Introduction
In this article, we would like to showcase the results of one of our clients. This particular client is the market leader in plant-based nutritional supplements. They initially launched the brand in 2018 and started off using a crowdfunding platform to generate traction. They raised all the necessary funds and, from their initial project, began creating valuable marketing assets such as customer emails and testimonials.
Soon after that, they launched their own web store using the platform OpenCart. The owner of this business has a strong marketing skill set, which he has been developing since he started his first eCommerce company more than five years ago. This client primarily focuses on utilizing Facebook campaigns – including retargeting campaigns, email marketing, and strong, promotional, story-driven campaigns – to attract new customers to their brand.
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Info:
The duration of this case study is 3 months. We were able to add almost $38,000 USD by spending nearly $10k in PPC cost – starting from scratch. The target ROAS of 300% was exceeded and we hit a total ROAS of 378%. This result was achieved through our utilization of Google Ads.
The Challenge
Since this brand is still in its growth stage, the owners have been developing multiple marketing channels to attract new customers. One of them, Google, never seemed to take off the way it should. The data in the account showed that the performance was not profitable and, as time went on, was actually showing a loss in this area.
After onboarding this brand as our client at WunderAds, we spent the first week researching their products, market, competitors, messaging, USPs & KSPs, and auditing their Google Ads & Analytics accounts.
What we found changed everything…
Fixing Tracking Issues
Because this brand’s Facebook campaigns were very successful, we realized that we were missing out on valuable profits on the Google side. Google usually acts as a great add-on to the overall customer journey. People often research, analyze, and compare your brand(s) and product(s) first before they do a purchase. For example: someone might see an ad first on Facebook, then goes to YouTube to search for a video about that product. This can lead that person to finally make a purchase for that product on the site – which usually involves them typing the brand name into the Google search engine to find their way to the site. Therefore, it’s important to provide as much information as possible throughout the entire customer journey.
When we engage with new clients, one of the first steps we take is ensuring that their tracking pixels are correctly installed and thoroughly tested. Together, with the client, we experimented with our Chrome extensions and Google Tag Manager on every step of the website’s customer journey.
When we arrived at the checkout and payment step of the process, something became apparent to us. This client was using a process that was more complex than it needed to be. Their checkout process involved multiple different payment processors as well as additional shipping methods using third-party providers. To complete the payment process, customers had to leave the site, enter the third-party website to complete the necessary steps on their platforms, and then return to the website of the client. However, when entering back at our site, the conversion pixel wouldn’t fire.
To sum it up, we found out that around 60% of purchases got affected by this complexity. Therefore, there was not an appropriate system of tracking built into the account. Upon sending our findings to the developer to set it up properly and to make sure it ran smoothly, we were then able to start with all the nitty-gritty account work that needed to be done.
Account Setup & Ramping up
Now that everything was finally sorted out with the tracking, we went ahead and revamped the account. Our initial set of campaigns included a branding campaign, a generic keyword campaign, a Dynamic Search Ads campaign (where Google uses information from crawling the website or individual web pages), and a Shopping campaign.
We structured our Search Ad Groups in a traditional Single Keyword Ad Group structure – known as SKAG structure. SKAGs serve the purpose of aiming ads precisely at what the users are looking for. It’s a message match that leads to higher Quality Scores, Click-through and conversion rates, a lower CPC (cost-per-click) – and therefore less overall cost. Optimizing and scaling such a structure takes time and effort. Thankfully, this is where WunderAds, as an agency, comes in handy and takes away all the tedious work.
Geo Expansion To Other Markets
As we saw a substantial increase in sales performance while also being very profitable, we began brainstorming ideas on where we should go next.
It struck us one day, after the client received an exceptional order one day from a customer based in a country other than the original target country. Why don’t we step into a market where there was no previous marketing done beforehand and gather valuable data?
Soon after, we began to see tangible results, even though the delivery time was extended. As expected, the total volume was way smaller since we were not doing any additional marketing campaigns, yet the overall campaign performance was profitable. Without much effort we were able to add on another cash-generating campaign, on top of having the opportunity to study a new target market.
YouTube Ads
Search and Shopping are great campaigns to get things moving with Google Ads, but there will eventually be a ceiling which will stop you from further growth. The solution that we found for this challenge was focusing our effort fully on video ads, which were running primarily on YouTube.
YouTube videos tap into the same psychology as the classic TV Ads, hence significantly lifting your brand’s awareness in the consumers’ minds. A successful video campaign does require a higher set of skills than only doing the technical parts that would typically be associated with this strategy. Researching, creating and also understanding a script that is appealing to the target audience is key. It is very important to craft a message around the core idea of the video, using the key elements of Attention, Advice and Action.
In our case, the client had a great selection of completed videos which they’d never utilized for ads promotion. We went ahead and analyzed their library and picked the top three videos for further A/B/C testing in our campaign process.
