Digital Marketing Company | Bright Strategies

Digital Marketing Company | Bright Strategies

Case Studies

The Tale of Three Gift Sites – Comparing the Successes of Three Sites in the Same Niche

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The Tale of Three Gift Sites - Comparing the Successes of Three Sites in the Same Niche

One of the biggest challenges our team faced when we started reeling in clients is the competition that clients faced with one another. While some people have this notion that working on similar sites is easy since we already know what to do, we looked at it from a different point of view. We viewed this as more of a puzzle that needed solving since we will be pitting different sites against one another AND we were the ones tasked with making each site earn more via our work.

Now, I’m sure some of you would wonder why we would take on such a monumental task. The answer is simple. We were up for the challenge (plus who are we to turn down perfectly viable clients?). So, we set about to get the work done for all of these same niche sites and to earn them the kind of income that they want to get from online ads.

We didn’t get all three sites at the same time, mind you. The first one, we got in the second quarter of the previous year. The second one came in three months after and the last one came in during the last quarter of the same year. This gave us the opportunity to get one site’s ads running and raking in the traffic as well as revenues before we needed to focus on the next one.

Suffice it to say that we were able to meet the revenue and traffic targets of all three and we will share with you some insights on how we achieved this, even  though these three are in the same niche and feature almost the same products on their sites.

Client: Gift Sites

Industry: Gift, Specialty, and Niche

Campaign Type: Site Optimization, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads

Project Background

This study shows you that three ecommerce sites selling the same products and targeting almost the same market can get the kind of sales that they want with our help. As with most of the sites that come to us for help, these three needed some help in the optimization department. They also needed some help in bringing in targeted traffic, particularly since times were tough due to the pandemic.

Not all sites came to us in the same condition. One had adwork done in the past while another had some SEO done to it as well. The third one we got without any work done to it but it had been around for years. These differences we had to take into consideration so we could come up with the right strategy for each one. With the aim being the same for all three and all three being in direct competition with each other, we had our work cut out for us

Project Objective

The objectives we had for all three sites were generally the same – bring in targeted traffic and increase revenues. Some people might ask why we chose to work with the other two sites after we accepted the first one, and the answer is rather simple. There is enough room for these sites to earn. We knew that there are thousands of people out there who will want to buy their products, even though these were similar. The choice is up to the customers and all we had to do was give them that choice.

Project Challenges

The challenges we faced with this particular project did not happen all at the same time and weren’t all the same either. We worked on each site in waves, with the first one happening early last year, the second one three months after that, and the last one near the end of the year. This meant that we were able to get the ball rolling on the first one before we had to tackle the second one, and so on.

The main challenge for the first account we handled was the botched ad creation and the lack of optimization on the site. Since the site already used ads in the past, we had to find a way to move past that and to create better ads that worked better for the client. We also had to optimize the site to help make it more appealing to search engines and their bots.

The challenges that came with the second site included pages that were optimized the wrong way and someone who tried to launch ads for them as well. Add to this the challenge of a tighter budget than the first site we handled, which somewhat limited our strategies for them.

The last site came with a unique challenge that can be easily seen as a combination of the challenges we faced with the first and second site. This last gift site never had any pages optimized, like the first site, but it has been around for years. It also had a rather limited budget when compared with the first site, but the budget was higher than what we were given for the second site.

Now that you’ve seen what we had to work with, let’s check out the solutions we used for each site.

The Solutions

As always, we tackled these obstacles with a multi-pronged solution. While our first step is usually the same across the board, which is an audit of each site, we knew that a one-size-fits-all approach won’t work. Each site needed a customized solution for us to achieve the goals that we set for each one. Here are some of the things we did for each one.

First Site

For the first site, after the audit, we planned the usual optimization and the eradication of the old ads that they used for it. We then did the keyword research required for the niche as well as for the products that they sold. We then formulated various campaigns surrounding these keywords and got the input of the site owners on which products they wanted us to feature more.

We began planning where we would position the ads and at what times these should show. We set budgets for each campaign and brainstormed ad copy that we felt would work well with the pages on the site. We also contemplated which smart bidding strategies would work well for specific keywords and ads, based on careful study of the ads that we first put out.

Constant monitoring of these ads and split testing was crucial to the success of our work, so during the first three months, we kept a close watch on the movement of our ads and tweaked them as we went along.

Second Site

The second site came in three months after we began work on the first one. Seeing the beginnings of success on the first one, we were confident that we could help the second site achieve the same kind of trajectory. We didn’t know that the second site would prove to be more of a challenge.

