A lot of Americans are either stressed, sick, or both.
According to Gallup, 80% of Americans say they feel occasionally or frequently stressed throughout their daily lives. And according to the National Health Council, more than 40% of the US population suffers from at least one chronic illness.
There are ways of coping with all this, of course. The American Psychological Association reports that music, prayer, and meditation are some of Americans’ favorite destressors. And as far as chronic illnesses go, researchers and health care professionals are constantly innovating to find new treatments and cures.
Via the American Psychological Association.
Reducing stress and improving health don’t need to be mutually exclusive. That’s what Jason Lincoln Jeffers realized when, after years of treating his chronic illness with traditional medicine, he discovered infrared sauna therapy. He was so amazed by its effectiveness that he decided he couldn’t keep it to himself.
In 1999, Sunlight Saunas—now known simply as Sunlighten—was born. Let’s dive into what Sunlighten sells, what sets them apart from their competitors, why paid search is important to them, and how they’re getting the most out of it.
Ongoing innovation
When Jeffers founded Sunlighten, he had a simple mission in mind: to help people heal the same way he had. Here’s how the company’s gone about making that happen.
First things first—a quick crash course on infrared saunas. Whereas a traditional sauna simply heats up the air around you, infrared saunas warm your body directly through the magic of electromagnetic energy. Rather than making the room hot, infrared saunas engage the tissue inside your body and raise your temperature from the inside.
Now—it’s one thing to heal. It’s another thing to heal efficiently.
Thanks to their patented Solocarbon heating panels, Sunlighten saunas boast 95% emissivity—meaning your body takes in 95% of the heat your sauna produces, making the most of the technology to enjoy an immersive relaxation process.
“That’s all well and good, Conor, but what makes Sunlighten unique among their competitors?”
I’m glad you asked. A full-spectrum heater is a heater that produces near, mid, and far infrared wavelengths at the same time. It’s impossible to produce all three from a single source. That’s why—for the sake of creating the best possible experience for their customers—the innovative Sunlighten team developed a brand new technology that combines all three heating mechanisms in a single heater.
As demonstrated through dozens of studies, Sunlighten’s 3-in-1 technology enables their saunas to deliver precise amounts of each wavelength of infrared heat to yield specific health benefits for their customers. No other infrared sauna company can say the same.
It’s that dedication to complete customer satisfaction that’s landed Sunlighten on major TV shows like Oprah, Ellen, Dr. Oz, and the Price is Right. And although that’s some legit promotion, the brand was still in need of a better online advertising presence.
A search engine scholar
William Rock is a seriously impressive dude.
Having made his foray into SEO in the late ’90s and accepted his first paid advertising role in 2001, he’s been in the search marketing game since pretty much the beginning. Between navigating the extremely challenging vertical that is credit card processing and building an agency’s SEO department from the ground up, he’s encountered his fair share of challenges.
More importantly, he’s developed an exceptional ability to help other people conquer their challenges. In 2012, in the aftermath of Google’s Penguin update, William found himself answering tons of concerned questions in online forums. Eventually, a friend called William and told him that he should become a Google Product Expert.
So, he did. As one of the most highly regarded Google Product Experts out there, William works with Google’s engineers to correct bugs in SERP properties, including Knowledge Graphs and Google My Business, as well as other products like Google Assistant.
Like I said—impressive. Suffice it to say that Sunlighten struck gold when they brought William on as their search marketing specialist in 2017. And boy oh boy—they needed to strike gold.
The long and short of it is that William inherited a Google Ads account that had been … mistreated by a few different agencies. Sunlighten’s account-wide CPA was insanely high and there were virtually no mechanisms for conversion attribution.
If you don’t mind, I’m going to say that again for the sake of emphasis: There were virtually no mechanisms for conversion attribution. Without the ability to track which campaigns and ads are driving revenue—and which ones aren’t—you have no way of assessing the effectiveness of your PPC strategies. That’s, in a word, a nightmare.
Google Analytics is an essential tool for setting and tracking conversion goals.
It’s especially nightmarish when you remember why Sunlighten exists in the first place: to bring relaxation and healing to those who need it most. The whole point of paid search is to deliver solutions to consumers when they’re actively looking for them. As long as Sunlighten’s Google Ads campaigns were mismanaged, folks looking for relief wouldn’t be able to find it.
Recognizing this, William teamed up with Sunlighten’s in-house marketing data analyst and went back to square one. He turned off Sunlighten’s call-only campaigns so he could focus on improving their text ads. Slowly but surely, William cleaned up each campaign in the account, adding desperately needed negative keywords and changing match types as he went along. He implemented robust conversion tracking, too.
The result: a drastic reduction in CPA and a huge boost in lead quality. That’s right—by sticking to the fundamentals of good PPC, William is spending less money, driving better leads, and bringing the healing power of Sunlighten saunas to more people in need of them.
I know what you’re thinking. William is clearly an outstanding search marketer. Why would someone like him need WordStream?
Better together
It’s one thing to master PPC. It’s another thing to master PPC efficiently.
That’s where WordStream Advisor—which Sunlighten started using in November of last year to spend less time and drive better returns on their paid search advertising—comes into play. William loves to use our software in tandem with the native Google Ads UI, which he often finds “too clunky.” Specifically, he uses our QueryStream tool every single day to see where his traffic is coming from and how he can optimize accordingly.
“I’ve completely stopped using the Google Ads interface for search term reporting. QueryStream makes it so simple. I can click on one word—or an entire query—and instantly make it a keyword or a negative.”
This is QueryStream.
William is also a huge fan of our premier consulting service—an add-on to your monthly WordStream Advisor subscription that connects you to one of our certified online advertising experts. As a premier consulting customer, William gets exclusive one-on-one time with his consultant every month. It’s his opportunity to get personalized insights into whatever it is he could use some help with—whether it’s landing page optimization, ad copy recommendations, keyword research assistance, or anything else within the digital marketing realm.
All things considered, William summed up his experience as a WordStream customer pretty succinctly: “Advisor and premier consulting pay for themselves with the amount of money they help us save.”
And he’s looking forward to the future of our relationship, too—specifically in regards to the launch of WordStream Advisor for Ecommerce: “I can’t wait to work with Advisor to manage our presence on the shopping networks.”
We’re always happy to hear that our software and services are helping businesses reach more consumers. But in the case of Sunlighten—which helps people relax and heal with every sale they make—it’s even more rewarding than usual.