How do you increase purchases whilst reducing advertising costs by 396%?
Nowadays, digital marketing is available to various companies in several ways, providing the ability to address an audience of different internet users.
Augusts Juško, Senior Specialist of Digital Marketing at RealWeb Latvia, shared his knowledge on how to significantly improve e-commerce results through digital marketing.
Customer: a tyre retail company operating in the territory of Latvia and Estonia since 2015.
In July 2017, the company launched an online store, using SEO, Google Ads, and Facebook & Instagram Ads as their digital marketing channels.
The target markets of the client are Latvia and Estonia. The product sold by the customer is highly seasonal with the highest demand for it in the spring months (March, April, May) and in autumn (from September to early December). The company plans its digital marketing activities based on the seasonality of its product, being most active during the high season. There is a lot of competition in the tyre market (especially during the season), which was taken into account when developing the digital marketing strategy.
Aim: to increase the number of purchases within the customer-set CPO (Cost Per Order – the cost of advertising per purchase) and to improve the Conversion Rate, which is the ratio of the total number of visitors of a page to the number of visitors who make a purchase.
Digital marketing channels used: Google Search and Display Ads, Facebook Ads.
Achievements in the period from 1 January to 31 December 2019:
- Dividing ad campaigns into keyword and audience-based groups.
The main focus was placed on Google Search campaigns. For example, a special Google Search campaign was created for the website visitors, allowing one to create personalised ads.
More than 100 keywords have been broken down into multiple keyword groups and campaigns. This allowed for creating interesting ad texts and finding the most suitable landing pages. As a result, the maximum Quality Score has been reached, cost-per-click has been decreased, and Conversion Rate has been increased.
- Creating a Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) campaign in Latvian, Estonian and Russian.
As a result, ads were automatically shown for less frequently searched keywords which cannot be manually processed. These searches included less popular tyre models, brands, sizes and other factors. The main advantage of this campaign is its low cost-per-click, as the competition for these searches is much smaller than that for more popular keywords. Other benefits of this type of ad include automated ad text creation and automated selection of relevant landing pages.
- Using Google Display and Facebook Ads to reach the audience repeatedly (remarketing), including dynamic remarketing (showing the exact product that the user has browsed before).
Due to the low CPA (Cost per action) set by the customer, addressing of a cold audience was only used partially. Otherwise, the CPA would have increased significantly and the client’s instructions would not have been met.
- Connecting Target CPA – one of Google's advertising automation strategies.
In order to ensure a 154% increase in the number of transactions within the CPA set by the customer, the Target CPA strategy was connected. The biggest advantage of this strategy is that the system completely takes over the bidding process for securing the specified CPA. It should be noted that the system has its shortcomings and without regular inspections and adjustments, an increase in the number of purchases would not be possible.
Actions fulfilled:
- changing the advertising texts;
- adding negative keywords;
- bidding percentage changes (by location, device, time, etc.);
- seasonal bidding changes, etc.
Results achieved in 2019:
Over the course of the year, the total Conversion Rate from all digital marketing sources (SEO, Google Ads Search and Display, Facebook & Instagram Ads) has improved by 16%. In the 1st low-season period (January – June) the conversion rate was 0.61, whilst in the 2nd season period (July – December) it had reached 0.71.
On an annual basis, the number of purchases has increased by 2.5 times or 154%. 260 purchases were made in the 1st period (January–June) with the number increasing to 660 in the 2nd period (July–December), thus increasing revenue by 188%.
According to the results of Google Ads, in the 2nd period (July – December), the CPO per purchase decreased by EUR 60.84, which equals 396%.
Using the right digital marketing strategies in e-commerce can significantly increase sales results and our customer’s sales increased by more than 180%. Successful e-commerce sales results are based on well-chosen digital marketing channels, good knowledge of these channels, and clear goals regarding what the entrepreneur wants to achieve.