Insight Communications Case Study
True Interactive Helps Cable Company Hold Its Own in Battle for New Customers
Company Background
Insight Communications was the ninth largest cable operator in the United States until its purchase by Time Warner Cable in 2011. Prior to acquisition, the service provider had 760,000 subscribers in Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio.
Challenge
In 2011, Insight found itself in a fierce battle for television consumers with numerous entities, including on demand networks, online content providers and third party aggregators. The company’s search channel was not doing its part to attract potential customers in buying mode to the Insight website and into the sales process. Insight was at risk of losing market share.
Solution
Insight chose True Interactive to build a high performing search engine marketing program.
To begin, True Interactive conducted a SEM audit, identifying significant opportunities for improvement. Insight’s campaigns were not set up to target the specific geographies it served, in effect wasting exposure on consumers that could not become customers. The company also had treated mobile as an afterthought rather than a high potential channel.
The new Insight SEM program developed by True Interactive:
- Aligned search ads with the geographies Insight served.
- Added mobile-specific campaigns to the mix.
- Linked online tracking and call tracking to better measure the contribution of search to inbound call volume and sales.
- Eliminated third parties from brand searches.
Results
Insight developed an increasingly robust sales pipeline through the new program driven by True Interactive, reaching a volume of more than 2,500 leads/month.
At the same time, costs to acquire leads through the search channel (CPL) dropped dramatically, from more than $50/lead to just $13/lead.
New customers signed from the search channel also proved to be among the best ones, as revenue per subscriber increased year over year for 3 straight years.