In the highly competitive event & party rental industry, reaching the right customers at the right time is critical. This case study features a success story of how we revitalized a Google Search Ads campaign for an event rental company that specializes in providing products like glassware, tables, linens, and other essential items for various events, from weddings to corporate gatherings.
For this client, we took over from a previous agency. And I normally don’t like to criticize agencies but this agency hadn’t made a change to the account in 6+ months. Not good. And upon review, we were licking our chops as there was an incredible amount of room for improvement and I knew we’d look like superheroes.
The goal was increasing quality leads while maintaining or lowering their advertising costs if it made sense. The campaign had underperformed previously, leading to lost revenue opportunities and frustration. This study highlights the challenges we faced, the solutions implemented, and the impressive (we think so anyways!) results achieved.
When we took over the Google Ads campaign, it was clear that the existing strategy was not optimized for success. The campaign, previously managed by another agency, had several key issues:
The campaign's structure was unnecessarily complex, with multiple ad groups that lacked proper keyword segmentation. This made it challenging to control budgets, analyze performance, and focus on high-intent searches. Ad groups were filled with overlapping keywords, leading to bidding conflicts and wasted ad spend.
Upon reviewing the search term report, we found that the majority of search terms were unrelated to the client’s core business offerings. The report was filled with ‘branded’ terms, as well as competitor names, resulting in clicks that did not convert into leads. While competitor search campaigns can be useful when intentional, in this case, it was unplanned and ineffective, driving up costs without yielding valuable conversions. About 40% of their previous ad spend was being wasted.
The existing campaign relied on automated bidding strategies based on conversions, but conversion tracking was limited to only a few specific actions. Critical conversion points, like phone call tracking, were not set up. As a result, the campaign couldn’t accurately attribute leads, making optimization efforts ineffective.
The cost per conversion was over $200—an unsustainable figure in the event rental market. This high cost indicated inefficient ad spend and a lack of focus on keywords that truly drove high-quality leads. Of course, it also didn’t help that proper phone tracking hadn’t even been implemented 🙁.
Here is a screenshot of the poor performing campaigns.
Phase 1
We began by overhauling the campaign structure:
Phase 2
Accurate conversion tracking was a crucial part of our strategy. We ensured that all possible conversion actions were tracked, including:
Accurate conversion tracking allowed us to establish a reliable baseline for performance measurement. We were able to identify the most effective keywords, ad groups, and ads, facilitating more informed optimization decisions.
Phase 3
Initially, we shifted to a Manual CPC bidding strategy to gain more control over ad spend. This strategy enabled us to monitor CPCs closely and adjust bids based on keyword performance, quality scores, and competition levels. As a result, we could prioritize high-performing keywords and limit the budget for low-conversion terms.
Phase 4
Once we had gathered sufficient conversion data, we began testing automated bidding strategies to further optimize performance:
The strategic changes we implemented led to significant performance improvements:
We reduced the average CPC from nearly $6 to $3, allowing the client to get more clicks and impressions for the same budget.
By focusing on high-intent keywords and optimizing bids, we increased search impression share by 50%, ensuring that the client’s ads appeared more frequently for meaningful searches.
With better conversion tracking and targeted keywords, the quality of leads improved significantly, resulting in higher conversion rates.
The cost per lead dropped to under $60, a dramatic improvement from the original $200. This was achieved through improved ad relevance, efficient bidding strategies, and accurate conversion tracking.
The client experienced an unprecedented increase in lead volume during the Fall season, a period that’s typically quieter in the event rental industry.
Here is a screenshot of just one week of data from October 24’ with our upgraded camapigns
We hope this case study was interesting and if you’re someone in the event space that looking for help, we’d love to chat. Otherwise, here are some key takeaways! Thanks for reading.
A focused and simplified structure can drive better results and make budget management easier.
Proper tracking is vital to understand what’s working and how to allocate ad spend effectively.
Prioritizing high-intent searches improves lead quality and conversion rates.
Starting with Manual CPC offers control, enabling informed decisions before scaling with automated bidding.
By applying a data-driven approach, we transformed a struggling Google Search Ads campaign into a successful lead-generation engine for an event rental company. The results underline the importance of precise targeting, conversion tracking, and continuous optimization in achieving a higher return on ad spend. The campaign not only delivered more leads at a lower cost but also demonstrated the power of strategic PPC management in driving business growth.
With that being said, there is still more work to be done as these campaigns are still quite young and the conversion rate is still relatively low. Through proper management, we’ll work to improve all key performance indicators and continue to drive down cost.
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