This Day's Thought

This Day’s Thought, a daily Christian devotional ministry, was facing a steady decline in email subscriptions despite having access to the $10,000 monthly Google Ad Grant. After working with a consultant who was unable to deliver sustainable results, their growth had slowed to only a few new subscribers each month. They had exhausted their internal capabilities and were seeking a partner who could understand the heart behind their mission and who had the digital expertise to turn things around.

The first step in the strategy was to diagnose the elements of the existing campaign that were effective, and then to build a roadmap for expansion.  With a full audit of the account history (including legacy campaigns that were well-performing at some historical point), we restructured and categorized the campaigns, ad groups, keywords and ad copy.  As part of this analysis we evaluated the existing content to ensure that keyword bids would result in a good user experience.

Using the jobs-to-be-done theory, extensive keyword research, and a fresh categorization we launched 6 new campaigns, 17 ad groups, hundreds of new keywords, 3 versions of ad copy per ad group, new sitelinks, structured snipets and assets, and experimentation for bid strategies.

After 21 days of observation we saw tremendous improvements in click through rates, traffic volumes and subscribers.  We also observed that we were throttling the campaign beyond the program limit each day.  This is actually really good news, because it told us that there is enough volume to shift our strategy from maximizing impression share, to one that is focused on maximize click volumes or driving conversions.  Once we tested these two bid strategies we found the permanent campaign structure that would allow This Day's Thought to get a consistent volume of subscriptions, and the full monthly grant benefit.

We were blessed to see immediate fruit from our efforts.  And the result is that each month 100 new people (and more) are signing up to receive a daily message of Scripture and encouragement! Praise God!