BACKGROUND
The client was a builder’s merchant based in the United Kingdom, whose objective was to attract customers to the website and increase the number of website orders.
OBJECTIVE
The primary challenge for this client was the low average conversion rate of the website, coupled with a tight marketing budget in a highly competitive market (building supplies). Thus, it was essential to identify and focus on the products that had the best chance to convert so that the budget could be managed in an efficient way. It was agreed that the strategy should start with Shopping campaigns and retargeting.
STRATEGY
With the cooperation of their website developers, conversion tracking was set up on the order confirmation page and retargeting tracking software was installed. Additionally, the Google Merchant Centre and the product feed were configured. The overall aim of Google Shopping campaigns is to match the right product to the search query. To this end, I utilised a third-party feed management platform to optimise titles and descriptions for all the products. Drawing on a wide array of search query data, the product feeds were optimised so as to provide users with as much relevant product information as possible. By tweaking the campaign parameters, the cost of the most expensive search terms was decreased, with the focus instead on less expensive long-tail search terms. For instance, “buy building supplies online” is a more costly keyword than “building supplies online”, since the former implies a user is willing to pay for a service; though the outcome for both searches is the same. I concluded that, if the latter user could be acquired at a much cheaper cost-per-click, the desired growth could still be achieved, but at a much lower spend.
RESULTS
By tweaking the parameters of the various campaigns and concentrating on long-tail keywords, the average CPC (Cost per Click) was decreased by 23%. Yet, the orders growth rate still increased to 40%.
