Ohio, Aardvark Screen Printing and Embroidery, we were able to gain the knowledge and expertise needed to successfully conduct an online advertising campaign. Working with Skycasters, LLC. allowed us to further our experience with the online market, as well as challenge ourselves in the world of analytics. As the education team we wanted to be able to increase awareness in schools and libraries regarding the E-Rate Program. After doing a great deal of research concerning the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), broadband stimulus package, and the No Child Left Behind Act, we were able to create an ad group and keywords that we thought would attract the most visitors to Skycasters’ website.

Our online advertising campaign for Skycasters began with an initial two day test period, and then proceeded to a four day campaign. Each group received $100 for the two day test period and during this time period our main goal was to test what geographic regions to target and a time frame for when to run the campaign. After presenting our results to Mike Kister, each group was distributed money. Being that we were given $300 towards our four day campaign, we made the necessary changes so we could produce the expected results. Our final cost for the four day campaign and two day test period was $393.55. We ended with 47,938 impressions, 87 clicks, a CTR of 0.18%, and average CPC of $4.52.

Industry Component

The education campaign was highly structured based on keyword choices and the daily monitoring of our Adwords account. We believed that we refined these words to the best of our ability during the four day time period, as well as greatly improved our efforts on other characteristics of the Adwords campaign. We were able to focus on many different characteristics of our campaign including keywords, geotargeting, analytics, number of clicks, and time of day.

I. Campaign Goals:

The overall goal of our campaign was to increase awareness of Skycasters to the education sector of Google, as well as inform schools of the benefits of ARRA and the broadband stimulus package, along with Skycasters internet, to receive free broadband for their school or library. The metrics that we set included 10,000 impressions and 150 clicks over the four day period. Therefore, we hoped to receive a 1.5% click through rate and a CPC of $1.50. We wanted to approach these goals by setting relevant, high quality key words in order to drive down our CPC. We believed that we had found a good ad text to work with that allowed many of our most important keywords to show up on the first search page. We ran our campaign over a four day period beginning on Friday, then resumed on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. During this period we wanted to equally divide our budget, since we were not sure as to what specific time of day our target market would be searching more, or less. We decided to use the adgroup directed toward schools (grades K-8) with an ad text of:

Stimulate Your Education
Skycasters brings broadband to you
Access satellite internet today!
http://www.Skycasters.com/broadband

We monitored the account as closely as possible each day. Our goal within the first two days was to split the money between the time period of 8a.m.-3p.m. and 3p.m.-10p.m., to see if we were attracting attention at both times. However, we had a tendency of spending a great deal of our money during the morning hours, so not much was left to spend after 3p.m. The remaining two days of our campaign we worked out some of these problems and were able to accurately distribute our money and record the action during the 3p.m.-10p.m. time period. We continued to formulate our initial plan of spending the same amount of money each day; although, we did not spend the entire budget on Friday and had money to carry over to the remaining days. We checked the account every day, working to reduce the CPC by adding more relevant keywords.

II. Evolution of Your Campaign Strategy:

We made a great deal of changes throughout our campaign. We worked hard on improving the CTR and the CPC every day by tweaking and rearranging the keywords to develop more relevant words. We worked with the max CPC to find a number that would allow our keywords to show up without depleting our budget. By using applications available for our access on the Ad Words website we were able to pin point key words that were specific with our needs, and that would be available on the search pages with a CPC of $5. When monitoring the time differences we worked on distributing our money throughout the day by pausing the campaign whenever the budget was increasing too quickly. We monitored the geographics to conclude which states were most interested in the broadband stimulus plan. Much of this information was hard for us to process at the time because of the short time span we were given, but much of this information would be helpful to Skycasters if they wished to continue this Ad Words account. The changes we made affected our campaign by giving us more control over the money we were spending, when we were spending it, and the quality of success our budget provided.

