Credit Law Center Sees Improved Lead Quality

OVERVIEW

Credit Law Center is a Missouri-based credit repair company that helps people with less than perfect credit take steps toward financial freedom.

Traditionally, Google Ads had always been an excellent source of profitable credit repair leads for companies like Credit Law Center. However, recent changes to the dynamics of the credit industry created a number of challenges.

They brought on Dgency in January of 2017 to help manage their Google Search Ads, Display Ads, Remarketing Ads and to develop an effective long term advertising strategy.

LAYING THE FOUNDATION

Our first task was to increase the efficiency of their Google Ads campaigns. We worked with their website development team to correctly set up conversion tracking from contact form submissions, and to install call tracking software onto their website.

The current Google Ads campaigns were not structurally effective. Many ad groups and keywords were duplicated three or four times, the budget was mismanaged, and relevant search terms were coming in at high cost-per-click.

WE HATE BEST PRACTICES
We avoid the term best practice. If a strategy works in one ad account, there is no guarantee that it will translate into a similar ad account. This was never more true than when we began working with Credit Law Center. Any preconceived notion of keyword intent, ad copy relevancy, or landing page content had to be thrown out.

We relied fully on creative strategy, advanced A/B testing, and an understanding of user behavior to turn this Google Ads account around. So we put away our PPC for Dummies books and dusted off our Psych 101 textbooks. (We don’t actually own an PPC for Dummies book, if such a thing exists).

For instance, one would think that someone looking for “credit repair company” is more worthy than someone looking for “how to improve my credit,” because the former is assuming that they’re willing to pay for a service. However, both users are eventually searching for the same solution, and if we can obtain the latter user at a much cheaper CPC, then both users can play a vital role in our business growth.

This strategy helped us achieve higher CTR, lower CPC, and higher conversion rate in many competitive areas of the ad account.

UNDERSTANDING VISITORS MINDSET

Throughout the management period, we found that there were two main segments of our user base. There are those that need this service for a specific reason (financing a car, for example), and there are those that need more comprehensive service offerings. People that recently filed for bankruptcy and need to rebuild their credit from scratch fell into the latter segment.

There were many differentiating factors that separated these two audiences. Those that only need help financing a car are more time-conscious than price-conscious. They want short-term results, and they’re apparently not interested in the long-term benefits of credit repair. They’re also more likely to be looking on their mobile device (perhaps, while they’re at a car dealership).

We saw the opportunity for custom landing pages that would cater to these two segments. ‍

IMPROVING LEAD QUALITY

The main hurdle of any lead generation initiative is deciding each lead that comes through and optimizing for better lead quality. When we began our partnership with Credit Law Center, their sales team was closing leads at a rate of about 12%. We knew that if we could improve the quality of leads, we could actually afford a higher cost-per-lead in the PPC campaigns and ultimately drive more business.

We set feedback mechanisms with their sales team so that we could get a better understanding of quality leads.

We also found that most leads that did not close into deals did so because of the cost of the service. As a result, we launched remarketing initiatives specifically geared toward former leads from 2-4 months prior that did not close into deals. It was our hope that these leads had time to reevaluate their decision and might now be able to come back and sign up for the service.

While not an instant success, an additional test offering a 10% discount to these former leads helped generate a significant spark with this audience.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

Dgency was able to help grow the Credit Law Center Brand in a unique space of credit repair and mentorship.

Thanks to ongoing testing and optimization of custom landing pages and other website content, we saw an increase in conversion rate of 10%.

Thanks to ongoing feedback with the Credit Law Center sales team, we were able to help improve their close rate from 12% to 20%. A percent-change of 85%.

The improved lead quality put less restraints on the break-even cost-per-conversion from our PPC efforts, which allowed us to experiment with new initiatives that ultimately brought in more business. Overall, the cost-per-new-client improved by 40%.