Automated SEM Optimization: The Gift that Keeps on Giving to Live it.

Vertical:    Services Insight:    Search Results  Commerce Analysis  Content Effectiveness

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What do you give to someone who has everything? An experience from Live it. Founded in 2005, the Swedish company offers more than 500 experiences — from a relaxing spa break to a thrilling skydiving experience that people can purchase for themselves or give as gifts to others. Live it's web site serves as a trading portal for the experiences, which the company arranges through a network of partners throughout Sweden. Generating traffic to the web site is vital to Live it's ability to attract new customers and partners.

As Live it added more experiences and begun to serve customers throughout Sweden and beyond, manual management of its paid search advertising was becoming increasingly inefficient. The cost of managing keywords was increasing along with overall spend. And, despite the increased volume of paid search and sales, the cost of generating each sale wasn't going down. "When we looked at how much money we were spending we thought, 'There must be a better way of doing this,'" said Jonathan Kirby, one of Live it's two founding partners.

Live it also needed a way to go beyond simple tracking of customer click-throughs, so it could more accurately assess how creative, landing pages and other factors influence purchasing decisions.

WebTrends Ad Director offers Live it a combination of SEM expertise and automation. Kirby has been impressed by the knowledge of the WebTrends staff, who worked with Live it to assess the company's SEM needs and set the parameters for the automated service. "WebTrends analyzed our keyword portfolio, looked at historical data and made recommendations," Kirby said. "The process filled me with confidence. These people really knew their stuff."

The self-learning optimization software of WebTrends Ad Director now manages a portfolio of more than 1,000 keywords for Live it. The system adapts ad buys and placements based on the performance of different keywords, creative and landing pages to meet set business objectives. Live it can track the results daily via dashboards and easy-to-understand spreadsheets.

WebTrends Ad Director lets Live it focus on building its business rather than managing its paid-search marketing. "We are experts on experiences and business," Kirby said. "Now that we have WebTrends Ad Director, we can operate online without being experts in search optimization."

Within a month of implementing WebTrends Ad Director, Live it had almost doubled its return on ad spend (ROAS), and now averages 400 percent ROAS. Visitor conversion rate is up by 344 percent (from 0.36 percent to 1.60 percent), while cost per customer acquisition (CPA) has dropped 75 percent (from 2000SEK to 500SEK).

Just as importantly, WebTrends Ad Director is helping Live It moderate the peaks and valleys in its sales, and create a stable business with consistent year-round ROAS and CPA. "We are only at the beginning of using Ad Director, and already the effect is remarkable," said Kirby. "We can see a fantastic improvement."