III. Key Results:

Ultimately, the outcome of our campaign was able to produce successful results. We tried not to focus as much on the CTR, but the fact that any one of these clicks, if a quality click, could lead to a large sum of money for the company. It is not about how many clicks you receive, but which ones were most relevant to the topic and the product being sold. Our total Impressions were 47,338 with 87 clicks. This gave us a CTR of 0.18% and an average CPC of $4.52. Our total money spent over the four day campaign was $393.55, and our average position was 3.17. Some of our most popular keywords included “education,” satellite internet, school grants, and stimulus plan.

The geotargeting results for the campaign include a number of states that have been interested in the adgroup. These include Georgia, Missouri, North Carolina, Texas and Illinois. For our campaign we tried to distinguish between different times of day and if more people were searching for our product during the school day (8-3) or during after school hours (3-10). This was difficult for us to accomplish at first because we had not worked out all of the problems with the keywords and the CPC was high so we had spent our money before we were able to look at the after school hours. On the last day we split our money up equally between the two time periods and saw that we received more clicks during the school day (10 clicks), but the amount of clicks during after school hours was not much less (7 clicks). We also wanted to compare the days to see if the beginning of the week or the end of the week was most successful. The results showed that Friday was the least successful day with only 6 clicks, and Tuesday was the most successful day with 22 clicks. All days at the beginning of the week had clicks in double digits. The average time spent on the site was 55 seconds, the number of pages people viewed on average was 1.60 pages, and the bounce back rate was 88.73%.

Some of the successful keywords included education (45 clicks), stimulus plan (5 clicks), and satellite internet and school grants with 2 clicks each. We believe the bounce back rate is so high because our keywords, such as education, were so broad that people did not really want to go to the site. We took steps to help improve these broad keywords by adding negative keywords, as well as individually specializing the keywords by placing parenthesis around them.

Throughout this campaign we have worked hard to improve all of the characteristics of the ad group. We believe that if this campaign were to continue we would be able to implement any changes necessary to make it successful and generate a group of quality clicks.

IV. Analytics:

Google AdWords revealed a metric of 61 clicks. Eighteen of these clicks were not registered by Google Analytics, which reported a total of 43 visits. The reason for this apparent error can be explained by the common misinterpretation of the terms “clicks” and “visits”. Google AdWords tracks “clicks,” while Google Analytics tracks “visits.” If a user clicks an ad two times within a thirty-minute period of time without closing their browser, their actions will be interpreted as one visit in Google Analytics and two clicks in Google AdWords. Because this section of the report is based on Analytics, all results discussed here forth will be relative to the 43 visits. Our results are also based on users clicking the ad from the Education campaign and landing on the ARRA – Education page (http://www.skycasters.com/broadband-solutions-for-stimulus-ARRA/bgsu-arra-education.html).

The Analytics Campaign Site Usage summary concluded figures of 55 seconds for the average time spent on the site, with 1.63 pages viewed per visit, and 100 percent of those visits derived from new users. However, the bounce rate was 88.37%. This means that the 11.63% of users who remained on the site have skewed results. When the data is further analyzed, one can conclude that 5 visitors had a bounce rate of zero percent and remained on the site, and of those visitors their range of time spent on the site was 14 seconds to 30 minutes and 15 seconds, with a revealed average time spent on the site of 7 minutes and 54 seconds. The pages per visit must also be reinterpreted under these same principles. The 5 visitors viewed 3 to 14 pages, with an average of 6.2 pages viewed per visit.

Results confirm that the Education campaign sent 43 visits via 39 cities. The five visitors with a bounce rate of zero were from the cities of Bowling Green, Ohio; Cabot, Arkansas; Dayton, Ohio; Lancaster, Kentucky; and Minot, North Dakota. The other 35 cities reported a bounce rate of 100 percent and can be found in Appendix A.

