Challenge
When lead quality drops, digital marketers need to respond quickly. With the client’s budget at stake, To Exceed, LLC paused a malfunctioning campaign and pivoted one of the most secure audiences online: branded search.
The client’s PMC campaign was producing cheap leads—but too many of them were poor quality. That’s a red flag because Google optimizes for cheap leads, even when the cheapest leads are some of the worst.
Approach
Going beyond damage control, To Exceed’s strategy dramatically lowered the cost-per-hire, outperforming other advertising vendors for the same client.
As described in “Case Study 02 – Landing Page Quality Score,” we optimized the client landing page for branded keyword phrases.
We:
- Paused the campaign bringing in low-quality leads
- Moved more budget toward higher-intent searches
- Created a separate campaign for branded keywords
- Used tighter targeting instead of broad catch-all searches
- Sent branded traffic to landing pages built around those searches
Branded searches are the low-hanging fruit in driver recruiting. Someone searching for your company by name is closer to applying than someone searching a broad phrase like “trucking jobs.”
With a little effort, every company should be able to dominate the search results for their own company.
Results
Once enough time passed for leads to move through the hiring process, the difference became clear.
- Cost per hire dropped from $8,000 in April to $2,500 in July
- That’s a reduction of nearly 69%
- To Exceed’s July cost per hire was about 48% lower than the average cost among other recruiting vendors
- July cost per lead was approximately $70.18
- Other active vendors averaged approximately $74.61 per lead
How to Improve Your Own Branded Landing Pages
You don’t need to rebuild your entire website to make progress.
Start with the basics:
- Search your company name like a driver would.
- Make sure the landing page matches the ad and keyword.
- Use your company name and important recruiting terms in the page copy.
- Make pay, home time, freight and requirements easy to find.
- Put the Apply button where drivers can see it immediately.
- Avoid sending every search to the same generic recruiting page.
- Check which keyword phrases Google rates highly—and which ones it doesn’t.
The goal is simple:
Make it obvious to both Google and the driver that they’ve landed on the right page.
Takeaways
The earlier Quality Score improvements were a good sign, but Quality Scores don’t haul freight.
By focusing more heavily on branded searches, To Exceed helped bring cost per hire down to $2,500, less than half the average of CPH of other vendors.
The lesson isn’t that every trucking company needs a complicated Google Ads strategy.
It’s the opposite.
Make sure you’re optimized for branded search. When interested drivers look for your company, make sure it’s easy for them to find your company and apply.