After the audit, we saw that some pages were optimized but in a haphazard manner that made the pages look spammy. This had to be corrected. This site also had ads launched by someone who didn’t know what they were doing and thereby caused problems with the use of the wrong keywords, careless bids, and even ad copy that didn’t resonate with the brand. All of these had to be fixed before we could do any of our work for the site.

Third Site

The third site was a little less of a challenge than the second site, but since we already had two of the same kind of site on our hands, we almost didn’t take this one on. As with the first site, this didn’t have optimized pages. It also didn’t have any adwork done for it even though it had been around for years. We also saw that the site had a tight budget, but not as tight as the budget we had for the second site.

One other challenge that we had with this particular client was the fact that they wanted to get on the holiday bandwagon. Meaning, they wanted to get as much revenue as they can for the coming holidays since Thanksgiving and Christmas was fast approaching. This put some pressure on the team to get things done faster.

Similar Solutions for Similar Sites with Different Budgets

While the budget does play a substantial part in determining what we can do for a site, there are some things that we can do for all our customers, regardless of how high or how low their budget is. For starters, auditing and optimizing the site is a given since we do want to succeed in what we do.

Just to be clear though, our optimization consists only of the basics, which includes the use of the right keywords, keyword saturation, title and meta tags, alt tags, and so on. Optimization for the sake of ranking purposes, which includes outreach and other external factors, we don’t provide unless it’s requested and it comes with additional fees (it is additional work and will need a dedicated content creator plus outreach specialist to get done).

Aside from a basic audit and optimization, keyword research and ad creation as well as split testing of ads and daily monitoring are all done on all accounts. Tweaking of ads to ensure that we use the best performing keywords for all our ads and using the best ad copy according to our split testing is also done for all. We also ensure that these ads are made to appear where they are relevant, which in this case included Shopping, Search, Display, and Video.

For all ads, we also used smart bidding strategies to maximize on our budgets for each. This became extremely useful for those accounts that had rather limited budgets. We also excluded irrelevant queries, changed up keywords according to trends, and even launched new ads according to the holiday or season.

The Outcome

The result of our hard work is a marked increase in the traffic and sales of each site. This is despite the fact that all three sites shared the same niche and even had almost the same kinds of products on their pages. Of course, the level of success for each site isn’t the same and this is due to the amount of money we had to work with for each one.

As expected, the site that had the bigger budget for ads gained the most traction out of all three, raking in a staggering 5,000% increase in traffic in a matter of 6 months. This is because we are able to show their ads more than the others. When the adspend of the other two accounts run out, the first one continues since it had more room for such a thing to happen.

This doesn’t mean however that the other two lost out on the competition. They still got their fair share of the market and got more traffic as well as sales, as opposed to when they did not have any work done for them. Imagine getting upwards of a thousand unique visitors to your site in less than three months and a huge fraction of that traffic actually converting.

What Does This Prove?

This essentially proves that even though different sites in the same niche compete against one another, they can still claim success and earn enough from ads and marketing, as long as this is done the right way. And yes, budget does play a huge part in how much you earn from your ventures.

If you want to find out more about what we can do to help your website become a success, and to help it earn more, just contact us. We will be happy to answer any questions you have about our services and how we can help you get the results you want. Get in touch with us so we can schedule a consultation with you.

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.

 

Solving the Ad Creation Conundrum for Your E-Commerce Site – Why Two Types Are Better Than One

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Solving the Ad Creation Conundrum for Your E-Commerce Site - Why Two Types are Better Than One

Creating ads for any site, let alone an ecommerce site, can be very difficult. Some people tend to focus on one medium or the other to avoid the confusion that comes with such a task. This, however, is a big mistake. If you want to rake in as much income as you can with your ecommerce portal, you need to reach as many people as you can. The only way you can do this is to find your target market, wherever they may be, and entice them to visit your site via your ads.

The most common avenue people take when it comes to creating ads for a shopping site is Facebook, and for good reason. For starters, there are approximately 2.74 billion people on this social media platform. This is one market you cannot pass up on. This doesn’t mean however that you should concentrate your ads solely on Facebook.

There are other avenues that you need to explore when it comes to advertising for your ecommerce site. Keep in mind that while 2.74 billion people are indeed on Facebook and can become potential customers, they only make up around 29% of the population. This is why you should not focus your advertising efforts solely on this particular portal.

