Kelly's: How a 204-year-old company succeeds in a thoroughly modern business

You can't accuse Kelly's, the venerable business directory publisher, of being too traditional. Its well-established print directory, popularly known as "the Big Red Book" for industrial product and part manufacturers, comes out yearly - and has done since 1799. Kelly's, a subsidiary of publishing giant Reed Elsevier, is the UK's premier brand for industrial purchasing and supplies. Its database aggregates more than 150,000 companies in 110,000 categories. Kelly's added a CD-ROM version of the directory in 1989. And in 2001, the publisher created a dynamic search-based site, www.Kellysearch.com, for up-to-date listings and faster retrieval.

Approach
Over the years Kelly's may not have shifted its business focus, but the market has dictated adding various features and changing formats. Today that means the listings must be extremely current, and easily searchable through many detailed technical keywords. That's why Kelly's executives moved to emphasise the online directory over the traditional print product. As General Manager Tony Millen says, "We know that our website has grown in importance in the day-to-day supplier/buyer relationship. It was time to migrate our brand to the web."

He also says that Google advertising was the first choice to enable such a move. "Both Kelly's and our customer base consider Google the top search engine in the UK," says Millen, "making it easy to opt for Google advertising, in addition to using Google search as part of our offering." The Kelly's sales force regularly combs the UK to get new entries or updates for many thousands of small specialty manufacturers and suppliers. Since basic listings are free, Kelly's has supported its sales effort by extending the canvass to an increased number of entrants. This in turn enables sales of enhanced listings for the site, making both a more compelling sales tool and end product.

In 2004, Kelly's created a £77,000 Google AdWords campaign to launch a new online advertising trial on Kellysearch.com. "We know that once someone has seen the benefits of advertising on Kellysearch they usually become a convert," Millen says. "This trial offers a low risk way for companies to see just what Kellysearch has to offer, and our Google campaign has been instrumental in creating awareness and uptake of it."

Results
What Millen didn't anticipate was the greatly increased volume of traffic the site would get - or the benefit of defining numerous specialised keywords on which Google users would search. "We chose around 20 keywords like 'anodizer' and 'asbestos' to start, and worked our way up to 100 of them. In some cases, we saw 10 or 15 percent clickthrough, well above the industry standard".

"Over the months the campaign completely exceeded my expectations in number of searches and clickthroughs to our advertiser pages. It yielded an overall clickthrough rate of over 4 percent," says Millen, more than twice the average.

It was this level of response that led him to budget an additional three months and 50 percent more money to the campaign.

Beyond the Invisible found a 225 percent ROI with Google AdWords.

Beyond the Invisible From their office in South West London, Jane and Simon Scotland design and install whole house audio and video systems, lighting control and home automation systems. Their company, Beyond the Invisible, works with homeowners, builders and architects in the South of England. Beyond the Invisible has been in business since mid-2003.

Challenge
The Scotlands already knew of Google advertising. "We had used Google AdWords successfully with a previous company," says Jane Scotland, "and we always use Google.com, and watched the ads on search results pages." With this business, she says, "we had invested a lot of time and effort into a really good website, so we wanted to make sure potential customers see our site and then contact us via an online form." In short, the goal was "to raise our profile and to generate leads for our business."

"We were really surprised how many customer enquiries we got through AdWords. The conversion rate has been good too."
Jane Scotland, Co-owner, Beyond the Invisible

The first challenge, Scotland says, "was working out which words people would be searching for. The technical descriptions of what we do and the non-technical words that clients use are different." And, she adds, "we are on a tight budget, so we need to focus on the most effective form of lead generation." The AdWords programme was "very quick and easy to get started with. We wrote an ad, posted it, and got leads coming through within a few days."

Results
"We were really surprised how many customer enquiries we got through AdWords," says Jane Scotland. "The conversion rate has been good too." As an example, she says, "the latest campaign has generated 809,993 impressions, 5,351 clicks and 64 good enquiries through the site, all from people interested in using our services. We probably also had another 20 phone calls from people after visiting our site." Perhaps best of all, she says, "once people made contact with us, we had a very good chance of converting their enquiry into a project."

In terms of ROI, she says, the numbers are equally good: "We spent £4,500 on the current campaign, which has resulted in about £200,000 worth of business, which gives us a return of 225 percent." Scotland's experience with print advertising is quite different. "A quarter page in a local magazine costs about £500 per month, and only generated a couple of leads. Google AdWords is much more cost effective than media buying or direct marketing" - particularly, she says, because it offers "instant feedback about the effectiveness of a particular message or keywords."

