Problem
Corporate Financial Services, a business unit of GE Commercial Finance, Services targets corporate executives and influencers in search of corporate financing and loans $10 million in size or greater. Their Keyword Advertising program, created by a previous vendor, was inefficient at driving prospects to their web site for further qualification. They asked ClearGauge to (1) improve the Keyword Advertising program, and (2) to lower their cost per lead.

Solution
ClearGauge’ team provided a measurable, efficient, paid Keyword Advertising program. This expanded the target base, generated qualified prospects and placed them in the pipeline for nurturing towards sales. Key elements of this online program were:

• Research and expand their keyword list from a small subset of words
• Increase reach and expand the keyword list by adding new target segments that encompassed influencers as well as decision-makers
• Build “middle ground” dialogue options and interactions with prospects to drive them along the buying cycle to sales
• Measure “beyond the click” to determine highly valued client activities such as newsletter sign-ups, and behaviors such as selecting the “Find Financing Now” option
• Set benchmarks for cost per newsletter sign-up and cost per “Find Financing Now” option
• Create a continual optimization loop to increase lead volume of targeted loan amounts at nominal increase in cost

Results
The ClearGauge program results showed the importance of a well-constructed keyword list. Keyword research on the original client-provided list of 47 words was expanded to 1,600, broken into 43 market segment groupings, and applied in 25 relevant messages.

In the first nine months of implementation, ClearGauge’ Keyword Advertising program increased the number of clicks by 414%, reduced Corporate Financial Services’ per click by 89%, and decreased cost per qualified lead by 64%. The expanded keyword list afforded selection of more unique problem-solving keywords for decision-makers and influencers, thus avoiding the more popular—and more costly—product description or solution words.

These successes were accomplished by setting benchmarks, gaining insights for optimizations related to messaging, landing pages, search engines and other online media.

Learn how ClearGauge can help you generate more qualified leads through Paid Search Engine Marketing. Contact us today.