Client: E-Commerce Sites and Niche Sites

Industry: Gift, Specialty, and Niche

Campaign Type: Site Optimization, Google Ads, and Facebook Ads

Project Background

This study focuses not only on one particular ecommerce site but a number of sites that we handle and that all have the same need. For all our clients, we take into consideration whether or not their site is optimized, whether they already have social media accounts or not, and other similar online concerns. If and when these are non-existent, we have to allocate time, money, and effort into the creation of these much needed resources, and that is where specific projects become more challenging than others. The same goes for sites that already had work done on them but were handled by agencies or people who didn’t really know how to do the work the right way.

Project Objective

With ecommerce sites, the objective is always to increase targeted traffic and revenue. You can add to this the need to appear more relevant for your niche than your competitors and to get to a better position on organic as well as in your ads. Added to the objectives for most of our ecommerce site clients is to appear more trustworthy than others just like them.

With a huge number of people going online to sell and buy, it’s pretty easy for people to get scammed by bogus sellers and those who don’t deliver on what they promise. This is an added objective that we aim to achieve in order to get the kind of revenues that our clients want. This is due to the fact that return customers bring in quite a bit of income for our clients. They also tend to recommend sites that deliver on what they promise to friends and family who are also looking to purchase items online.

Project Challenges

Since we are talking about a number of different ecommerce sites here, we will outline all of the challenges that are shared by most, if not all, of the sites that we are using for this particular study. One of the biggest challenges that we face with most of the ecommerce sites we handle is the lack of optimization. Majority of the sites that we are tasked to work on aren’t optimized for search and are in dire need of help in that department.

Aside from lack of SEO, these sites also need some help in the structuring department. When you have an ecommerce site, it has to be easy to navigate, or else your customers will leave and find somewhere else to buy what they are looking for. Also part of the challenges that we faced with these shopping sites include the lack of enticing product descriptions that used relevant keywords, images that did not have alt tags, slow loading times, and many more.

Also part of our challenges in handling selling sites is the lack of social media platforms and interaction. These are those sites that relied heavily on a Facebook page but did not have ads or other social media portals that can be used for customer interaction. If you want to succeed in the ecommerce game, you need to have all the tools and tricks necessary for it. This means you need to have a proactive customer service arm, which you can have via your Facebook and Twitter accounts, and a sterling reputation for delivering on what you are supposed to deliver.

Another challenge that we face with multiple clients is the budget that they set for their advertising needs. While we do have packages that state what they can expect when they choose a lower-priced ad and site care package, some of them still expect maximum results for these. This is probably one of our biggest challenges since a limited budget can only achieve so much.

The Solutions

Since we are talking about multiple ecommerce sites here, we will also outline the various solutions that we used on them. Not all of these solutions were used on all of the sites that we handled, but we do make allowances to give most of our sites the best possible care that we can with what we are given. We allocate funds for ads to show on more than just one portal and to make sure that these show at times when the target market is actively looking for what these sites have to offer.

Also part of our solutions for these sites is the recommendation that optimization should be done on the pages that the site has. Each site has to have pages that are properly optimized in order for them to appear relevant not only when ads are created for them but also for organic search. We believe that when a site shows up on organic alongside its paid ad, it gives a person more incentive to click through since the site shows up twice for a particular search term.

To find out more about the kind of work that we do for our ecommerce sites, here is a small outline of what we get into before we can say that we did what we could for a client’s ecommerce site.

Audit and Optimization

While this isn’t something that most online ad agencies offer their clients off-the-bat, this is something we do. The main reason for this is that we want all our accounts to perform well and we want them to succeed. In short, their success is our success. We do what we can with the budget we are given but without going overboard. We do have our own budgets to take care of, so going overboard with what we can stretch for our clients is a big no-no.

So, we audit a site, optimize it with basic optimization tactics, and start with the rest of the work we usually do with all sites we create ads for. In the audit, we usually check URLs, keyword saturation, and keyword focus. We conduct a keyword search to determine which keywords are best for the site’s ads and optimization needs.

Aside from these, we also check for image sizes, image alt tags, and other elements that make for a well-optimized site. Once optimization is done, we then begin to focus on the ads and campaigns that we plan to create for the site.

Facebook and Google Ad Creation

The creation of ads begins with, as you guessed it, keyword research. This will involve the input of the client since we do need to know what they want to rank for and what their customers use to find them. We also integrate keywords and keyword variations based on the products that they normally sell (if they’re an ecommerce site) or what services they offer.

