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How Obility Compares to AdWords B2B Benchmarks

06.21.16 // Ashley Kennedy

Have you ever wondered how your AdWords account stacks up against the competition?

Seeing month-over-month improvements is great, but if you don’t know how you are performing relative to your competitors, you can’t see where you stand in the market. Wordstream recently released a report containing benchmark AdWords performance broken down by industry. To make sure we continue to provide the best service to our clients, Obility wanted to know how our clients stack up with B2B industry benchmarks.

We reviewed performance across all of our accounts to determine how our metrics compare to industry standards. Here’s what we found:

Close More Leads at a Lower Cost Per Lead

Obility’s clients are exclusively B2B, and the metric we care about most is revenue generated. In addition to reporting on lead quality and opportunities generated from our paid search efforts, leading metrics such as conversion volume and conversion rate are important. Within the B2B industry, the average cost per conversion (CPA) for search campaigns is $63.57. The average CPA across Obility-managed accounts is $43.48, 32 percent lower than the B2B benchmark. Obility clients’ conversion rates (CVR) surpass the B2B industry average by a wide margin as well:

CVR-graph-big-text

 

Emphasis on landing page and messaging alignment is a big part of why our clients’ conversion rates beat industry averages by so much. Obility structures campaigns based on intent, which allows our clients to serve prospects a highly relevant offer that provides added value to the audience.

Paying More for High Quality Leads

Click through rate (CTR) with Obility clients’ campaigns is consistent with B2B benchmarks for Search & Display. However, Obility clients’ average cost per click (CPC) is somewhat higher than the B2B standard. This differential is due to Obility clients targeting keywords generating opportunities even at a higher CPC. For example, Obility clients’ competitor campaigns have some of the highest CPCs of any AdWords campaigns. They are also some of the best performing campaigns in terms of conversion rate and generating opportunities and revenue.

Industry-CPC

Obility’s philosophy of quality over quantity is proven by our conversion metrics. Our campaign structures are designed to target prospects based on their stage in the buying cycle, which enables us to target prospects in the consideration and evaluation stages of the funnel. As prospects move down the funnel, their keyword searches change and signify high intent. Often times this leads to bidding on keywords that have a high level of competition, resulting in more expensive CPC’s.

While this strategy does increase CPC, Obility clients are willing to pay more for high quality leads, leads more likely to turn into revenue and justifying the higher cost per click. Even paying more for each click, Obility clients spend over 45% less per new lead due to their significantly higher conversion rate. Better quality leads at a lower cost per lead are certainly worth the higher cost per click.

While ROI for paid search campaigns remains the priority, CPA, CVR, CTR, and CPC are critical factors that contribute to overall performance. Ultimately, Obility’s tailored approach to the prospect journey results in metrics that may seem counter intuitive such as a higher CPC, but Obility’s clients convert higher quality leads at a lower cost than the B2B industry as a whole.

About Ashley Kennedy

Ashley is currently the Director of Paid Search & Display at Obility, where she is responsible for the management, support, and implementation of strategic programs that create interest and demand for our clients. She also works closely with her team to nurture their professional development and to expand their knowledge on new topics and trends in the industry. View all Ashley Kennedy’s posts >