Clyde Marine
Growth through Google Ads Case Study
The Client
Clyde Marine Recruitment have been supplying bespoke marine recruitment and crew management services to the global maritime industry for over four decades.
With offices in the UK, Latvia, and Poland, they source international crews and work in partnership with shipping companies and seafarers to provide a first-class, fully rounded personnel service.
In 2022, I began working with them to scale their growth to the next level by connecting with qualified candidates through Google Ads.
The Challenges
After stints with two different marketing agencies, both failed to keep up the lead volume or lower the cost per lead. As a result, the Google Ads account was struggling to manage to keep up with the increasing CPCS and competition in market candidates.
Momentum in the account from previous years was lost as CPA was increasing month on month and the volume of conversions was dropping.
Furthermore, the marine niche required a high level of detail for targeting which was clearly being neglected. As a result, the Ads were losing impression share and spending on irrelevant traffic.
The goal was clear, the account needed thorough diagnosis and optimizations to drive conversions up while bringing down cost per lead.
My Solution
Once I reviewed the account, competition, and analytics, they accepted and committed to the challenge.
Key to driving better return was a methodical examination and optimization of the whole account. No detail too big or too small, with all search terms reviewed, conversion attribution models changed and targeting was made hyper focused.
Over segmented ad groups were leaned out for best performers and in market keywords. New campaign structures put in place with DSA leveraged for new search terms and keywords.
Finally, we leveraged more audience data as we created strategic 1st party audiences along with split testing different in market google audiences.
The Outcome
Clyde saw an immediate impact, once areas of waste were cut. Budget was pushed into areas to expand reach to high quality candidates.
The first 3 months of my management saw conversions increase by 10% or more month on month while CPA got down to a 12 month low without a drop in volume.
Conversion rate went up intitaly by 88% after the 1st month and maintained its high rate month on month consistently with no sharp drops afterward.
Clyde Marine continues to grow its base by attracting the best candidates without having to hit crippling customer acquisition costs.
The Results after the first month of my management:
112%
Increase in conversions
47%
47% drop in CPA
88%
Increase in conversion rate
1
Very Happy Client