US-based technology company Cisco wanted to increase brand awareness and generate demand for their products across Europe. To do so, they developed a new consumer-centric strategy, aiming to understanding users’ intent and context to produce smarter, more relevant ads in real time.
Cisco rolls out Dynamic Search Ads across Europe to boost conversions and cut cost per click by up to 80%.
About Cisco
Networking products
Founded in 1984
Headquarters in San Jose, California
www.cisco.com
Goals
Drive relevance
Improve engagement with European audience
Drive conversions
Improve cost per click and click-through rate
Approach
Tested Dynamic Search Ads
Matched each user’s search query to the most appropriate landing page
Plugged gaps in keyword coverage
Achieved maximum coverage of long-tail traffic
Results
Reduced cost per click by up to 80%
Improved click-through rate by as much as 5.7X
Up to 30X lift in conversions
Cisco measures conversions as a registration, a click to initiate a chat, or the completion of a “let us help” form. Following an in-depth audit of their traditional search activity, Cisco decided to run a pilot test of Dynamic Search Ads in France to help drive this metric.
Dynamic Search Ads use organic web crawling technology to index Cisco’s website and determine in real time which searches to show ads for. Dynamically generated headlines and URLs boost the relevance of each ad that is shown. In this way, Cisco matched each user’s search query to the most appropriate landing page, plugged gaps in keyword coverage, and achieved maximum coverage of long-tail traffic.
Within days of setting the pilot live, the results exceeded Cisco’s expectations. By the end of the quarter, the team recorded an 80% reduction in cost per click, 2.5-fold improvement in click-through rate and an eightfold increase in conversions.
Inspired by the results they saw in France, Cisco worked in partnership with their agency DWA to transition all of the brand’s search campaigns in Switzerland, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy, and Spain to Dynamic Search Ads. The new approach drove performance gains throughout the region.
“In the campaigns that we have created so far, we can clearly see that Dynamic Search Ads work where we have deep, content-rich pages that enable Google to define a relevant set of keywords.”
– Helen Gillbe, Cisco, EMEAR Paid Media Manager
According to the Cisco team, the advantages of the new strategy don’t stop at improved metrics. Not only are they’re saving time on keyword management, ad copy creation, and translations, but they’re also generating useful insights to apply to other campaigns and channels.
“Dynamic Search Ads can be very useful for keyword research. With regular search query checks, we can mine for new keywords with real performance metrics included. Ultimately, the learnings can feed into other channels such as real-time bidding and social media.”
– Helen Gillbe, Cisco, EMEAR Paid Media Manager
