This is the story of how our digital marketing efforts enabled the rapid growth of a telemedicine brand from a startup to market leader, scaling conversions on SEM by 2,985% over the course of 4 years while improving the efficiency by 40%.

In this article, we share the top 5 strategies we used to drive 15% YoY growth even in 2022, despite the challenges of post-covid drop in demand and increase in competition.

Client Overview

Our client is a nationwide virtual primary care provider that offers a quick and simple alternative to traditional health care. With board-certified doctors licensed in all 50 states and high ratings in app stores, they’re on a mission to help everyone live longer, healthier and happier lives.

SEM Growth Throughout the Years

Source: analytical data obtained via Google Ads, 2019 – 2022

2019:  +130% Conversions  |  +35% Spend  |  -40% CPA

“The year we took over the account.” — Immediately we started to focus on optimization and efficient expansion. This resulted in over 100% customer base growth at 40% lower cost per customer compared to 2018. Mainly, the strategies that got us there were better traffic control and orchestrating the user’s keyword-ad-landing page flow which led to 97% CvR boost.

2020:  +440% Conversions  |  +390% Spend  |  -10% CPA

“The year Covid hit.” — In March 2020 the world changed, and so did the telehealth industry. The natural demand for our existing core keywords grew exponentially, but we also drove significant incremental volume by retesting all the keyword themes that didn’t perform in the past. For many initiatives, we finally had enough volume to build more granular structures and further customize the user flow.

2021:  +100% Conversions  |  +165% Spend  |  +30% CPA

“The year Covid continued.” — The industry’s increase in demand was followed by an increase in competition that impacted the CPC. Suddenly, we had doctor chats, symptom checkers, and even Amazon entering the playing field. One of our main strategies focused on ad messaging and repositioning ourselves to stand out in the new competitive landscape, as well as doing extensive landing page testing which led to 12% CvR increase.

2022:  +15% Conversions  |  +/-0% Spend |  -15% CPA

“The year Covid ended…” — As of February it seemed like Covid didn’t matter any more. We got the vaccine, several Covid pills, and life was going back to “normal”. Just look at the search demand diving off a cliff on the trendlines below.

Source: publicly available Google Trends data, 2019 – 2022

So, how did we maintain a flat spend and almost 15% customer growth year-over-year?

Let’s dive in!

The 2022 Challenge & Top 5 Strategies for Success

Without Covid, 2022 was going to be a challenge. We needed to identify new pockets of volume that will help us deliver YoY growth, and we needed to do it fast.

So, we rolled up our sleeves and kept them rolled up in order to stay on top of new keyword expansion opportunities. Here’s the anonymized traffic for a few of our key finds:

Source: anonymized Google Trends data of newly identified keyword themes, 2018 – 2022

To identify these much needed volume-drivers we used the following 5 Strategies:

1. Scraping competitors keyword for any gaps
2. Tracking the popularity of specific medical conditions
3. Using internal business data for month-over-month changes in diagnosis and prescription trends
4. Following FDA medication approvals
5. Staying on top of seasonal patterns

Then, we just launched fast, optimized faster, and dug for new expansion opportunities again and again.

Needless to say, we continued to focus on optimizations for ad copy and messaging. This time, we perfected the RSA testing strategies, which brought a 15% CTR increase compared to the previous year.

Conclusion

At LeanSEM, experts run your entire PPC operation better than an in-house team. We execute the right ideas faster and better, delivering meaningful results and insights. Our results speak for themselves, and that’s why clients stay in business with us for 5+ years, while the industry average is around 1-2 years.

But, don’t take our word for it…

Check out the LeanSEM methodology and brand promise here.

If you’re still wondering whether Performance Max campaigns can bring real results for you business, the answer is – 100% yes. And here’s our proof.

Our client Dialpad faced challenges in driving revenue through their customer acquisition strategy with Google. However, we leveraged Google’s Performance Max to deliver an additional 18% revenue, making this campaign a core part of their marketing strategy.

In this official case study by Google, we explore the approach, results, and the role of LeanSEM’s expertise in Dialpad’s success with Performance Max.

Performance Max helped us leverage all Google channels in a very simple way under a single campaign, helping us get nearly 20% more new paying customers for Dialpad.

– Morgan Norman, CMO, Dialpad

The Challenge

Dialpad is an industry-leading AI-powered cloud communications platform that was facing challenges driving additional revenue with its customer acquisition strategy with Google. It wanted to increase the volume of high-quality free trials that led to paid Dialpad customers. 

The Approach

Dialpad turned to Performance Max, using free trials as the conversion event. For Dialpad, trial signups are high volume, but also correlate well with buying intent, with a typically strong customer conversion rate. The cloud company was then able to leverage existing creative assets from other campaigns to quickly build and launch its Performance Max campaign, enabling them to maximize their reach across Search, Display, Video, Gmail, and the Discover feed.

Partnering with LeanSEM: LeanSEM helped Dialpad use paid customer lists as audience signals and tailor its value propositions for ad copy and creative, and use final URL expansion targeting for landing pages to find additional search queries likely to convert.

The Results

Prior to Performance Max, Dialpad was managing more than 30 campaigns across Search, YouTube, and Display. Since launching Performance Max, Dialpad has experienced improvements in both the quality and volume of net new free trials coming through Google Ads. Dialpad was able to uncover a completely new keyword theme with the Performance Max landing page insights report, which contributed to Performance Max delivering an additional 18% in revenue, 17% more Dialpad customer conversions, and 26% increase in trial signups. As a result, Dialpad made Performance Max a permanent part of its marketing strategy. 

Source: Official Case Study by Google

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