30 May Client Case Study – PPC Search and Shopping Campaigns For a UK Umbrella Brand
The Problem
The client came to Amanda White Digital needing PPC management for a 6 month project.
For anyone working in Ecommerce and retail, it hasn’t been easy over the last 24 months and it was no exception for this brand. Although consumers have flooded online since the pandemic. And It is thought that people are spending more online than ever before. With 70% of people buying more online in early 2021 compared to only 41% in March 2020.
Retailers have been hit pretty hard with increased costs getting stock into the UK. Huge delays with containers, manufacturing costs at an all time high. Plus increased delivery and staff costs. Meaning that this huge spike in customer traffic hasn’t always been a blessing.
As many brick and mortar retailers went online for the first time due to the pandemic. Online retail became much more competitive. PPC in turn also has become a lot more expensive. With some cost per click costs increasing 41% year on year.
Maintaining and even generating year on year growth has been an impossibility in some industries. With costs of PPC doubling. It is now costing twice as much to reach the same goals as previous years.
The Strategy
Knowing that the landscape has completely changed it is important that the client understood the new challenges. That they were aware that clicks were going to cost more and that there were far more competitors bidding on the same terms.
Fully auditing the PPC account highlighted areas to work on. A Smart shopping campaign had been live since July 21. However, the shopping campaign was not performing anywhere near as well as the search campaigns.
A focus was to work on a shopping feed audit. The audit would look at the product titles. The title lengths. Making sure each title included as much information as possible. Described colour, gender, material and size. The audit also made sure correct use of GTIN’s were in place as well as proper use of Google product categories.
Squeezing every bit of opportunity out of the current campaign has meant that the project can remain profitable.
The Results
The above graph shows Amazon, The Brolly Store, Jolly Brolly and DaveK all increasing on the overlap on how many times they appear in the same ad auctions as the client.
In December 2020 there were barely a handful of competitors bidding on the same terms. Comparing this to December 2021 shows an increase in the number of other competitors within the same ad auction of 350%.
Without any of the changes implemented. With competition increasing driving up the cost per click the account would have continued to struggle to drive year on year returns.
However, understanding the competitive landscape and the increased costs has meant that we have managed to maintain revenue levels via optimisation without increasing spends.
Conclusion
Sometimes PPC management isn’t always about huge growth and amazing results. It’s often about maintaining results and expectations and avoiding catastrophic declines in previous expectations.
External forces can quickly derail planned growth. In this case a doubling of the cost of a click, the increase of competition and the increase in product costs and postage all meant we were facing an uphill battle.
But through expanding ad groups and auditing shopping feeds we have managed to maintain year on year figures without increasing spends.
If you are looking for someone to manage your PPC accounts then you have come to the right place. Get in contact for a small PPC agency Cornwall with a personal touch to get the most from your PPC budgets.