In conclusion, the overall results were minute in quantity and therefore relatively insignificant when analyzed at a small level. However, if the data is considered as a highly selective focus group of the large scope of possible consumers, the results can be quite significant. There is a small percentage of visitors, 11.63 percent, who remained on the site and this demonstrates a potential need that was met. Individuals were searching for something, and were able to find what they were looking for through the CPC ad on Google. Those who clicked on the Education campaign ad and visited the site expressed an interest in the material with which they were presented. If Skycasters has grabbed the interest of an individual in their selective target market, and that individual is a potential client, then the Analytics results indicated five potential clients from 4 states. Skycasters could take the results presented in this analysis and focus their campaigns in the areas that have visitors with a bounce rate of zero percent. If their efforts were focused in these areas, and the company were to make itself more pronounced, through CPC campaigns and multimedia advertising, the clients who visited the site may become more familiar with the company and be more inclined to make a purchase.

Learning Component

I. Learning Objectives and Outcomes:

Through the duration of our ad campaign, our team not only hoped to gain insight on the advantages of online marketing, but we wanted to make an impact on the business success of Skycasters, LLC. As marketing majors, we have previously learned various aspects of advertising, ranging from print to broadcast. Being given the opportunity to work with a real client gave us the motivation needed to successfully create an online campaign, and differentiate ourselves amongst our competition. In order to meet the needs of Skycasters, we wanted to learn more about their everyday business operations so we could have an overall impact in helping them better serve the needs of those interested in the E-Rate Program.

Our team not only met our primary learning goals, but we were able to exceed expectations. Understanding the basics of online marketing was a fundamental learning aspect, but we continued to go beyond this and use Google Analytics to strengthen our campaign, as well as create multiple keywords that we thought would be most successful. This was an experience that we wanted to benefit from, as well as increase awareness of Skycasters and the assistance they can provide to schools and libraries. Taking into consideration that many people obtain information through internet access, we realized that our increased knowledge of online marketing would give us the experience we need to succeed in any marketing profession.

I. Group Dynamics:

Establishing keywords was something we reported amongst our group on a daily basis so that we could select the ones that were most relevant to our ad group and that would generate the greatest number of clicks. Being that we had received the greatest amount of money to use towards our ad campaign, we wanted to spend our budget wisely by targeting specific regions of the country, and eliminating the keywords that were costly, and irrelevant. Discussing a campaign strategy and creating reports daily, allowed us to closely monitor our campaign over the four day period.

II. Client Dynamics:

In order to create a campaign that would benefit Skycasters, we initially decided to use the original landing page where customers could access information regarding the E-Rate program. We did make minor changes, such as placing ARRA in the left-hand navigation. Our client approved this and said it greatly improved the SEO against that term. Ultimately, the three landing pages were placed as navigational elements within the “2009 Broadband Stimulus” section of the site. We hope that the additional information provided on the landing page will allow visitors to navigate the website more efficiently.

III. Future Recommendations:

After closely analyzing our campaign for Skycasters, we decided on several changes we would make, such as placing our CPC at a cost between $6 and $7. Also, we would focus on our best performing keywords and eliminate education because of how broad of a keyword it was. It would also be more desirable to test for a few more weeks. Being that our results showed less clicks on Friday and a larger amount on Monday-Wednesday, we would divide money spent to distribute more money on Monday-Wednesday. Our campaign was more successful during the hours from 8a.m.-3p.m. because this is when we received the most clicks.

When referring back to our results on Google analytics, the geographic locations we would focus on would be Ohio, Arkansas, Kentucky, and North Dakota because in these locations we had five people that did not bounce. These people could be potential customers; therefore we would direct our attention in these areas through increased advertising. Using the insights for search tool would allow us to focus on cities instead of states that are interested in specific keywords. Lastly, watching the news would help us better the campaign because if information is brought up relevant to our campaign then this may allow us to buy keywords for cheaper. Including the best performing keywords in our ad copy would allow us to compare the results. A recommended change we would make to our ad copy would be to change the third line to “Satellite internet through grants.”

