Cleveland Containers

“After Hallam started working with us, we saw a sharp rise in online
enquires, as well as the cost to acquire them decrease. We’re very
pleased with the work carried out by the team and the results we’ve
seen.”

Lewis Pennicott – Marketing Director, Cleveland Containers

Executive Summary

Cleveland Containers approached Hallam to help increase their number of telephone requires and reduce the cost of generating the calls. We restructured the Bing account and applied like-for-like campaigns that had already performed well in Google. This Bing campaign helped Cleveland Containers not only achieve their long-term goal of more than 1,000 calls by the end of 4 months but also led to a 62% decrease in the cost per call.

The Client

Cleveland Containers is the UK’s leading supplier of new and used shipping units. They also offer a bespoke modification service designed for businesses with specific storage requirements.

The Challenge

The primary objective of Cleveland Containers’ PPC campaign was to generate high quantities of telephone enquiry leads.  This had been done with varying success until Hallam was called in, and the challenge set by Cleveland was twofold.

• Increase the number of telephone enquiries tracked each month through Infinity Call Tracking.
• Reduce the cost of generating each phone call.

Although the Google AdWords account was in a good position to be optimised, the same could not be said of the Bing Ads account.  The team at Cleveland was initially sceptical about Bing’s potential to deliver enough enquiries at an effective cost, having tested the concept unsuccessfully before.

Our Approach

Having analysed the Google account, we were confident that by applying some proven techniques and best practices, we could reduce the wastage and increase the number of conversions generated. After the initial optimisation took place, we started seeing a rise in tracked phone call and online enquiry form submissions.

While the major focus was on the Google account, our experience suggested that Bing offered serious potential to deliver the client’s targets. With a much smaller budget, we restructured the Bing account with a focus on the business’ core products. The objective was to demonstrate that Bing can be a highly cost effective platform to advertise on, and in many cases more economic than Google, although clearly lower in volume terms.

Due to the limited time available to improve results, we applied like-for-like campaigns in Bing that had already performed well in Google. This was a planned to be a short-term fix until enough data was generated to allow campaigns to be optimised individually. After applying this structure, we saw a significant improvement on this network.

The Results

The results we achieved for the client over the initial four months were highly significant, and after just one month the number of calls received had increased and the cost per call reduced.

Results from Bing Ads prompted Cleveland to quadruple the ad spend, and within two months calls received from the campaign were in their hundreds and cost per call was 62% lower than the Google equivalent.

Cleveland’s long term goal of more than 1,000 calls and form enquiries per month was achieved by the end of month 4 and led to the company’s most successful month to date.

This, alongside dramatic improvements in the goal conversion rate and cost per call, has made a major impact on Cleveland Containers’ bottom line.