Next will be the planning stage of the ads that we will be running in the various campaigns that we will put up for the site. In this instance, we take into account a number of factors, and these include the location or the geographic reach of the company, the demographics they are targeting, and of course, the budget. These factors are important because it will shape the decisions we make for a lot of the work that needs to be done.

These decisions include what types of ads we will make, where we will focus most of our attention on, and how often these ads will appear. This will also help us decide when these ads will run, what their triggers will be, and a lot of other factors. We will also decide where our Google Ads should appear, for instance, if it’s an ad for a product, we can have it appear on Google Shopping. If, however, we are making an ad for a service, Search might be our best bet for this.

As you can see, the creation of ads for any site involves more than just the putting together of keywords and phrases to drive traffic to a site. It also involves decisions like what time these should show according to the target demographic, geographical reach of the client, and other similar factors. The one thing that remains constant in our decisions however is the fact that we use both Facebook Ads and Google to get the reach that we want for our clients.

What Influences Our Ad Creation Decisions

When deciding on where the bulk of your ads go, there are a few questions that you need to ask before launching your campaigns. The first question involves the target market of the client. Is the majority of their market on Facebook or do they use Google more to find what they need? The next question involves what stage of the funnel the client should target. Should the ads aim at those who are ready to buy or are we still at the convincing stage?

These two questions, along with others that we ask as we put together campaigns and ad copy, will drive what we do. Now, we can’t divulge all of the things that we do to get things done and to get our clients the traffic as well as revenue that they need. Suffice it to say that we do get the job done and we try to do it with a set pattern that has worked for us over and over again.

One of the biggest deciding factors for where to focus our attention on when it comes to choosing which side of the ad creation conundrum we should lean heavily on is the budget. Sure, Facebook ads are cheaper and can reach a lot of people but there are factors there that have to be looked into before we pour a lot of our effort in that arena. The demographic that we need to reach is one factor and the rather restrictive guidelines that Facebook places on the ads that you create are another factor.

This is why we opt to use both advertising mediums when we present our plans and outlines to our prospective clients during a consultation. Not only do we show them that using both is a good idea, but we convince them that it is what will bring them the most traffic and revenue, bar none.

Other Work We Do on Both Platforms

There are a lot of other things that we do when we create the ads for our clients on these two very different ad platforms. For one, we review all the search terms we use on a daily basis to see which ones are the most effective. We also do split testing of ads to see which ones bring in more traffic and revenue. We even make sure to exclude irrelevant queries to ensure that our ads don’t show for anything that our clients don’t sell or do.

All in all, the work is pretty extensive and is aimed at bringing the client the kind of traffic that they want and need to their site. The use of both platforms for advertising, along with smart bidding strategies, strategic timing of ads, and thorough research, we often find that our efforts are rewarded with an increase of at least 1,000% traffic from the time we take over the site’s ad work to a few months down the line.

What This Says About What We Do

So, what does this say about what we can do for our clients here at Bright Strategies? It shows that we do what we can in order to bring in the results that a client wants and needs. We know what we are all about and what to do with what we have in front of us.

If you want to bring in relevant and targeted traffic to your site, all you have to do is to contact us. We can begin with an audit of your site, a carefully formulated plan for your site’s marketing needs, and months of work that will bring about results you are sure to be happy with.

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.

Digital Marketing Agency Case Study: Why Search Campaigns are Still a Good Idea for Your Shopping Site

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Digital Marketing Agency Case Study: Why Search Campaigns are Still a Good Idea for Your Site

Digital Marketing Ad Agency Worker Using Google Search

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

Digital marketing agency worker on laptop trying out smart strategies

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

A Good Digital Marketing Agency knows how to create ads for any part of the world

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

how a digital marketing agency helped increase sales and deliveries

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.

PPC Agency Smart Bidding Strategies – What We Did to Increase Traffic and Revenues Without Breaking the Bank

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PPC Agency Smart Bidding Strategies:
What We Did to Increase Traffic and Revenues Without Breaking the Bank

PPC Agency Working on Ads and Researching Smart Bidding Strategies

When it comes to creating ads for your own sites, if you don’t know exactly what to do, you might find yourself spending more than you’re prepared to. A lot of people think that creating ads for their sites can help increase revenues by driving targeted traffic to their site. In a sense, they are right. However, if you spend more on your ads than you actually earn from them, it defeats your purpose for the ads. This is when you need to find a PPC agency that can help.

