Implementing a Tiered Search Strategy

Every vision care location has appointment availability that's in flux. Appointment cost also varies. The company had previously tried to tackle this by setting each search campaign with a target cost-per-acquisition (CPA) bidding strategy that aligned with each location's appointment availability and value. But adjusting bid strategy goals for over 800 campaigns was quite a manual and time-consuming process, and every time bidding was adjusted on each campaign, the bidding algorithm would go into a new learning state, which wasn't ideal.

Analyzing each location's 14-day appointment availability and the average customer spend per appointment (SPA) from the past 30 days, Goodway combined the data into nine tiers: low availability-low SPA, low availability-medium SPA, low availability-high SPA, medium availability-low SPA and so on. Then we rolled out the search campaign one to two tiers at a time, testing and optimizing along the way, with each tier launching on a Monday and running for one to two weeks.

The first month after the tiered search strategy was set, conversions increased 25% compared to the five-month average before the test started. Spending increased only 6% during this period, resulting in a 16% decrease in CPA. The second month was even better: Conversions increased 28% compared to the five-month average before the test started, spending decreased 4% and CPA decreased 26%. The combined two-month tiered paid search strategy increased conversions 27%, spending by only 1% and decreased CPA by 21%. Goodway's tiered paid search campaign drove consumers to make appointments at locations that needed them the most.