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JointSourcing in Action #1: Sales Renewal Wins Battle Against Google Adwords On Behalf Of Client

It began when analysts at Sales Renewal noticed the poor return on investment one of the firm’s clients was receiving on their Google Adwords search ad campaigns.

In response, Sales Renewal asked the ad agency it had subcontracted on behalf of the client to investigate. As is typical of such specialized firms, their view was narrowly focused on their area of expertise, and on traditional advertising metrics like CPC (cost per click) and CTR (click-through rates). Those measures seemed to show the campaigns were performing well.

Unable to pinpoint the source of the problem, but nevertheless wary of what they saw, Sales Renewal immediately recommended canceling the previously planned ad spend increase. Later, Sales Renewal decided that the campaign’s poor ROI-even if the reason why was still a mystery-required cutting the client’s Google Adwords budget in half (something no ad agency would volunteer to do, as their compensation is tied directly to the ad spend). As Sales Renewal pressed Google Adwords for a remedy, the search giant’s early denials and demurrals eventually led to a $200 credit offer, provided the client would drop all future claims.

Convinced there was a larger problem, however, Sales Renewal rejected the settlement offer and kept digging, ultimately pinpointing a complicated technical glitch deep in the ad tracking system. Because of this, for every ad landing page a visitor actually saw, Google Adwords was charging for 5.78 click-throughs!

“If you had enough time and technical expertise, this is how you would do it.”

Faced with Sales Renewal’s detailed and accurate analysis, Google Adwords yielded and provided a credit that fully funded the client’s Adwords advertising campaigns for six months.

There were three elements to Sales Renewal’s success with Google: perspective, expertise & tools and motivation.

• As a General Contractor, Sales Renewal is focused on the big picture and how all the pieces work together, not just performance within a narrow silo like advertising.
• SR also had the expertise and tools required to monitor return on investment, dig into problems and convince Google over several months its technical evidence was sound.
• Probably most important, however: thanks to its innovative JointSourcing Solution that shares risk and reward and aligns the economic interests of Sales Renewal with its clients, Sales Renewal is as motivated as its clients to cost effectively grow their sales.

As Keith Loris, CEO of Sales Renewal Corp., often tells our clients, “If you had enough time and technical expertise, this is how you would do it.”

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A Powerful, Cost Effective Way to Market Locally: A Business Sign

Many online sources of business advice have online myopia: they seem to believe that marketing didn’t exist before Google or that the only way to market a business today is through the Web.

At the risk of sounding like the old guy who yells at the kids to get off of his lawn, “hogwash” I say.

In fact, one of the most powerful, cost effective forms of local advertising is as old as business itself: the business sign. I know it might be surprising to think of the sign on your building or store as advertising, but if you think about the key elements of advertising–branding, impressions, ability to bring traffic through the door–they all apply to signage.

And while the cost of a great sign that can really put your business on the map, help you stand out and be easily remembered might seem high at first, business signs last an eternity in comparison to most online ads (10 years, if you obtain it from a high quality manufacturer). This means that from a cost-per-impression perspective, business signs can be dirt cheap.

Sales Renewal knows this first hand because one of our clients, Metro Sign & Awning, is one of the biggest sign designers in New England and we created a free Signage ROI Calculator for them that compares business signs to other forms of advertising. Here’s the comparison that results when some pretty typical numbers are input:

Seems to blow all the other forms of advertising away doesn’t it?

Our point here isn’t to sell you a new sign (though contact us if you’re interested because we’re sure Metro Sign will be happy to help you), but to remind you that marketing happened before the Internet was invented by Al Gore, and that some of the old ideas and methods are still relevant–maybe even more so–today. This underlines the importance of always looking widely for solutions and not to simply follow the herd or rely on today’s “hottest” fad.

Because sometimes, if you’re looking to do more cost-effective local marketing, the answer can be right outside your front door.

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