For us, this is where we utilize our smart bidding strategies. By using this method, we are able to bring in the revenues without bidding beyond what is reasonable for the keywords that we are targeting. We also increase the site’s visibility with the help of this strategy by adding to our arsenal our tried-and-tested optimization methods and tweaks.

Before we talk about the strategies that we used, let’s first understand what exactly is a smart bidding strategy? Is there really such a thing?

A smart bidding strategy is something that a good number of ad specialists turn to when they want to reduce costs but not reduce results. In short, these are tactics that a PPC Agency uses in order to get the revenues that they expect from their efforts but without burning a hole in their pockets or their client’s pockets, for that matter, so to speak. We will discuss this further as we go into the nitty-gritty of what we did for one of our clients in this case study.

Client: Gift Site

Industry: Gift and Specialty

Campaign Type: Site Optimization and Google Ad Campaigns Using Smart Bidding Strategies

Project Background

Just like in our previous case study, our client in this one is an online store that sells personalized gifts online. While this is a different site altogether, it occupies the same niche as the previous site we evaluated. Much like their competition, they are aiming to increase traffic and revenues to their site by asking the help of a PPC Agency in utilizing Google Ads. The main difference between this client and the previous one is this latter site doesn’t have the deep pockets that the other one has in terms of ad spending. This is where the challenge lies for the team.

Project Objective

The main objective for this project is to increase traffic as well as the income of the site but with the caveat that we don’t have an expansive budget. In short, we needed to achieve the goals we set for this client without going beyond what we stated we will be spending on ads. Also part of our objective here is to optimize the site to appear better on search.

As with other sites that we handled as a PPC Agency, optimization is also part of the task here. Without optimization, your ads may not appear too relevant to your target market since your site doesn’t show up on organic search results. Being able to appear twice on the first page of search will help solidify your site’s reputation as a store worth visiting as opposed to simply appearing on ads.  

Project Challenges

using analytics to tweak ads while using smart bidding strategies

Much like every site we handle, this particular website had numerous challenges that we had to overcome before we could succeed in our goal of increased traffic and revenues. The challenges we faced as their new PPC Agency included undoing the work done by another agency before us and being able to appear on organic search results as well as Google. Add to this mix the fact that we were in the middle of a pandemic and people weren’t really into gift-buying when budgets were tight and jobs were on pause.

The biggest challenge that we faced here was the limited budget that we were given by the client to achieve the goals that they wanted to reach. Since we didn’t have the kind of budget that we could experiment with, our only recourse was to find effective ways to get things done without running out of funds before the week was over. This is where our innovativeness and creativity kicked in.

We also needed to bring in more sales via organic traffic to augment the income brought in by our ads. This will help us meet the target monthly revenues that the site wanted to reach. This meant that our multi-pronged approach to such a project was required here.

The Usual Solutions a PPC Agency Uses

The solutions we used for this site are similar to what we used for the other gift and specialty items site. The only difference is we did not have the kind of budget we had with the other one. This is where we had to rely heavily on smart bidding strategies. As a PPC Agency, we did use this same strategy on the previous client, but we did not have the same freedom we had to run with our plans. This is due to, as mentioned earlier, budgetary constraints.

Much like what we do with all of the clients we take on, we first did an audit of the site and listed down what flaws needed to be corrected before we could move forward. We also had to assess what work was done on the site by previous agencies, both in terms of ads and optimization. Apart from this, we also formulated plans for PPC ad creation following some of the smart bidding strategies that we often use when we’re faced with budgetary challenges.

To show you how we achieved a marked increase in visitors and revenues in only three months, read on.

Site Analysis and Optimization

Being a PPC Agency that strives to meet our goals, we began working on this site by conducting an audit of its online ad work and the site itself. We saw what was lacking in both aspects and recommended changes that would help increase not only the site’s visibility but also the appearance of the ads in better positions on SERPs and on Google Shopping. Once we finished auditing the site, we then began the actual work needed to get the site to where it needed to be.

As with all of the work that we do as a PPC agency, we started with keyword research. We based this on the site’s niche and expanded it with the help of keyword suggestions as well as the products that were being sold on the site. We also checked on other items that needed optimizing, like URLs, alt tags, and other meta information that was needed for better ranking on SERPs.

Next, we formulated plans for tackling the ads that the site needed. Since we were working with limited funds, we had to employ the smart bidding strategies that we mentioned earlier. What smart bidding strategies did we use? Read on so you will find out.

