River & Trail Outfitters
Success Story
PPC Overhaul to Drive Ecommerce Sales
Client Problem
River & Trail Outfitters is a premier adventure company operating rafting, tubing and specialty day tours for the Washington/Baltimore metro area. River & Trail operates in a highly competitive market. They wanted to grow their business and knew PPC should be a good channel, but they were seeing limited results with their current PPC program. They asked Liquid Spark to assess their program and identify how to improve it.
Our Solution
A complete PPC overhaul and ongoing account management.
We did a comprehensive PPC audit on River & Trail’s existing Program. We uncovered several key areas to improve ad reach, budget efficiency, geographic targeting, and conversions. We overhauled their PPC program with a mix of search and display ads, focusing on conversion as our top goal.
- Keyword Analysis: LS mined and analyzed both organic and prior PPC query data to make sure the most important keywords were covered in our PPC ad targeting and landing pages. We went offline and visited River & Trail’s actual adventure center, too!
- Campaign Segmentation & Optimization: We overhauled their PPC Campaigns, and segmented campaigns for that sweet spot of best keyword/ad/landing page alignment that Google rewards with lowest costs per click (CPC). Updating engaging ad copy for humans and Google, along with leveraging the right extensions, completed our campaign optimization strategy.
- Ongoing Performance Tuning: Other agencies might engage in “set it and forget it” PPC program management, but we know that the highest performing campaigns require consistent tuning and review to deliver the best results, week after week. Savvy data review uncovers new opportunities and competitive insights that support driving higher conversions through PPC.
- Content Optimization: It’s not just about the ads! We make sure the landing pages are fully optimized for visitor conversion, and lowest costs. This helps support better organic search results, too!
Marketing Examples
METRICS
Return on Ad Spend
Results
- The PPC program for River & Trail took off right away, and has continued to reach new heights for their business.
- The program immediately jumped up to contribute over 5X total ROAS in the first few weeks. The results kept climbing, with over 9X ROAS for ecommerce revenue and now over 15X into our second season.
- Organizing, optimizing, testing and expanding River & Trails’s PPC program helped deliver a record breaking year for River & Trail outfitters in the first season we took over. We are on track to break that record yet again this season!
We have worked with Liquid Spark for many years and have always found their work to be top notch. Specifically, working with Dan & Julie these past two years in PPC has helped our business GROW! We were seeing a slight decline in our online business coming into last season when we asked Liquid Spark to take over our Google Adwords program. They did their research and recommended an aggressive approach. Dan monitored the results and made appropriate tweaks to improve our ad campaign. Under their watchful eye, our return on advertising spend soared up to 9x-15x! Liquid Spark sent weekly results and patiently and thoroughly answered any questions we might have. They also asked pertinent questions and monitored the current trends in our business activity that helped to direct our ad spend. Last year we saw an increase of about 15% in our overall business, and we can’t wait to see what this year brings!