Increased Conversions, Decreased Cost Per Acquisition with ClickTracks

MostChoice (www.mostchoice.com) needed to get a 'big picture' view of their paid and natural search traffic. Online Marketing Manager Michael Andrew used ClickTracks to gain insights on bots, human visitors and keyword patterns, which had a huge positive impact on MostChoice's ad spend.

MostChoice is an online quoting service that seeks to simplify and speed up the process of buying insurance, mortgage, real estate and financial products by combining impartial online information with the offline help of independent local agents.

Just What are Those Bots Up To?
One of the first things that Michael and his team were interested in tracking was search engine bot behavior. "Because we have a team of writers creating content across a range of industries—including insurance, mortgage, real estate, and financial products—it was imperative that we know how search engine bots indexed and ranked our content."

ClickTracks was able to shed light on what the bots did. "Being able to drill down and see exactly when different search engine robots were visiting our site, how frequently, and what pages they hit is a huge benefit when it comes to our search engine optimization campaigns," said Michael. "Using the Robot View, we're able to see our site the same way that all of the search bots see it—and that's been quite valuable when it comes to making changes on the site."

"Golden Words" Increase Conversion Rate Seven Times Higher than Average
ClickTracks has also made a difference in MostChoice's ad spend in two major ways. "First," said Michael, "it's helped me better segment exactly which keywords corresponded to users who were in 'buy' mode, and to also filter out those customers that might just be in the research phase. For example, when I looked at the Search Report for a recent campaign that was promoting an expensive life insurance product, I noticed certain "golden words" or "golden phrases" that had a conversion rate nearly 7 times higher than the average!"

By digging a little deeper, Michael noticed something else: those "golden words" corresponded to 'ideal' customers who met MostChoice's targeted financial and age demographics perfectly. He also came upon a few keywords that had the opposite effect—AKA "poison words". Michael commented, "Just as I'd seen the "golden words", I also noticed that certain keywords corresponded to people who weren't really serious—hence the "poison words". It wasn't worth paying the high cost per click for those poison phrases, so I adjusted my PPC campaigns accordingly."

Drilling Down into the "Long Tail" of Search Doubles Customers, Cuts CPA by 40%
Michael's ad conversions increased and his ad spend decreased in other ways, thanks to ClickTracks. "The second way that ClickTracks has had a huge impact on our ad spend is by letting us truly drill down into the "long tail" of search. Since MostChoice had been a major search advertiser for years, I have at my fingertips a wealth of log data, showing the real terms and phrases people have been using to get to our site, via paid and natural search listings."

Using ClickTracks, Michael took a closer look at his log files—choosing to concentrate on files that covered a recent 6-month-period and contained 300,000+ unique search phrases. "I began to see patterns of keywords that had shown a significant response to our product offering. These keyword patterns had never been obvious—until I saw them in ClickTracks," said Michael. With his new view of old data, he "revised our AdWords campaigns, actively targeting the keywords I'd noticed in the pattern. Since then, we've nearly doubled the number of daily customers for one of our core products, and have done so at a cost savings of nearly 30-40 percent below our average cost per acquisition (CPA)," said Michael.

Knocking Out Click Fraud With Ease
Michael and his team have just started exploring ClickTracks' new Click Fraud analysis tool to look for patterns indicating potentially fraudulent activity. "Like anybody else, we don't want to have to pay for illegitimate clicks. Believe me—being in the insurance and financial industries, we've seen our share of fraudulent PPC activity over the years, so we're always looking for better ways to identify bad clicks and alert the search engines to it. I think that ClickTracks will help us do that much more methodically and easily."

MostChoice on ClickTracks: "It Was a No-Brainer to Pick up the Product"
The MostChoice team likes ClickTracks! "I don't remember exactly how I came upon ClickTracks, but I'm glad I did," said Michael. "I read SearchEngineWatch daily, and when I found out that ClickTracks had won numerous ClickZ awards, I knew it was something worth looking into. Dan [Miller, a ClickTracks sales rep] got in touch with me and walked me through the product—and after seeing some of my actual data within ClickTracks, I could immediately see how it could make my day easier; it was a no-brainer to pick up the product."