Google Ads with Smart Bidding Strategies

Doing Google Ads with Smart Bidding Strategies

For those who are not familiar with Google Ads, it’s a pay-per-click advertising medium that requires you set a bid for the keywords you are targeting on the platform. This is why we are called a PPC Agency, among other things. It’s because we handle pay-per-click ads. Now, to continue, depending on the popularity of the keyword, this bid can go really high. When you’re working with very little money, you have to be smart about your bidding strategies, and this is where our smart bidding strategies come in. What are these strategies? Here are some that we frequently use, which we also used for this site:

Maximize Conversions – This is a smart bidding strategy that automatically sets your bids for you. This is to help you get the most conversions possible without exceeding your budget. What happens is the machine learning used by Google Ads will analyze your ads and use the data it comes up with to optimize your bids for you. This allows you to maximize your budget by getting the most conversions you can out of it.

Maximize Conversion Value – For the untrained eye, this may seem like it’s the same as the previous bidding strategy mentioned above. For those who know their PPC, like a PPC Agency, this is actually very different. With Maximize Conversions, your bids are set automatically based on the activity on your ads. With Maximize Conversion Value, however, you can set the parameters for your bidding strategy. You can do this with the use of values such as profit margins, sales revenue, and the like.

Enhanced CPC – This shows up on your google ads dashboard as CPC Enhanced. What this does is it gives you more conversions while giving you limited control over how you set your bids. This is similar to Maximize Conversions in that it also adjusts your bids to help you get the most out of your ads. This can be used on both Search and Shopping ads, with the latter presenting you with increased conversions for overall spend. This is as opposed to increased conversions while keeping your CPA at a set level.

Other smart bidding strategies that we use for this client, and for other clients that have a rather tight budget, include Target CPA, Target ROAS, and Maximize Clicks.

Constant Checking and Tweaking

PPC Expert on Computer

While using smart bidding strategies semi-automates the work, this doesn’t mean that we should just leave these ads to run on their own. Checking, tweaking, assessing, and realigning with goals is a constant, therefore these have to be done weekly, if not daily. This is what we do as a PPC Agency. Keywords have to be researched every week as well to check for trends and possible new keywords that can be used in new ads or in reworking existing ones.

The work of tweaking ads is often more marked when there are holidays in the offing. For instance, for Valentine’s Day, we had to rework specific ads so that these will show when people search for “valentine’s day gifts for dad” or “valentine’s day gift for wife”, to mention a few. Tweaking usually involves the addition of holiday-specific terms. This will always require fresh keyword research to get keyword volume, suggestions, and competition.

Another thing that we do as a PPC Agency when it comes to the checking and tweaking of ads is the pausing of good performing ads that are no longer relevant to the season. We pause these instead of deleting because we reactivate these ads when the same season is about to happen again. Why delete great ads when these work real well during the right time of year, right?

Why We Use Smart Bidding Strategies

The use of smart bidding strategies when we create ads for some of our clients helps us to not only maximize a rather tight budget, but also to help our specialists handle such accounts better. It helps them see the benefits of trusting in what Google can do when it comes to these automated options and how you can get great results without having to check on your ads and your competition every hour of the day.

Of course, you still have to take a hands-on approach to the work here since automation can go wrong sometimes. You need to be able to use data that you get from analytics and from your perusal of your reports to tweak your campaigns when needed. The use of smart bidding strategies should only be done in conjunction with a carefully planned and executed campaign.

Key Takeaways

At the end of the day, using a combination of Smart Bidding Strategies and carefully crafted ads partnered with sound knowledge about how these ads work will help you achieve certain goals. You still need to be vigilant when it comes to these ads that are running with automation behind them. Just letting these run without you checking on them every now and then can result in you eating up your budget without actually generating the kind of results that you are aiming for.

Our strategy of using this approach coupled with our vigilance with our work has resulted in a notable increase of traffic to the site by a whopping 5,000%! All of this in a matter of three months of ads on Google Shopping and on Search. If that isn’t a win, particularly with a rather limited budget, then I don’t know what is.

If you want to learn more about what we can do as a PPC Agency and to help your website in terms of ads and increased traffic as well as revenues, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can show you what we do and how we can help you in a deeper sense when you schedule a consultation with us.

 

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. 

