In the quest for Google PPC marketing and matchmaking excellence, our shared vision led us to collaborate with David Cliff, a long-standing WLD partner. We set out on a mission to unlock the full potential of his campaigns, elevating his return on investment (ROI) to new heights within a return in seven days. Our case study explores the intricacies of our collaboration, revealing the strategies and insights that led to our success. Through a judicious blend of data-driven analysis, industry expertise, and digital innovation, we unleashed a very successful wave of optimised campaigns that resonated with his target audience.
A Background of Over 60s Dating Online
Over 60s Dating Online has, in the past, been one of the largest sites on the White Label Dating platform. However, in recent years, acquisition has slowed due to reduced performance on that brand. Given the strength of the domain, the existing brand awareness and the fact that mature traffic converts very well on our platform, we saw huge potential in the brand. Typically we see higher transaction values and more users staying for longer, meaning increased re-bill revenue and re-initial revenue.
While mature niches such as Widow and Retired have exceptional conversion metrics, the volume available is much lower due to the nature of the keywords targeted. A “soft-niched” over 60s site has large volume potential while maintaining extremely attractive conversion rates and ROI.
WHAT WE DID.
1. Tracking
We started by implementing Google post-back tracking. This not only means we can monitor performance easily with Google Analytics but it also means we can accurately bid on a Target Cost Per Action (TCPA) basis. By feeding goal conversion data from Google Analytics back to Google Ads with very little delay we can give Google what they need in order to optimise campaigns. The signals Google uses include the following;
- Device
- Operating System
- Location
- Site Behaviour
- Day of Week/ Time of Day
- Ad Characteristics
By passing details to Google, on who has converted to basic membership we can ensure our ads are shown to the most relevant consumers based on the above.
While we only use a registration goal for bidding purposes, we also set up postback goals for initial, re-initial, rebill, chargeback, and refund. This makes it easy to optimise campaigns using data straight from Google Analytics. For example, if a campaign has a lot of initials but a high chargeback rate we can investigate why that may be, if we are picking up bot/scammer traffic or any other reasons. Likewise, if registration volume is low, but initial count, rebill count and re-initial count are high, we know we can increase bids there while maintaining good levels of profitability.
2. Landing Page Design
We created new landing pages based on months of research on our own brands. By monitoring sessions and how users interact with pages, we were able to ensure focus was kept where it needed to be – on the registration form. We removed any text content directly below the hero section to reduce distractions and excessive scrolling, we added a sticky registration form on desktop and added a “chatbot”. We tested multiple reg form configurations, including split testing a drop-down field for gender vs a male and female icon, and found that the drop-down selector worked best in terms of encouraging users through the registration process. This also led to a significantly higher percentage of signups that were the correct gender due to there being less confusion.
Every step of the reg form has been carefully considered, down to the text used on the chatbot. In the past, some steps have felt too aggressive but with a more mature audience, this is a perfect opportunity to explain why we require their email address and other details.
We noticed from our own tests, that many users were reaching the final stage of the registration form but not clicking the final CTA. This typically has been “Join Now” (or something similar) which was a sticking point for a surprising number of people. By changing the final CTA to “Next”, as it is throughout the rest of the form, it removed that friction.
3. Hosting
The landing pages are now hosted on the lightening fast Cloudflare Pages. This is important for PPC and SEO as Google closely monitors performance, including page speed. Combined with the removal of any unnecessary scripts, the pages are now extremely well optimised in the eyes of Google.
Every step of the reg form has been carefully considered, down to the text used on the chatbot. In the past, some steps have felt too aggressive but with a more mature audience, this is a perfect opportunity to explain why we require their email address and other details.
We noticed from our own tests, that many users were reaching the final stage of the registration form but not clicking the final CTA. This typically has been “Join Now” (or something similar) which was a sticking point for a surprising number of people. By changing the final CTA to “Next”, as it is throughout the rest of the form, it removed that friction.
4. SEO
As well as ensuring the pages were optimised from a technical SEO perspective, we also updated all content, added new sitemaps and followed Google best-practices which led to higher impression volumes, higher click volumes and overall improvement in average position on Google’s SERP.
