Digital Marketing Agency Case Study: Why Search Campaigns are Still a Good Idea for Your Site
One thing that has come about due to this pandemic is the increase in the number of people buying stuff online. This has also brought about more people selling stuff online. This meant that while you had more potential customers, it also meant you had more potential competitors too. As a digital marketing agency, we were lucky enough to continue working even during this pandemic. This is because of the many online stores that needed our help with their online marketing needs.
Shopping online has become the norm in these trying times. With this increase in online stores and competitors comes the need for finding ways to rise above the fray. Most people turn to Facebook and Shopping Ads to bring in revenues, and there’s nothing wrong with this, however, it’s not entirely ideal as well. If you really want to reel-in the revenues, you need to utilize Search ads as well.
Some people have this mistaken notion that search ads are old news and that they are not as effective as other options. The truth however is that ads that are posted on search are actually very effective in bringing in targeted traffic and earnings. To show you what we mean, here is a case study that we, as a digital marketing agency have undertaken. It centers on the use of search ads for a site that we are handling.
Client: Gift Site
Industry: Gift and Specialty
Campaign Type: Site Optimization and Google Ads on Search
Project Background
This is the third gift site that we are handling and is one of the most challenging. When we started handling this site, it had little to almost no ad activity. This is pretty rare for a site that has been around for almost 7 years. As with the other gift sites that we handled, this one also didn’t have any SEO work done on it. The goal here is to increase traffic and revenues substantially in 6 months.
Project Objective
As with all other projects we handle as a digital marketing agency, this site’s goal is to increase traffic and revenues. This meant that we needed to get more people to come to the site and to purchase products on the site. This objective had a few caveats attached to it, which we will discuss in the challenges.
Apart from an increase in traffic and revenues, we also needed to focus on giving the site’s content a much needed revamp. This meant optimization work that will help the site’s pages appear better on search engine results pages. Optimization would include the rewriting of some product descriptions to ensure that each page had unique content on them, even when these pages had similar products on them.
Project Challenges
There were many challenges to this site since this was the third one that was in the same niche as the two previous sites. Now, some people would believe that this would be a walk in the park since we already have experience with two others just like it. On the contrary, even as an experienced digital marketing agency, this actually proved to be more difficult since you have to create content and ads that are very different from the other two, even though they are very similar.
The biggest challenge we had in working with this site was to ensure that what we wrote for it did not sound like what we wrote for the other two gift sites that we were already handling. That is a pretty tall order considering that this site and the first two before it had almost the same items for sale. Add to this challenge the fact that you can only say so much about such items without re-using similar terms and descriptions.
Apart from the content challenges that the team faced with this account, there was also the time constraint and the budgetary considerations. We needed to get everything optimized and ads working in less than 3 months and with a budget that was less than ideal for its goals. Since Christmas was just around the corner when we got our hands on this account, we had to hustle to get the optimization and ads working before then so that they can capitalize on this gift giving season.
The Solutions
The site’s solutions that we, as a digital marketing agency, came up with were numerous. These included the usual ones that we use not only for gift and specialty item sites but for all sites that we handle. This meant an audit of the site, the planning of the work needed, the research required for the ads and the content, and the delegation of the work to the members of the team. We also needed to use smart bidding strategies here to ensure that we got the most out of the rather limited budget that we had.
Also part of the solutions that we used on this site is the heavy focus we placed on search ad campaigns. While we did plan to distribute these ads among a few different platforms, which included Facebook and Shopping, we decided to rely heavily on Google Ads on search to help bring in a lot of traffic. This was to help reel in customers that used search engines to help them find the right gifts for their loved ones for the holiday season.
Since we had to get the ball rolling on this site ASAP, and we had less than a quarter of a year to come up with great results, we had to hustle. To show you what we did, and how we succeeded in increasing traffic to the site by over 1,000% in the short time that we had, read on.
Site Audit and Optimization
Just like the two gift sites that we were working on concurrent to this one, we first had to do an audit of the site’s pages. We had to check the URLs, content, images, and other elements of all the site’s pages. As expected from a site that nobody thought to optimize from the start, it was severely lacking in numerous elements. No self-respecting digital marketing agency would ignore making the changes that were needed to make search engines see this site as relevant to its niche.
As with most of the work we do for our clients, after an audit, the nitty-gritty of the work begins. This included keyword research to find keywords relevant not only to the niche but also to the products that were being sold on the site. We also began to rework URLs, title tags, site content, and even formatting.