Google Ads Agency Case Study – How We Increased Revenues with the Help of Google Ads and Google Shopping

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Google Ads Agency Case Study: How We Increased Revenues with the Help of Google Ads on Google Shopping

Woman buying stuff online via Google Shopping

As a Google Ads Agency, we are asked by some of our clients a number of questions pertaining to Google Ads and how these can help them increase revenues. To help them and you understand what impact ads have on your ecommerce store, here is a case study you can read and learn from.

Some people have this mistaken belief that once they create an online store, it will be an easy avenue for them to make money. While online revenues and opportunities did increase in the past year due to the pandemic, it actually isn’t as easy as it is made out to be. This is because of the increase in the number of people doing the same thing. This is why sellers have to come up with ways to get ahead of the competition. This is where online ads come in.

There are many ways to advertise your goods online. There are Facebook Ads, Twitter Ads, and Google Ads. If you’re thinking of doing well on Google, then you’re best option would be to focus most of your efforts on Google Ads. You can try to do all these yourself or you can ask a Google Ads Agency for help.

If you’re thinking of advertising on Google, you will first want to think about where exactly on Google you will advertise. One of the options that you have, and the one which will be focusing on in this article, is Google Shopping.

To show you what we mean about doing well on Google Shopping ads and getting the best results from it, we will show you what we did for one of our clients. In this piece, you will find information on what we did and how it impacted the sales as well as popularity of the site that we handled.

Client: Personalized Gift Site

Industry: Gift and Specialty

Campaign Type: Optimization and Pay-Per-Click Ads on Google Shopping

Project Background

The client in this case study is an online store that specializes in gifts and unique items that people buy for their loved ones.  As their chosen Google Ads Agency, we began handling this client in the middle of 2020, right at the height of the lockdowns due to the pandemic. The company called for help in increasing traffic and revenues to their site.

Project Objective

As mentioned above, the main objective of this project is to increase traffic and revenues to the site. This would include improving on any efforts that the company may have already done on their own in terms of ads and other avenues. Apart from this, we would also need to not only help increase traffic and revenues but also tweak the site to appear relevant to Google.

This means that apart from the creation of ads, we had to recommend tweaks for optimization purposes, which can help our ads become more relevant in the eyes of search engines. This is why we included in the project objectives the optimization of the site to help it appear better on search engines. When this happens, you get to appear to prospective buyers twice – on ads that appear on the same page as organic results. This helps legitimize your products and store. When the site appears twice on the same page for the same keyword, albeit in different forms, it cements the site’s reputation as a good place for people to buy what they are looking for.  

Google Ads showing on Google SERPs and Google Shopping

Project Challenges

As a Google Ads Agency, we faced multiple challenges with this project, primarily because of the niche and the timing of the need. The biggest challenge we faced was in getting people to notice us during such a difficult time. While life still had to go on despite the pandemic, buying gifts and specialized items during this time wasn’t the main focus of people everywhere. Since people were unsure of the future due to the health problem that took the world by surprise, gift-buying was obviously the last thing on their minds.

Before we can begin work on the site, we had to investigate whether or not they had any work done for them by other agencies in terms of Google ads and advertising on any other platform. Aside from determining the ad history and background of the company, we also had to check if the site was optimized for organic search as well as to analyze what would work well for them.

Analysis showed that they relied too much on organic traffic for revenues and even with an increase in online spending by many, they weren’t actually getting their fair share of the pie, so to speak. Our biggest challenge was to not only optimize the site to make them appear more above their competition but to actually put them in a situation where actual buyers found them. We decided on a multi-pronged solution to help them achieve the kind of income stream they wanted while at the same time, giving them the kind of online exposure that can build a stellar reputation.

The Solutions

Our first attack was to optimize the site so it appeared relevant to search terms that people used to find them. This involved quite a bit of work and it all began with keyword research, demographic research, and partitioning. The partitioning was to help us determine what strategies to use for the site and to create different buckets of keywords for each strategy.

To help you understand what was done to help the site achieve the revenues that it deserved, we’ll break this strategy down to its bare bones.

Optimization

Checking Google Analytics for Google Shopping Ads and Google organic results

The first thing we did was to optimize the site with relevant keywords that would help it rank better on search engine results pages or SERPs. This began with keyword research, which we first did for site optimization. The keywords that we gained from this work were expanded to include not only general terms but also specific terms that we could use with category and product-specific ads. We will cover more of that in the next stages of this strategy.

We found lots of keywords that were relevant to the niche itself. This included general terms like personalized gift ideas, and more specific terms, like music plaques and watches for men. We chose the terms that weren’t only relevant to the niche but also had quite a substantial search volume. The keywords we used to optimize the site were the same keywords we placed in another bucket for use in the creation of ads, but these we just set aside for now.