Keyword List

“stimulus package”
“stimulus bill”
“stimulus plan”
“american recovery and reinvestment act”
“american recovery and reinvestment”
“2009 arra”
“arra 2009″
“economic stimulus package”
“state equalization fund”
“educational technology”
“education stimulus”
“education stimulus bailout”
“education stimulus money”
“2009 stimulus plan”
“2009 stimulus bill”
“2009 stimulus package”
“stimulus internet”
“education technology stimulus”
“stimulus bill”
“satellite backup”
“broadband stimulus package”
“broadband stimulus plan”
“satellite internet backup”
“satellite back-up”
“satellite internet back-up”
“k-12 education stimulus”
“stimulus bill for education”
“education economic stimulus”
“satellite stimulus”
“remote satellite internet”
“remote broadband access”
“urban broadband”
“remote education”
“arra education”
“dish satellite internet”
“portable satellite internet”
“internet for education”
“quality satellite internet”
“education internet options”
“education internet back-up”
“education internet backup”
“education internet plan”
“education internet plans”
“educational internet”
“quality internet coverage”
“broadband satellite internet access”
“broadband satellite internet access for schools”
“landline backup”
“school internet backup”
“education internet connectivity”
“satellite internet connectivity”
“satellite broadband internet”
“education broadband”
“skycasters education”
“skycasters broadband”
“skycasters stimulus plan”
“skycasters stimulus”
“satelite backup”
“satalite backup”
“sattellite backup”
“sattelite backup”
“satelite internet backup”
“satalite internet backup”
“sattellite internet backup”
“sattelite internet backup”
“satelite back-up”
“satalite back-up”
“sattellite back-up”
“sattelite back-up”
“satelite internet back-up”
“satalite internet back-up”
“sattellite internet back-up”
“sattelite internet back-up”
“satelite stimulus”
“satalite stimulus”
“sattellite stimulus”
“sattelite stimulus”

By: Megan E Bockbrader

Megan E Bockbrader — Tue, 05 May 2009 02:22:53 +0000

From: Megan E Bockbrader
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 10:22 PM
To: Mike Kister; Gregory Alan Rich
Subject: BGSU Communities

Appended below is the analysis paper from this morning’s presentation.

Thank you again for all of your time, Mike. It is greatly appreciated- this was an unbelievable learning experience.

Thank you,

Megan Bockbrader

ARRA- Communities
Skycasters

Megan Bockbrader
Katy Burkholder
Lauren Schumacher
Stephanie Tanner

Appendix

Introduction

Skycasters is a satellite internet company based in Akron Ohio. The owner and operator Mike Kister came to BGSU looking for students to help orchestrate several pay-per-click advertisements. Focusing on remote communities Skycasters is able to provide internet access to places that would never have been able to use cable internet. Mr. Kister approached Falcolytics about conducting pay-per-click ads to help generate business and business partners to aide in Skycasters application for ARRA funding.

Mr. Kister was interested in focusing on communities, education, and healthcare opportunities. Our group’s focus was communities. This includes remote locations and communities with low per-capita income levels. We thought Mr. Kister’s funds would be best spent focusing on acquiring business partners that would help Skycasters provide internet access to these communities. Skycasters is looking to attract companies from the following areas:

Local communications consultants
National VoIP providers
Fiber installation contractors
Fiber network management firms
Wireless or Wi-Max providers
SCADA Manufacturers, installers or network owners

Our goal from the ad campaign was to gain partnerships that will help Skycasters take satellite internet to those communities off the grid. Companies that would make good partners would be communication companies, those who already provide terrestrial connections and networking among communities, technology players, and anyone with advanced technological skills that could help Skycasters break the geographic constraints.

The focus was put on partnerships because these alliances must be in line before any business transaction can take place. Also the ads are more likely to gain interest from businesses looking to get involved with ARRA than actually create business among communities. Finally, if these communities do not have internet access they are less likely to see the Adwords ad which would be a waste of advertising dollars.

Expanding internet service will provide many benefits for all those involved. By becoming partners, both companies will be able to combine their global reach, market strengths, and innovation thus being able to finally support the underserved areas with communication technology. Having a partner also provides a cost effective method for reaching this market. They will be able to extend traditional networks and get past the current constraints of terrestrial connections. Finally by creating these partnerships both companies will be able to stay ahead of the competition with the new innovations and superior customer service provided from reaching out to the underserved communities.

The project was broken into two main portions: a two-day test campaign and a real campaign that lasted four days.

