“We are spending our budget smarter with better results for all of our websites because of Nina Hale Inc.’s technical, SEO and PPC expertise. Our programs continue to achieve greater success each month we work with them.”
— , Interactive Marketing Supervisor, Stratasys
Room & Board
We were pretty excited to have Google write a case study about us. This came about because we had the opportunity to participate in a beta program for call tracking through Google AdWords. Below is a reprint of the Google PPC Case Study.
Sitting pretty
Room & Board believes quality and style should always go hand in hand. The company’s principles include timeless design, authentic hand-craftsmanship, and serious comfort. For
Room & Board, a philosophy of quality and timelessness extends beyond its wide selection of mid-century modern furniture to ensuring a level of customer service that establishes
trusted, long-term relationships. “Room & Board has solid principles and sticks to them,” says Zac Stafford, a former longterm Room & Board employee who is now Senior Search Specialist and Consultant for Nina Hale, Inc., an SEO/SEM ad agency that works with Room & Board. “If a customer is not completely satisfied with a purchase or any other part of their experience, Room & Board will make it right. This kind of treatment is what makes customers come back to Room & Board again and again.”
Search marketing ninjas
Nina Hale, Inc., a Minneapolis based agency with 14 employees and more than 70 years of collective experience, plans, implements, and measures online advertising campaigns for a
diverse roster of companies – from Room & Board to Ecolab, General Mills, and Häagen-Dazs. The Nina Hale team is always on the lookout for the latest ways to improve their clients’
marketing returns and help them establish stronger customer relationships. When the Google staff introduced the agency to call metrics, a new feature in Google AdWords,
Stafford was intrigued and believed it would be a good fit for Room & Board. Because furniture is a highly personal, high-ticket item, customers typically go through a long decision cycle that involves a variety of channels. They may conduct research online first, or they may go to a store to see the furniture in person. They typically then order later
via phone, on the website, or in the store.
The path to loyalty
Call metrics would allow Room & Board to insert a unique Google Voice phone number into their AdWords ads, which would redirect callers to the national Room & Board catalog call
center. Google would then automatically log these calls directly in the Room & Board AdWords account, making it easy for the Nina Hale team to track and review the data.
“Room & Board was excited by the ability to better track customer interactions using an easy tool that’s integrated with AdWords,” says Stafford. “Better visibility across channels was seen as extremely valuable.”
Traditional with a twist
With its focus on building long-lasting customer relationships, Room & Board reasoned that using call metrics and displaying a phone number in the ad would give their customers a
more personal way to connect with their business. At the same time, call metrics reports would help Room & Board better determine ROI and average order values resulting from
specific campaigns. The Nina Hale team and Room & Board decided to test call metrics to discover how it could help them track the purchase path of their customers.
Stafford spearheaded an AdWords call metrics campaign incorporating Room & Board’s traditional branding ad creative. The one unique twist was automatic insertion of a Google
Voice toll-free number as an additional line of ad text.
Shedding light on purchases
Once call metrics captured the number of calls resulting from each campaign, Room & Board was able to crosscheck this data against the company’s sales system to determine if,
where, and when customers purchased a furniture item.
Calls from the Google-published phone number, according to Stafford, lasted four to five minutes, indicating that customers were doing far more than just asking for directions to astore. “Instead, customers were doing a fair amount of inquiry and research – they were relatively serious after obtaining the number from the AdWords ads,” he says. In fact,
Stafford noted that calls originating from AdWords ads had a slightly higher conversion rate than calls to the normal Room & Board toll-free number.
In-store purchases driven by online advertising
For Room & Board, call metrics is providing new insights into how customers research and purchase relatively high ticket furniture items. The Nina Hale team was frankly surprised by
how many people purchased in stores. “I think we were assuming customers would buy online, because that’s what we typically measure when it comes to paid search campaigns,”
says Stafford. “Then we saw that half the people who called the toll-free number purchased online but the other half purchased in a store. Before using call metrics, we probably would
have determined our ROI just by looking at the online sales numbers. Now we understand that online search ad campaigns drive in-store purchases. It was quite an eye-opener.”
Call metrics also had a surprising impact on other online metrics. The Nina Hale team observed a 61% increase in ad clicks with a 19% decrease in cost-per-click – results. They
attribute these results, in part, to more eyes being drawn to the ad once it featured a phone number. Stafford reports, “We were actually able to increase clicks to the site, which before we thought had been maxed out. These clicks paid off, as online conversion rates increased by 40%.”
An eye toward the future
Room & Board plans to run geo-targeted tests and potentially reroute calls back to local stores for even more personalized service. And looking to the future, both Room & Board and
Nina Hale Inc. see call metrics as a way to better tailor the customer experience and generate increased ROI from campaigns. “Room & Board likes testing new technologies,” says Stafford. “Our campaign with call metrics was very successful, and we’ll be trying it with other clients. Call metrics is one more way our clients can personalize the experience to increase customer loyalty. To other marketers, I’d say ‘Don’t be afraid to try new things like call metrics – especially when they are provided at no extra charge from Google, and they hold the potential to truly enhance customer relationships and improve ROI.’”
This article originally published here.
