Santanna Energy Services had historically run their own Google Ads campaigns, with 40% of overall leads coming through this platform. At the end of the year, they decided to double down in display ad strategies due to changing market conditions. This resulted in poor performance and a lot of wasted ad spend. Santanna needed to turn around their marketing performance & selected Digital Growth Studios for the job.

When Santanna began working with Digital Growth Studios, they set a goal of achieving a CPA of $250 in each of their five markets. To hit their goal, Digital Growth Studios would need to achieve a 42% reduction in CPL.

Goals

• CPA of $250
• Target New Renewable Energy Audience

Digital Growth Studios identified three major impediments to reducing CPL. We saw that the account was utilizing single keyword ad groups, which was leading to a reduced AI learning ability. This technique called SKAG had been historically very successful in qualifying traffic. Butin the last three years, Google made updates to the platform to discourage this practice. In the modern search ad landscape of AI bidding, this technique negatively impacts an accounts ability to compete for quality clicks.

Secondly, Digital Growth Studios identified very precise location targeting limitations. In the same way that hyper segmentation in the SKAG technique has become an antiquated form of Google Ads marketing, so has precise zip code targeting. Google artificially restricts campaigns with exact location targeting requirements. Those restrictions can increase CPC and CPA for clients.

Thirdly, an exhaustive qualification process onsite significantly impeded conversion rate. Instead of requesting a zip code, Santanna Energy required a full address before offering products. This onsite barrier ment many qualified clicks would bounce before seeing product pages.

To address these issues, Digital Growth Studios developed a new strategy that involved shifting away from campaign types that did not support the clients goals. We turned off Display and Discovery ads that werent performing and reallocated this spend to search. We also reprioritized the budget and rebuilt the campaign structure. By pulling spend from inefficient campaigns, we were able to increase spending for bottom of funnel terms most likely to convert.

To further improve the campaign structure, BP encouraged quality AI learning by identifying core terms, grouping KWs into themed ad groups, and segmenting those terms to their dedicated budget. This meant they could change the bidding strategy to Max Conversion Value bidding and take advantage of quality learning. By switching bidding strategies, Google was able to more easily see how audiences engaged with our ads and serve them to the search traffic most likely to convert.

After addressing these initial needs we started the conversation around changing onsite form requirements. We found that for most of Santanna Energys product offerings they only require a zip code. So for those specific campaigns we worked with their team to change the forms. Previously, when the form only required a zip code, they recorded 30% more conversions.

The results of this strategy were impressive. By restructuring core campaigns using Google Ads best practices, Digital Growth Studios was able to lean into success that aligned with the clients goals. This led to a 50% increase in conversions year-over-year and a significant reduction in Cost Per Acquisition. With these learnings, they were able to find low funnel opportunities that branched into new renewable energy audiences, which also met the clients secondary goal.

Overall, the partnership between Santanna Energy Services and Digital Growth Studios is a great success. We helped the client achieve their goals and develop a sustainable marketing strategy for the future. By identifying inefficiencies and implementing a new structure, we significantly improved the clients marketing performance and drove impressive results.