When we talk about formatting, this meant the way that each page was laid out. We needed to rework the pages to make these easier for site visitors to view and to make these relevant to Google’s crawlers as well.
This meant the creation of descriptive paragraphs and bulleted lists that described the item being displayed. It also meant the addition of important information on each page, like shipping and handling costs (if any), delivery expectations, and special information about personalization as well as return and replacement rules.
Google Ad Creation for Different Regions
Once we were done with optimization, the next challenge our digital marketing agency faced was to create the ads. These were needed for the many products that the site had. Since we did have a rather limited budget, we needed to create lots of ads. These were not just for individual products but for product types.
The site had products that belonged in multiple categories, even though they were essentially the same kind of product. This helped us. We could create one ad for one particular product type even though it had many variants of the same product in different categories,
For example, belts. The site had belts for men, belts for women, personalized belts, leather belts, engraved belts, and so on. They also had these in different colors, widths, lengths, and more. We didn’t need to create a different ad for each belt type or design. We simply had to create an ad that would encompass all of these belts and redirect the said ad to the category that it described.
Also part of the challenge that we faced with this site is the fact that it wasn’t a US only site. This meant that the company sold their products worldwide. Not only that but it sold only to a few select countries around the world. This meant the need for regional ads and local ads that targeted towards people in specific regions. This is something that most fledgling digital marketing agencies would balk at.
This still proved to be an extra challenge for us, despite our experience. This is because we did have a rather tight budget for this site. What we had to do was to not only create ads for each product type but to also create one for different regions. For example, for ads that are made for the AU market, we had to write in AU English then we had to restrict their appearance to that region only.
The same was done for products that were targeted at US and Canada markets. Ads were written to appeal to these regions and then these ads were slated to show only when people used specific keywords on Google for that region.
Digital Marketing Agency Challenges: The Competition Conundrum
What do you do when you are working on a number of sites that are in direct competition with one another? You create ads that feature not only the products that each site sells but also on their personal branding. Yes, branding came into play with this site and with the other sites that we worked on that belonged in the exact, same niche.
The uniqueness of the company’s name helped us to create ads using keyword phrases that included their name alongside the product or item they were selling. For instance, let’s take the same example as before with belts. We created ads that had the word belt in it together with the brand or name of the store. This helped us to formulate ads that showed only when the store’s name and the item type were used together in the search term.
This also allowed us to create similar ads and to use similar keywords for different accounts that belonged to the same niche. The use of the store name in the search terms we use for our ads helps us narrow down some of our ads to cover loyal customers of this particular store. As mentioned earlier, this shop has been around for years but didn’t have any ads to help them bring in more revenues.
This helped us, as a digital marketing agency, to meet our goals of increased traffic and revenues. The aforementioned move helped people who loved this store to easily find them online with the specific keywords we used. This is because such a tactic featured the store name alongside the product name.
This same move also helped us with the same niche-different brand conundrum we faced with our ads and keywords. Adding the store name to the keyword phrase helped us create ads targeting people looking specifically for this store.
Smart Bidding Strategies for Better Budget Control
As mentioned in an earlier study, smart bidding strategies are what you use to help create optimal ads on tight budgets. You get the most out of your adspend when you utilize this particular tactic for ads that you don’t want to check every few hours. It also helps you change-up the bid strategy type to fit the movement of particular keywords and ads.
Just like the other accounts we, as a digital marketing agency, handled in the same niche, we still kept a careful watch over this account, even though we were already using smart bidding strategies for it. This helps us step in when needed, to change up the strategy when needed and to diversify where these ads appear when required. While we did focus a lot on search ads for this particular account, we still enabled some campaigns to show on shopping for a few terms.
The Bottom Line
The main goal we had for this account, as a digital marketing agency, was to increase traffic and sales via ads that appeared on search. The reason for focusing more on search and not on other avenues is to help the brand show better in local search. Since the brand had a decent following in certain parts of the world, we had to capitalize on this. We helped the store reconnect with their loyal customers while at the same time making them appear for search terms that new prospective buyers use to find what they are selling on their site.
If you are thinking of having ads created for your site to appear on search engine results pages, or if you want to find out how you can increase revenues and targeted traffic to your site via ads, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can schedule a consultation with our team to help you understand the importance of search ads and other online marketing tools for your site.
Note: Our case studies don’t come with the usual screenshots of our analytics and ad backend pages due to existing NDAs with the clients being mentioned in them.