Pre-test Campaign Strategy

The test campaign was conducted over a two-day span. Prior to the launch, our group decided to run four ads. They were:

Ad 1
Satellite Internet Access
Join Skycasters to Provide Internet
for Communities through ARRA.
http://www.Skycasters.com

Ad 2
Satellite Internet Access
Work with Skycasters to Apply
for ARRA Government Funding.
http://www.Skycasters.com

Ad 3
Skycasters Internet
Joint Business Ventures
Use ARRA to expand Your Business
http://www.Skycasters.com

Ad 4
Skycasters Internet
Looking for Partners to Deliver
Satellite Services through ARRA.
http://www.skycasters.com

We thought this would help us see which ads perform the best so that we would know which ad texts should be used during the real campaign. The ads were set to optimize so the best ad would be shown more, this indicated how the ads were performing. For the test campaign we targeted the whole United States of America with a budget of $50.00 a day, and a goal to have around 5000 impressions.

We selected ten keywords.

Satellite Internet
Satellite Internet Providers
ARRA Satellite Internet Providers
Partner with Satellite Internet Companies
ARRA Satellite Internet
Satellite Internet Stimulus Partnerships
Internet Service in the ARRA
VSAT Satellite Internet Partnerships
American Recovery Reinvestment Act
ARRA Business Opportunities

By focusing on detailed words and phrases, we thought we would be able to attract quality impressions and clicks rather then just obtaining many uninterested visitors. We also tried to make the keywords fit our landing page and ad text to help lower the cost of each keyword.

Test Campaign Analysis

We ran the test campaign for two days using the four different text ads. Since we set the campaign on optimizer we were able to determine which ad(s) were the best performing ones to give us better insight as to which ads to run for the actual campaign. According to the data presented below, we clearly saw that ad #1 and ad #2 were the best performing.

After seeing the results of the different text ads, we determined that using “Skycasters” in the heading of the ads was not as effective as using “Satellite Internet Access.” For the actual campaign we will choose to use ads #1 and #2 with the possibility of using the other two text ads with a different heading.

We kept all 10 keywords throughout the whole campaign and found that “Satellite Internet” by far as the most impressions and clicks, followed by “Satellite Internet Providers.” The following charts show the results of the keywords in the form of impressions and clicks.

The results of our keywords were much skewed and the reason for this is because our keywords are very specific and are not often search about on Google. So when we only have a few impressions and one click that is progress for us because that means that someone specifically searched for our keyword and clicked on our ad because they understand what the ad is trying to say. As we stated earlier, we want to strive for quality people clicking on our ads, so the more specific our keywords are and the clicks associated with those keywords, means that we have a higher chance of getting quality people clicking on the ads.

Our test campaign also resulted in our group spending $71.70 of the $100 budget, meaning that we have $28.30 to add to the actual campaign. Most of our impressions and click came from the keyword “Satellite Internet” but the campaign did result in 7799 impressions with 47 clicks; a click through rate of .60%.

Campaign Strategy and Analysis

Before running our four-day campaign we thoroughly discussed our strategy. We decided that it was more important to have a very high quality campaign with effective keywords and texts than having a large quantity of impressions and clicks.

With a budget of $55 a day during the four-day campaign, the initial cost per click (CPC) bid for each of the keywords was set to $2.51. After watching the campaign for a day we increased the bid to $3.73 to increase our page position to make sure that the ads were being shown on the first page. We then increased the CPC bid for the keyword “Satellite Internet Providers” to $6.51 because its position was very low.

Listed below are the 3 text ads that were used in the campaign:

Ad Text #1: Satellite Internet Access
Join Skycasters to Provide Internet
For Communities through ARRA.
http://www.Skycasters.com

Ad Text #2: Satellite Internet Access
Work with Skycasters to Provide
For Government ARRA Funding.
http://www.Skycasters.com

Ad Text #3: Satellite Internet Access
Looking for Partners to Deliver
Services through ARRA.
http://www.Skycasters.com

After considering the results from the two-day test campaign we decided to use the two most successful ad texts for the campaign and the body text from one of the ads, with a new heading. The original heading had “Skycasters” in it, which we determined was not beneficial for the campaign since most people are not familiar with Skycasters and ultimately would not know what they are clicking on then. The third ad text was not developed into the campaign until Tuesday, April 28, 2009, which was nearly two days into the campaign.

