3Xed Revenue, 400% ROI: Compose.ly’s Success Story

Compose.ly is a content marketplace that provides high-quality copywriting services. The company offers two solutions: a self-service, eCommerce-type option for clients looking to order a single article, as well as a fully managed service where Compose.ly becomes the exclusive copywriting agency for the client. 

In 2019, Compose.ly reached out to Hop Online to manage their Google Ads account and help promote their managed service, 

By establishing trust and bringing incremental results, our partnership resulted in scaling the budget more than tenfold with a steady return on ad spend of 400%.

The Results in a Nutshell

Since partnering with Hop Online, Compose.ly has achieved some fantastic results. Here’s a quick overview: 

• 3x’ed 6-figure revenue
• 10x’ed а 5-figure budget while maintaining ROAS above 400%
• In the last year, ROAS was 485%
• In the last 3 months, Google Ads brought 87% of the total revenue
• In the past year, Google Ads brought around 51% of the total revenue
• Google Ads became the main revenue driver for the client
  

Effectively, the biggest achievement was a very linear increase in results both in Google Ads, as well as the client’s sales pipeline. 

Even more, the scaling is happening without any long-term changes in terms of CPL and the lead quality is equally good, as well. 

How We Got There

Adapting to Change in Algorithms

In the past year, Google Ads has been shifting its emphasis towards a more simplified account structure and broad match keywords. Not keeping up with this trend usually leads to higher CPAs. 

Changing up the account structure involved testing to pinpoint the tactics that work. We launched broad match campaigns with the ad groups that were bringing the most valuable leads, Then we adjusted the daily budgets accordingly.

This was a winning strategy. We started seeing more leads and getting improved CPA, at times, even lower than the initial target. 

Together with a bigger budget and the client’s trust in our capabilities, the broad match tactic enabled us to experiment more and expand horizontally. It gave us the ability to dive deeper into how the product is used to identify other horizontal campaign opportunities. 

Development Plan with 20+ Pre-Planned Opportunities

As we began to increase the budgets, we started implementing a development plan. It included over 20 opportunities that we pre-planned for each quarter. 

We tested different industries to identify opportunities. We uncovered that some industries actually converted more and at lower costs.

The development plan for Compose.ly was extensive with a lot of different experiments, many of which were successful. Even those that didn’t bring the expected results served as proof that there were no missed opportunities.

Deep Dive into the CRM

We developed a very transparent relationship with the client to make sure we are focusing on the right reports in their CRM. Our team has put a strong focus on getting a deeper understanding of Compose.ly’s conversion cycle and what goes into their CRM before importing any data back to Google Ads. 

This has been a key step that has helped us gather valuable insights and understand how prospects become customers.

Currently, we are using HubSpot to leverage customer and sales data and determine the success of Google Ads. After all, bringing in leads is an important goal, but if there are no sales to back that up, your strategy is likely to fall short and lead to wasted time and resources. 

Ultimately, by partnering closely with Hop Online, Compose.ly managed to 3x the revenue and maintain a 400% ROI. 

Helping our client understand what we’re trying to do, how it works, and then showing progress along the way has been crucial for establishing trust, boasting effective communication, and helping the business improve performance.

If you’re looking to learn more about scaling performance, here are our best PPC tips, tools, and guides.