Today, Scotland checks keyword performance weekly to refine keywords and ad copy if necessary, and adds, "I've recently discovered the keyword suggestion tool, so I will use that to further improve our effectiveness." In general, she believes AdWords "helps us refine our marketing message, the kind of language we use on our website and in our sales literature. And it's particularly powerful for small businesses like ours that work in niche areas and have very limited marketing budgets. It's a very cost effective way of connecting directly with clients," and, concludes Scotland, "AdWords is very democratic. In a particular niche, a small company can get as much exposure as a multinational with huge resources. These are the reasons why Google AdWords is the main part of our advertising and marketing strategy."

Figleaves.com found a way to cover the essentials with Google AdWords.

Figleaves.com Now five years old, London-based Figleaves.com is the biggest online retailer of intimate apparel in the world. The company sells lingerie, swimwear and hosiery for men and women, with designer labels and famous brands such as Malizia by La Perla, Wonderbra, Wacoal and Gossard.

Although it faces little direct competition in Europe, Figleaves is in a competitive marketplace elsewhere around the world, and for this reason has developed three key differentiators. The company offers more than 140 brands; it is the key lingerie store for retailing giant Amazon.com (which promises to boost U.S. visibility and sales); and it offers fast and free shipping worldwide. To keep up with demand, Figleaves has recently opened a second warehouse in the UK, as well as a New York office.

"Based on a wide variety of generic and brand-based Google ad keywords, we consistently achieve clickthrough rates between one and 25 percent."
Richard Brooks, Marketing Executive, Figleaves.com

Approach
For the last 18 months, Figleaves has used keyword advertising, including Google AdWords, to expand business. Two of the 15-person sales team are wholly dedicated to managing these pay-per-click accounts, including marketing executive Richard Brooks. He says the challenge from the start was to gain qualified traffic, and to convert visitors to sales. "In the lingerie business, you run the risk of lots of browsing traffic but few buyers," says Brooks. "So we set up thousands of very specific keywords, expand the list constantly, and use Google's keyword matching options to closely target the most likely purchasers."

Results
Using AdWords tracking and reporting tools, Brooks can review ad performance by individual keyword, and check patterns daily. "Based on a wide variety of generic and brand-based Google ad keywords, we consistently achieve clickthrough rates between one and 25 percent. In every case, these are dramatically above the norm," he says.

Even better, Brooks reports that sales conversion through Google is trending upward. "Based on the level of traffic and conversion rates we are now seeing, we have had an eightfold increase in order values over the past year - and 80 percent of these are new customers. This performance has led Google to become one of Figleaves' largest external sales drivers," he says, "and it is a major reason we've trebled our Google ad spend."

How Rackspace.co.uk gets 40 percent better clickthroughs with Google advertising.

Rackspace A mid-sized media agency with business and consumer clients throughout the UK and Europe, Frontline offers "guerrilla-style" media marketing. Myles Anderson, Frontline's Senior Media Planner says, "We aim for what's fast, effective and targets well, which is why Google forms a cornerstone of every campaign for us."

Approach
The agency designs online ad programmes and special promotions for clients built around search advertising plus portal and banner ads. As Anderson's team has studied results from various campaigns, Frontline has narrowed its online media spending from 35 sites to just a handful that perform best.

One client, Rackspace, is a global provider of Linux-based managed Internet hosting services. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, Rackspace has nearly 5,000 customers in more than 80 countries, with thousands of servers in data centers. Frontline represents the UK-based business (Rackspace.co.uk), which over the past 2 years has become a strong profit center for the company. As with many technical service companies, Rackspace must maintain a steady high volume of qualified traffic and leads. Under Anderson's guidance, Frontline developed a Google advertising campaign over the past 18 months to generate leads. The web hosting business in Europe is "hugely competitive," he says, especially since the decline of dot-coms and resulting cutback in IT expenditures.

"Google has always done the job for us. It's a fantastic response medium."
Myles Anderson, Senior Media Planner, Frontline

Results
What Anderson likes about Google, he says, is consistency of results. "Google has always done the job for us. It's a fantastic response medium." In one campaign based on 40 keywords, Anderson says Google traffic delivered 40 percent better clickthrough than other programmes. "Even better, 90 percent of Google leads go further into Rackspace and are more qualified, more targeted for their business."

Another positive result is greater visibility. Anderson notes that Hitwise, a service that ranks sites by volume of traffic, now rates Rackspace in fifth position, up from twenty-fifth, "largely thanks to Google. No other sources tend to be as consistent for us," he says. "No flash in the pan traffic, no spikes - just steady, active business, which is just what Rackspace, and our customers overall, need to succeed."

Beyond the immediate success of traffic and leads, Anderson notes perhaps the most important metric: business success. "Rackspace as a company has doubled its net worth and tripled UK office size and staff since we began running Google ads," says Anderson. "Google definitely plays a big role in that, which is why we keep it at the top of the advertiser sheet."

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