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5. Campaign Structure
The campaigns required a ground-up rebuild to ensure they were properly optimised. We used a mix of generic keywords with tight demographic targeting and longer tail keywords to bring in the highest quality traffic possible. The generic keywords, such as “Dating”, “Online Dating” and “Singles” were each split into three groups targeting Males, Females and Unknown genders individually. So this would mean for example, if a male clicks our ad, they will land on a landing page with a hero image of a female.
We kept age targeting locked down for the initial launch as this ensures no younger users see our ad and waste our budget by clicking when they are extremely unlikely to register. Outside of these generic keywords, we also bid slightly more aggressively on age-specific terms such as “Mature Dating”, “Senior Singles”, “Over 60s Dating”. Impression volume on these campaigns is considerably lower but brings an extremely high quality of traffic to the site.
We also set up campaigns targeted specifically to each gender where we bid on gender-specific terms such as “Meet Women” and “Single Men” which directed users to a relevant landing page. The final part of the initial group of campaign builds, was to target generic keywords but also targeted to core locations in the UK and USA. We bid on “Dating” and “Online Dating” keywords, as well as “Yorkshire Dating” and “Yorkshire Singles” to bring a higher quality of traffic to the site. Users would see a landing page specific to their location with titles, descriptions and H1’s relevant to them.
Each campaign had landing pages built to ensure a high quality score – including the keywords in the titles, descriptions and H1’s of the page, as well as body content that makes the page relevant to the search term. Each ad group consists of just 1 keyword. This way, we can ensure the ad copy is relevant for the user, as well as making it easier to manage what search terms are linked to different landing pages. By structuring in this way it gives us a huge amount of control when it comes to optimising campaigns.
6. Lunio
We implemented Lunio, a click fraud solution to this site. This automatically blocks clicks from known click farms, bots, web scrapers, competitor activity and malicious devices. Lunio also provides insights into the quality of your traffic at a campaign and adgroup level which helps us manually optimise campaigns.
7. How We Define Success
With a subscription service there are a huge number of ways to measure success. We can look at sameday conversion as an indicator of a campaigns performance, but if conversion rates are high and transaction value is low the campaigns may not generate a positive ROI. We can also look at the cost to acquire a paying member, but again, if we don’t see rebills, re-initials, or if we have a low transaction value, the campaign won’t generate profit. The key metric we have been using is ROI within 7 days, 30 days and 90 days.
Our target was to be making a 35% ROI within 7 days. In reality, we have hit 100% ROI within 7 days on this site on multiple occasions.
What We Are Going To Do Next?
The current growth plan consists of 2 phases. We’ll start by creating location targeted campaigns that target unknown age ranges using niche-focused keywords. These will target users 55+ and with unknown ages. By targeting these by location it gives us more control over optimisation moving forwards. These campaigns will be set within the location campaigns launched previously and will send users to location-specific landing pages. TCPA bids will remain low on these as the quality is likely to not be as high and the campaigns with extremely strict targeting but the additional volume we will gain from these, plus the lower CPL will offset this.
The third phase will involve setting up new campaigns to only target unknown age ranges. These campaigns will mirror the Mature/Senior/Older/60s campaigns set up in phase 1. This means the keywords themselves will do the heavy lifting with targeting. TCPA bids will be lower still on these while assessing the quality of traffic. By keeping these campaigns separate we can optimise them without affecting the initial campaigns which we know to be bringing in exceptional quality traffic!
We Can Do Amazing Things For You Too. . .
To wrap it up, our Google Advertising campaign for Over 60’s Dating Online has been a roaring success, surpassing expectations with flying colours.Â
Now live, and achieving a 100% return on investment in just seven days on a number of campaigns and ad groups. That’s 185.71% higher than our initial goals in that time frame! We’re excited to expand the campaign to new granular levels over the coming months.Â
Ready to take your Dating Google PPC campaigns to the next level? We’d love to help, so reach out to our account management team today and we’ll discuss how we can work with you to achieve even greater success!Â
Don’t wait, contact us now and let’s get started.