“Don’t it always seem to go That you don’t know what you’ve got Till it’s gone” Joni Mitchell
We’ve been working with some of our best clients for 10+ years, offering a variety of site design, re-design, and digital marketing services to help them build business. Of course, strategies change over the course of a 10+ year working relationship, especially online, but in some cases, you should consider not trying to fix what’s not broken.
In this case one of our long term clients asked if we should pause their Google Ads campaign as a test to see what would happen. We did our due diligence, showing value from a variety of tracking angles and suggesting not to test pausing campaigns, but the client couldn’t be swayed. Our other digital marketing services remained intact; we were simply pausing the Google Ads campaigns for 30 days.
We know that user behavior has changed over time, and in many cases users don’t convert on the first visit to your website, which has become a key part of our strategy throughout the time working with this client. We warned of negative impacts on other traffic channels, and most importantly on Goals and Ecommerce metrics. The effects were even worse than we anticipated.
Don’t Make This Mistake
Leading up to this test, we had seen months of positive momentum. Year vs. Year Comparison Metrics had showed improvements in volume and sales during the months prior to pausing the campaigns. (Specific Months / Years removed to protect the client)
The negative impact was felt across all channels, reversing recent trends we had in the account, and not a profitable test based on the amount we were spending per month in the campaigns.
A Better Test is Coming
Based on the impact we’re seeing from the paid campaigns on total site performance, it wouldn’t make sense to just re-enable the campaigns. Instead, we will be finding ways to increase the PPC budget to test instead. This should get the traffic and revenue trends moving back in the right direction for this client, and hopefully even make up for the loss during the testing period.