On the technical side, Google Ads offers us plenty of different targeting options that we used for different purposes. The power of Google Ads in combination with YouTube is that if you use the targeting in the right way, you can target various customer journeys. This includes the journeys of window shoppers, in-store shoppers or checkout shoppers. In other words, you can target your customers all the way from the top to the bottom of the funnel. We came up with different campaigns, targeting and testing each stage using several targeting options – whether it was the contextual keywords targeting, retargeting of website visitors, or audience targeting (similar to Facebook ads).
The results speak for themselves:
- Cost: $1,747.93
- All Conv. Value: $9,600.23
- Summary of all Video Campaign:. We spent $1,747.93 and made $9,600.23 in conversion value only from video campaigns in April just after they launched.
The results here came from our use of YouTube Ad campaigns. YouTube Ads are a powerful method to use in today’s market, as many people utilize YouTube as a primary source of information. YouTube has a large amount of traffic and thus is a great way to generate interest for businesses and services.
Automation Learnings
Once we received traction in our campaigns, we looked into automation tactics to gain more control over our new campaigns. The ultimate goal here was to set up and test multiple new campaigns. This makes sense – especially for Display and YouTube campaigns, with their numerous targeting options.
Even though that idea sounded amazing, in reality we ended up facing more issues than what we’d originally expected. Setting up automation rules on top of the already automated bid strategies would mess up Google’s powerful machine learning algorithm for as long as the campaign lasts. Every targeting option that shut down our rules would confuse the algorithm and push it out of its learning period. There is data supporting the claim that the algorithm is created to make better decisions with more data. However, if there are too many changes at once, the entire dynamic of a campaign changes and hence the algorithm needs to start calculating all over again. We stopped using automation rules after this experience and we put more trust into the powerful automation bidding tactics by Google.
Check out Google’s Support Article on Observation vs Targeting settings.
Generating Insights
Doing direct response marketing via Google has great benefits. Digging into the analytical data testing of different messaging and targeting options has never been easier. We’re able to generate new insights about audiences and share them with the clients relatively quickly.
One of the ongoing practices is the A/B split testing of different ad copy. To do our ad copy testing, we were not only utilizing different ad copy methods but also using the third party provider software Adalysis that told us exactly when our tests hit the statistical significant mass.
Not only can this data be used for continuously improving ads for better click-through rates (hence cheaper cost-per-click) if we find certain benefits, features or call-to-actions that resonate with the target audience, it can also be very valuable input for web copy adjustments.
Another great way to generate insights is by analyzing the data of different audiences and interest groups. With the various campaign types in Google Ads, there are many more targeting options than just using keyword targeting. Remarketing, Affinity, Custom Intent, Placement, In-Market audiences are just a few of the options. There are two different ways to utilize audiences:
- Observation:
This won’t affect the reach of any campaign. You basically layer the audiences on top of your other targeting options with the purpose of generating more data.
- Targeting:
Using the targeting option basically works like an ‘AND’ function coupled with another targeting option.
For example: Only show my ads to people who are interested in “Fitness & Health” AND are looking for the search term: “Protein powders for workout”. Therefore, targeting becomes very granular.
When doing video campaigns or display campaigns we can also see which websites or Youtube channels/videos generate the best results. With this particular brand we got a lot of positive feedback targeting a specific demographic that watches news channels on YouTube. That immediately gave us a few ideas on how we could adjust our messaging to this particular group.
Check out Google’s Support Article on Observation vs Targeting settings.
Promotional Campaigns
One crucial thing to mention about this client is that they are quite strong with their online marketing approach. Not only do they have great coverage and handling on all the major marketing channels, but they’ve also been decisive in setting up promotional campaigns.
Essential skills for setting up high-converting promotional campaigns, besides technical skills, are storytelling, copywriting, and creative design.
A major promotional campaign was set up to run on a regular basis with almost no idle time in between. Its backbone is a robust and dedicated landing page with not only dozens of credential assets on it (like testimonials, media mentions etc.), but customized video material as well. The video material would usually include a portion dedicated to the campaign plus a number of video testimonials that they have compiled when running trade shows.
WunderAds helped support the brand by managing promotional Google Ads tactics, including promotional extensions for the Search campaigns, as well as setting up promotions within the Merchant Center for the Shopping campaigns. We then also made some adjustments to specific ad copy patterns where we ran A/B split tests.
Final Results
After three months of engagement, we were able to ramp up the account and generate a total sales volume of $37,600 at an ad spend of $9,960. The average ROAS over the given period was 378%. Therefore, we exceeded the appointed ROAS target of 300%.
For the last week only, as shown in the screenshot, we were able to increase ROAS to nearly 400% and achieved a sales volume of almost $7,000 alone.
We want to say thank you to our client!
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