The Challenge

Monex, a leading precious metals dealer, presented Silverback with a unique challenge in the paid search space. The company’s revenue model is almost entirely dependent on inbound phone calls from their online and offline marketing efforts to generate leads and new business opportunities. Their website, Monex.com, intentionally does not contain any lead forms, so the only way for a site visitor to convert to a lead is to call Monex.

Although the company was generating a large volume of calls via the paid search channel, they had no visibility regarding the individual keywords and ads that were generating those calls. Monex looked to Silverback to design a customized paid search solution that would enable them to gain visibility and optimize the paid search channel at the keyword level.

The Solution

Silverback proposed an integrated strategy leveraging enterprise-level call tracking technology to tie phone calls and corresponding transactional data to site visitors originating from the paid search channel at the keyword level. Code was integrated into Monex.com enabling user defined tracking parameters to be established for each landing page used throughout the campaign.

Each paid search visitor that was referred to Monex.com was exposed to a unique toll free number that carried with it unique and actionable session data from every paid search visitor. Beyond tying keyword data to every paid search visit, the solution provided visibility into the ad group, ad type, landing page, geo-location, caller ID and other relevant metrics.

The Results

The integrated call tracking solution yielded positive results almost immediately. Silverback discovered that Monex was receiving a large volume of clicks and inbound calls during off business hours. Although some of the phone callers would leave messages requesting to be contacted, the vast majority of the callers simply hung up the phone. After sharing these findings and consulting with the client, their paid search campaigns were immediately adjusted to only display ads during regular business hours.

Over time, as the campaign generated a statistically significant data set, it was discovered that about 50% of the campaign was either A) not generating phone calls; or B) generating unprofitable phone calls. Silverback quickly identified and eliminated underperforming segments of the campaign and reallocated budget to segments of the campaign that were proven performers.

To date, the net effect of the effort has led to substantial reductions in customer acquisition costs and significant enhancements in overall campaign efficiencies and performance. Having visibility into paid search performance at the keyword level has also paid huge dividends for our ongoing SEO efforts as we gain more and more visibility into the performance of individual search terms.