The importance of knowing your Adwords from your elbow was highlighted recently by one of the players trying to muscle in on the electricity market in Ireland. The Bord Gáis Big Switch campaign, an integrated advertising, marketing and PR campaign exceeded all expectations.
According to Eoin O’Suilleabhain, e-channel developer, Bord Gáis Energy, over 30,000 new customers in the first 30 days of the campaign were directly attributable to Google Adwords advertising alone.
“Within 30 days of launch over 30,000 sign ups were attributable to Google AdWords advertising and the most impressive measurement of our online channels was the conversion of over 100,000 customers via the Big Switch website in just four months, which rates as one of the most successful online campaigns in Ireland to date.”
Adwords was necessary at launch as microsite TheBigSwitch.ie which contained information on switching. As it was launched on the same day that the company announced its entry into the electricity market, it did not have an immediate presence in Google’s organic search results.
Working with its media buying agency MindShare, Bord Gáis Energy was able to generate online traffic from extensive media coverage and above the line marketing activities including TV, print, radio advertising, sales promotion and online marketing.
When measured it became clear that TV advertising had an almost immediate effect on search volumes and site traffic, indicating that more and more people are surfing the web whilst watching TV. One of the major lessons learned is that an effective online channel can continue to drive conversions well past working hours when combined with effective TV placement.
“On launch day searches for “The Big Switch” went from zero to thousands. Our Adwords campaign featured hundreds of ad texts and thousand of keywords to ensure that every relevant search user was presented with a consistent message, a simple strong call to action and the website URL,” explained Will Roche, Senior Digital Account Manager with MindShare.