The following are the ten keywords that were used in the campaign. These are very specific and narrow keywords. Our strategy was that we wanted to have very defined keywords because we did not want to spend money on clicks from people who are not interested in Skycasters or their services. By defining the keywords we were able to attract people who were most likely interested in Skycasters or the concept of becoming a partner. Our goal was that we would not necessarily attract a large amount of impressions and clicks for each of the key words, but the people who did click the keywords were interested and learned something about Skycasters while also hopefully becoming a potential customer.

Satellite Internet
Satellite Internet Providers
American Recovery Reinvestment Act
ARRA Business Opportunities
Satellite Internet Stimulus Partnerships
VSAT Satellite Internet Partnership
Partner with Satellite Internet Companies
ARRA Satellite Internet
Internet Service in the ARRA
Satellite Internet and Communication Partnerships

The only keyword listed above that is a broad term is “satellite internet”. Our intentions of using this keyword were that if our text ad was very specific and well defined we would not have problems with unwanted visitors. “Satellite Internet” was the most costly keyword and had the most number of impressions and clicks.

Throughout the campaign we made many small changes in order to maximize our results. The first change was to put the campaign on a schedule; we set it to run from 6am to 10pm because that is when professionals would most likely be at work (with a couple hours before and after to allow for flexibility). The percentage listed on the campaign settings is incorrect however because we left the settings to run all day on the weekends because the campaign was only running Monday through Thursday.

On the third day of the campaign we had only spent about $125 so since there was extra money we made some changes to the campaign. First the max CPC bid was changed from $2.51 to $3.73 for all the keywords. Additionally the max CPC bid for the keyword “satellite internet providers” was manually changed to $6.51 in order to gain first page status. We felt this was an important keyword because potential partners may just search for internet providers if they are thinking of partnering with someone.

A content network was also added to the campaign. This was added to potentially grab partners’ attention if they were not necessarily searching on Google. Five sites were added as content networks:

These sites were chosen because when technology and business technology were searched these appeared on the first page. The sites also seem to contribute more business technology news as opposed to consumer technology and trends. This content network didn’t provide us with any useful results however it didn’t cost us anything either. There was only one impression and no clicks. This could be for a number of reasons such as these sites aren’t actually viewed very often, or the ads weren’t actually being shown on the pages.

The following charts show the final number of impressions and clicks for each of the ad texts and individual keywords in our campaign.

The four-day campaign generated 9,376 impressions and 74 clicks. The total cost was $191.04. Using the Google Analytics feature we were able to determine that the average time spent by visitors on the Skycasters webpage was two minutes and thirteen seconds, which is a fairly long time for visitors to stay on the site. This shows that people were interested in the site and were not just clicking on the site and then leaving quickly. Google Analytics was able to provide data that told us that there was a bounce rate of 48.21%, which is also very good. A complete report from Google Analytics is provided in the appendix.

The final results for the campaign appear as if they could be promising. There were three keywords with a 100% click through rate, they were:

ARRA Business Opportunities
Satellite Internet Stimulus Partnerships
VSAT Satellite Internet Partnership

If people were searching this specific of a phrase we feel like they would have to be potential partners because customers would not be typing this in to search. The overall click through rate was .79%, and a complete list of keyword analysis can be found in the appendix.

Our average ad position was low, but this is in part due to “satellite internet provider” being so expensive. We did not raise our bid till after a couple days so we had very low position with that keyword. Another problem we faced was raising the quality score for American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. Our ad text only said the acronym ARRA and Google did not recognize this as the same thing.