To optimize, we sprinkled some of the general keywords all over the site in relevant content that included blogs, product descriptions, and even in alt-text. Also part of the optimization stage was the addition of long-tail keywords that had lots of search volume and that we knew would drive targeted traffic to the site. Examples of these include keywords like hand-crafted leather wallet, hand-crafted watch, and necklace to my future wife, to mention only a few.

The results of our effort weren’t too bad. We showed up on the first page of Google organic search in the top 10. This meant that we are getting the results we were aiming for with organic. Now, it was time to move on to Google Ads.

Google Ads

­­Another avenue that we took to help increase traffic and revenues here is the creation of Google Ads for the site, which is one of our strengths as a Google Ads Agency. This began with, as always, keyword research, which gave us not only terms relevant to the niche but also search volume and competition. These are important to the creation of ads since these last two will dictate the bidding strategy that you will use.

Since we wanted the products of our client to show not only on SERPs and as ads on these same pages but also as ads for Google Shopping, we had to optimize these to appear in a format that was acceptable to the platforms we were targeting. This is where the use of Google Merchant Center came in.

In the creation of ads, we had to use the usual split-testing model to find out what ads appealed to our target demographics. The ads that showed more traffic and more revenues were the ones we kept running and the non-performing ones were either scrapped or repurposed to appeal to a different demographic. We also chose which ads we deemed would work better on search and which ones worked better on Google Shopping.

Tweaking and Refining

The final prong of this strategy came in the form of reworking and fixing of current campaigns as well as ads that showed some promise but did not deliver. We also took pains to check our statistics daily and to fix things as we see fit when we noticed relevant changes in our reports. Included in what we did regularly were the exclusion of irrelevant queries and terms that we felt weren’t in-line with what we wanted to achieve.

This last part is an ongoing process that continues to this day. We constantly tweak our ads and research keywords on a regular basis to find out what other new terms we can use to create new ads with as well as to update existing ones with. This keyword research is also done to help with the removal of ads that were no longer working for us, based on the keywords that were used and the products that were no longer trending.

Our Results

Add to Cart button after shopper sees ad on Google Shopping and Google organic results pages

So, what is the key takeaway in all of this? For starters, as a Google Ads Agency, we found that saw that our efforts helped them a lot. The company actually earned more than they did pre-pandemic and this is for items that aren’t necessarily considered essential. The site also got the kind of attention that it wanted and the kind of revenues that they needed to keep them going.

All of these were achieved primarily because of the work that was done for them via the process outlined above. The marked increase in revenues were seen in a matter of 6 months, gradually increasing in the first three months and exponentially in the following months up to today. In one of our reports, we could easily see along with our clients that sales and traffic were indeed on an uptick, with a 100% increase in clicks and an increase in ROAS of 340% in a span of 6 months. If that isn’t a testament of success, then we don’t know what is.

Also worth noting is that, even though we did have a number of carts abandoned before checkout, it paled in comparison with the number of successful transactions that the site experienced. We also noticed the marked increase in clicks and revenues starting from the third month of working on the site up to today. An increase in sales from hundreds of products in a month to thousands the following month is not something to scoff at.

Conclusion

In conclusion, we can safely say that the combination of ads on Google’s SERPs and on Google Shopping is a must, if you are in the e-commerce sphere. No amount of telling us otherwise will convince us that there is no need for one or the other. We have the results to show for it and, more importantly, our clients have seen exactly what our work can do for them and their site.

If you want to experience the same success for your site and get the same kind of revenues our clients did, you will want to try this strategy out. This formula is geared towards e-commerce sites, so if you’re not a shopping site or are one that doesn’t sell products but rather services, then you will need another type of strategy. You should know, however, that no matter what your niche or what business you’re in, the fundamentals still apply.

These include the most important first step, which is keyword research, and a careful analysis of your site. Before any work can be done, a thorough audit of your site is required. This will help us, or whoever you ask to help with your site’s performance, find the flaws in it and recommend changes before any ad work is started. The audit will also help us see if any optimization was attempted on your site and to fix any errors that resulted from such prior activities.

If you want to find out more about what we can do as a Google Ad Agency, for you and your website, don’t hesitate to contact us. We can show you some of the results that we’ve come up with via our analytics pages and other similar proof of success in what we do.

 

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.