Summary
This surf company came to us with a great product, 8+ years in business, and upside-down ad accounts. Having hired and fired two expensive PPC agencies, they wanted someone who could significantly cut costs and improve everything from ad spend to conversion rate, ROAS, and CPA.
The Ask
The greatest challenge was isolating high-intent keywords and removing most of the non-converting, awareness-level search. Due to the custom nature of their products and the long path to purchase, this was necessary to bring their account back in the black. Implementing call tracking and multi-touch attribution reporting was necessary to measure the true effectiveness of our advertising efforts. The goal was to hit 4:1 account ROAS at scale.
The Solution
After evaluating all conversion touchpoints, we removed non-converting and low converting keywords and display advertising from their Google Ads and Microsoft Ads campaigns. We used Google Analytics to define the average time to purchase, and added a tight retargeting series on Facebook and Instagram to convert visitors based on time lag reports. Cutting the top of funnel and display advertising gave us room in the budget to add Google Shopping and Microsoft Shopping.
Google Ads – We concentrated on long-tail keywords and added local inventory shopping ads to increase foot traffic to their retail location. Adding Google Shopping allowed us to show highly relevant ads to users while they were searching for competitors, size, shape, material, and color of their desired surfboard. This greatly improved the quality of traffic and conversion rates while also decreasing spend. We were able to successfully deploy campaigns maintaining 7:1 ROAS – 12:1 ROAS, a great improvement over the previous 2:1 ROAS.
Display and Youtube – We used targeted placements on specific articles along with Youtube video ads on relevant channels. This functioned as low-budget conquesting and top-of-funnel awareness in one. As profitability increased, we used cohort analysis and competitor search terms to build custom affinity audiences to target with product launch videos.
Facebook and Instagram – We primarily focused on a 2 step funnel targeting warm users and lookalike audiences. Ad creative consisted of promotions, product videos, and dynamic product ads for product viewers and cart abandoners. Because of their product seasonality and low eCommerce conversion rate, we reserved interest targeting for giveaways and sales.
UpViral Giveaways – Giveaways have historically been great for this brand and we worked diligently to find ways to increase entries from new leads for the lowest cost per lead possible. We set up a custom conversion for entries and were able to use Instagram and Facebook to consistently drive new, highly engaged leads for .20 per lead. Giveaways resulted in 10:1 ROI, generating over 20k new email sign-ups and 70k gross revenue in 2020 alone.
The Result
Over the past three years, we have consistently increased revenue, email list signups, improved ROAS, average order value, conversion rate, and decreased costs.