According K50, search engine advertising as part of a multi-channel strategy allows e-stores to attract from 15 to 40% of traffic to the website with investments of no more than 20% of the total advertising budget. But such a value can be achieved under one important condition – comprehensive improvement of all the contact points between the client and the business. This means it takes more than better quality in trading, dynamic advertising campaigns, remarketing. What is required is wholesale management of the attention and customer loyalty: from proper presentation of a business on the Web to competent website arrangement according to all the digital canons.
Yes and no
We were approached by the management of a factory for sewing women’s lingerie with the task of optimizing search advertising. All goals, KPI and work were determined right at the meeting with the client: an audit of existing advertising campaigns immediately revealed the sore spots of the marketing channel. To increase the efficiency of optimization and get higher results from the work, comprehensive analysis of competitors and TA was agreed on right away. But the client was not ready for the additional costs, even considering the full range of opportunities that the analysis revealed. And this almost undermined all our work, at first. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Expensive does not mean better
As it turned out, the client did not have financial objections as such, but rather a psychological barrier to additional services.
Prior to working with us, the factory worked with a fairly popular advertising agency, which set up the AC as well as all key channels, together with the website. But, despite the name and the price they had charged, we had to start from this:
- Advertising campaigns that were outdated for the product range.
- Wasted advertising budget as a result of campaigns that led to page 404.
- An incorrect trading AC algorithm due to data feed problems.
- A complete lack of dynamic remarketing.
- Inconsistency in the configuration of analytics systems with AC.
- Lack of a call tracking system.
Working up a sweat
Since we had agreed to the work and despite the rejection of our suggestion of an integrated approach, we worked on several improvements simultaneously:
- Implementing a web analytics system.
- Working with a product feed and customizing a brand new Google Shopping AC.
- Preparing for dynamic remarketing.
- Updating and revamping search advertising campaigns (from the semantic kernel to customizing the extensions).
- Customizing automatic product-wise advertising (from automation of work with stock balances and pricing to automation of creating new criteria-specific advertisements).
- Targeting and creating conceptually new AC in GDN.
- Creating banner ads and video ads.
Time to throw stones, and time to gather stones
5 weeks after the start of the work, thanks to correctly reconfigured analytics systems, we carried out an in-depth analysis of our progress so far. Yes, there had been a progress. And here we could pass the report and be done with it. But the analytics data had shown that the achieved indicators were far from the limit – and we work for the maximum result.
We started small: introduced call tracking, which allowed us to track the effectiveness of receiving and processing calls. Despite a deep understanding of the specifics of the product by managers, an ethical question was clearly in the air.
After 2 weeks of thorough analysis, we identified a sensitive problem: the main target audience – girls and women – were not so ready to place an order with a male consultant as with a female consultant.
Don’t be penny wise and pound foolish
The same data analysts firmly stated that there were problems both in the processes of the company, and in the core of the contact between the client and the business – the website.
Problems with working with commodity cards, website pages, catalog structure, order processing system were acute. Needless to say, the mobile version of the website also left much to be desired. In addition, the website was often the victim of DDOS attacks by competitors, and the current hosting and protection system did not allow it to work normally in such a mode.
And here the customer’s psychological barrier to optimizers and improvers was clearly manifested. So much had been “done” before us, so much strength had been sapped, and here we were, still requiring something to be changed.
Yes, this is the whole tragedy of the global marketing industry in a story of cooperation with one client.
Of course, the results that had been achieved by that time still convinced the factory owners that the work carried out by us would actually help. But had we conducted a preliminary analysis well in advance, we would have guaranteed them a full return on investment with interest in those 7 weeks.
Associated conversions:
And, accordingly, the return on investment due to sales growth of 73 times!
Comprehensive optimization of an online advertising campaign: what you need to understand
If you decide to optimize search engine advertising, targeted advertising, SEO or work with other tools, you need to cover all digital channels. It is enough to conduct an in-depth audit to understand that the problem may be far from where you were looking.
Required:
- Implement analytics systems, in the case of multichannel advertising – end-to-end, preferably.
- If the sales funnel has not been fully automated, evaluate internal business processes: the work of the warehouse, call center, and sales department. These are call tracking, CRM and ERP systems.
Optimization is a complex process, but a successful result will bring valuable returns.
Want to improve your company’s financial performance with improvements in the digital sphere? We can help your business. Contact us now for advice and professional support!