Conclusion and Recommendations

After evaluating the results of the four-day campaign combined with the two-day test we have several recommendations for Skycasters if they are to continue a campaign in the future. The first suggestion would be to consider not using “Satellite Internet” as a key word. The keyword cost nearly $170 of the campaign. It is likely that many of the people who clicked were not interested in becoming a partner of Skycasters, but we do not have any hard data to confirm that. Skycasters needs to weigh the costs and the benefits of using it as a keyword and if they are able to determine any type of conversions. We do suggest that all of the other keywords be used in the future as we feel that they are very specific and can help to find the right people that Skycasters is looking for.

It is also suggested that the #1 and #2 text ads are used. Both of these ads performed very well during the two-day test and the four-day campaign. These two ads very specifically address what the company is looking for. The #3 ad text did not perform well in the two-day test and the four-day campaign even when the heading was changed. It would be suggested that the ad text #3 not be used.

Finally, it is suggested that the Skycasters name not be used in the heading of any ad texts. During our test campaign we found that texts that contained “Skycasters” did not perform well because people are not familiar with Skycasters. The “Skycasters” name is not necessarily known to the general public. The heading needs to contain something to catch the searchers eye, but still relevant to what we are looking for.

By: Mike Kister

Mike Kister — Mon, 04 May 2009 19:00:17 +0000

Congratulations! The BGSU Marketing Class, FalcoLytics, has released their final reports on their Skycasters AdWords campaigns. One report actually contains findings we'll implement in our own AdWords campaigns. Bravo! See the attached presentations by sector:

Healthcare report & analysis

Education report & analysis

Communities report & analysis

- Mike

By: Megan N Svat

Megan N Svat — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 20:29:56 +0000

From: Megan N Svat
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 1:43 PM
To: Mike Kister
Subject: RE: BGSU: AdWords: Education Team

Mr. Kister,

Attached is the Education Team power point. Sorry about the delay.

Megan

By: Andrew J Baney

Andrew J Baney — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 16:05:29 +0000

From: Andrew J Baney
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 12:05 PM
To: Mike Kister
Subject: RE: BGSU- Healthcare Group

Sorry Mike,

Here is the PowerPoint!

-Andrew

By: Mike Kister

Mike Kister — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:48:09 +0000

From: Mike Kister
Sent: Monday, April 27, 2009 10:48 AM
To: Andrew J Baney
Cc: Gordon Landefeld
Subject: RE: BGSU- Healthcare Group

Good Morning,

Please forward your PowerPoint presentation from last Thursday.

Thanks,

-Mike

By: Mike Kister

Mike Kister — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:27:38 +0000

Hi Andrew (and team):

Google will not accept some of these (the ones in all CAPS!!!), but the rest should fly.

However, not all of them are really appropriate for Skycasters. You need to bear in mind that the vast majority of end users who need broadband will have a terrestrial alternative. In these cases, satellite is not the best solution for their needs.

Ads that have a broad appeal (to all hospitals) will produce a very high bounce rate. I believe that your ads (along with your keywords) need to specifically disclose the type of service/target that we are addressing.

I would recommend headlines like “Satellite Broadband”,”Rural Broadband”, etc. Maintain the body copy with EHR/EMR theme.

-Mike

By: Andrew J Baney

Andrew J Baney — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 23:56:39 +0000

From: Andrew J Baney
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 7:56 PM
To: Mike Kister
Subject: BGSU- Healthcare Group

Hello Mr. Kister,

Our group has put together some various ad copies. We were hoping you could give us some feedback before we run them tomorrow. Thanks for your time and sorry this was sent so late.

Sincerely,

Aaron Neal
Andrew Baney
Carolyn Nesline
Lindsay Squier

By: Megan E Bockbrader

Megan E Bockbrader — Thu, 23 Apr 2009 20:36:21 +0000

From: Megan E Bockbrader
Sent: Thursday, April 23, 2009 4:36 PM
To: mike@skycasters.com
Cc: Lauren Taylor Schumacher; Stephanie M Tanner; Katherine S Burkholder; Gregory Alan Rich
Subject: BGSU Communities Team

Mike,

Attached is our PowerPoint from this morning’s presentation. Thank you again for your time.

Thank you,

Megan Bockbrader
Katy Burkholder
Lauren Schumacher
Stephanie Tanner