Castle Associates Case Study
See how we helped the specialist employment law experts grow their business.
Castle Associates offers free and paid-for employment law advice to employees and employers across the UK.
Castle Associates has become one of the UK’s leading private trade union and employment law support specialists.
Their goal is to deliver exceptional, affordable, and practical support for individuals and employers dealing with a wide range of HR and employment issues.
March 2024 Update
Results Summary
38%
Increase in Instructions over 6 Months
1,033%
Return on Investment
40%+
Increase in Revenue
Find out how we achieved these fantastic results below
Challenge
What a difference a year and greater understanding makes!
Following discussions with Mark and Yvonne of Castle Associates, it became apparent that even though we were generating loads of enquiries from the Google Ads campaigns, perhaps the enquiries were not of the best quality. Mark and Yvonne confirmed that they had been stuck on 30 instructions per month for many years.
We love a challenge, and we got our thinking caps on to see if we could come up with the right solution to enable Castle Associates to make a big break through.
Solution
So, in September 2023, after reviewing the campaigns we were running, we made the decision with Mark and Yvonne to actually pause the campaign that was generating the bulk of the leads, around 80% of them, to enable the limited budget to be allocated to other campaigns with more relevant target keywords.
We paused the campaign on the last day of September so that October would be our test month.
To be honest, it felt like we were taking a chance, but we all agreed it would be worth testing for at least 30 days.
We explained to Mark and Yvonne that the cost per enquiry would likely increase, and the actual number of leads generated would fall. However, we believed that the leads generated would be of a better quality so although they would have less phone calls coming into the business, those phone calls would be of a better quality and convert into instructions more often.
Results
Let’s talk about business results ahead of the Google Ads statistics.
What happened to the instructions? October was an amazing month with 50 instructions. We surpassed everyone’s expectations. Of course, there have been ups and downs but as you can see other than December 2023, which is notoriously tricky, we’ve been beating the 30 instructions per month quite comfortably.
| Month | Instructions |
| Oct-23 | 50 |
| Nov-23 | 48 |
| Dec-23 | 23 |
| Jan-24 | 39 |
| Feb-24 | 41 |
| Mar-24 | 48 |
And the great news is that there’s room to scale with a gradual increase in budget and a gradual increase in geographic targeting as more advisers are recruited. 😊
Of course, instructions are just one aspect. How has this impacted return on investment? This does vary each month, depending on the level of leads and instruction values, however, we are now looking at a return on investment as high as 1,033% and that includes our fees as well as ad spend.
38%
Increase in Instructions over 6 Months
1,033%
Return on Investment
40%+
Increase in Revenue
So, what happened to the Google Ads statistics, you might ask? Comparing the 1 October 2023 to 31 January 2024 with the previous period, we’ve seen the following changes:
245%
Increase in Cost Per Click
69%
Reduction in Conversions / Enquiries
225%
Increase in Cost Per Conversion
At face value these look like shocking statistics. Really what are we doing to the Google Ads campaigns??
The truth is we are generating fewer leads at a higher cost per lead. But guess what, we are generating better quality leads. The client has better conversations that lead to more instructions.
So, looking to generate loads of leads at low cost is not always the answer when it comes to Google Ads or any form of marketing. A quality lead may cost more, but all leads are not equal and sometimes it pays to literally pay more.
Conclusion & Testimonial
A very happy client and one very happy team at Key Principles.
The 5-star Google My Business review is copied below.
“We’ve been working with Jackie and her team at Key Principles for well over 2 years now and we are impressed! They continue to look for improvements and ways to help us grow our business. Most recently, following a review meeting, we agreed on some changes that have finally led to us smashing a long-standing target. We’d been stuck on 30 instructions per month for a while. Working in partnership with Key Principles, we recently managed 50 instructions which was amazing. We are so thrilled, we just hope it maintains and we keep growing.”
Mark Ferron, Castle Associates
February 2023
Our Google Ads Management led to a 105% increase in conversion rate, with a 29% reduction in cost per enquiry.
Challenge
Castle Associates came to Key Principles as they were unhappy with the service levels and the results from their previous Digital Marketing Agency. They believed that the Google Ads campaigns could be producing better results, and they simply didn’t feel loved.
Solution
From August 2021, Key Principles started working to improve Castle Associates’ Google Ads. After discussions and gaining a thorough understanding of the Castle Associates business and objectives, optimisations were undertaken and have continued on a regular basis.
As the budget was limited the focus was on getting as much from the budget as possible, whilst keeping enquiry levels high. The optimisations included:
- Reducing the geographic targeting to areas that were more likely to generate instructions.
- Reducing the number of campaigns from 12 to 4 by:
Agreeing a focus on generating employee enquiries rather than trying to generate both employee and employer leads.
Pausing underperforming campaigns with a high cost per enquiry and less relevant searches. - Increasing the number of calls compared to form completions as requested by Castle Associates by adjusting ad text and ad extensions – calls increased as a percentage of all enquiries from 71% to 81%.
- Reduced the hours the adverts run to enable the team at Castle to pick up all calls as answering calls as they come in improves instruction rates.
- Other optimisation activities include regular reviews of search terms, adding negatives, using audiences and audience insights to enable bid adjustments for certain audiences, reviewing and testing bidding strategies, improving the adverts, etc.
We have regular meetings via Teams to discuss instruction levels.
Reporting is provided 24/7 and includes all digital marketing activity so Castle Associates can see which channels are driving enquiries.
Results
1 August 2021 to 6 February 2023 compared with the previous period shows just what we can do compared to other agencies:
Google Ads
110.5%
Increase in Enquiries
29%
Reduction in Cost Per Enquiry
105%
Increase in Conversion Rate
Testimonial
“We’ve been working with the team at Key Principles for almost two years now, and their input has been invaluable. Besides the improvements to our Google Ads campaigns, they’ve also worked on improving our tracking, our SEO and provided help and advice on our email marketing. More than this though, we’ve realised with their help just how important it is to understand the figures, to track enquiries to instructions so that we can improve our conversion rates. They are providing more than you’d expect from a Digital Marketing as they are acting as a mentor too. I’d definitely recommend Key Principles.”
Mark Ferron, MD, Castle Associates
Want Results Like These?
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