Growing Business With Online Advertising: Case Study

Share This Post

“Dynamic Creative not only achieved our essential 10:1 goal, they maintained it at higher ad spends. On the back of these results, we’ve been able to open 3 new stores across Australia.” Mannys – Luke Bowditch | Marketing

The Objective

Mannys is an independent musical instrument and equipment store. With just a solitary ‘brick and mortar store’ in Melbourne, Mannys’ challenge was to compete in the national market at scale. Before becoming a customer of ours, Mannys were not maintaining profitability and felt that national exposure was impossible. They were struggling to achieve a positive return from their online advertising. “We needed a 10:1 return on ad spend to keep the lights on”, said Luke the marketing manager.

When they came on board with us, it became our mission to achieve their goals by helping them grow their business online and compete in the national market.

Strategy

Our approach has been to use our Ad Tech in conjunction with Google’s Machine Learning to drive the most relevant traffic to their website. Our Google Ads campaigns are specifically created and optimized to leverage Google’s Data, showing ads to consumers who are in-market to make a purchase. Our execution of this strategy included being fast to market with Google Smart Shopping, highly relevant Search campaigns, budget growth and Display ads.

Google Search Ads

Through the use of the Dynamic Creative Ad Platform, we built our individual model (SKU) Search Ads for all products on the website. The ad copy for these ads included the manufacturer name plus model number, product description and availability. Furthermore, ads were kept updated with live inventory and price changes. Our Ad Platform would automatically turn off advertisements for items when out of stock and updated the displayed price when changes were made.

This meant that they would not be spending their advertising budget on products that they were unable to sell. With the inclusion of price, we also avoided clicks from consumers who would not be willing to pay a particular price for a particular product. Therefore, our ads were able to pre qualify customers before they clicked.

The ads would also have relevant landing pages. For example, an ad for a ‘Roland Digital Keyboard’ would take the consumer directly to the specific page of Roland Digital Keyboards on Mannys’ website. This campaign type was rolled out nationally.

We chose to create this type of campaign to match the way consumers were searching in Mannys’ industry. After prospective customers had done their research on their desired product and were ready to buy, they would search for the model number plus the manufacturer name and compare the prices.

The results were astounding, they experienced:

252% uplift in return on ad spend
92% increase in conversions in two months after launching

Google Shopping Advertising

We understand that Google drives innovation and Shopping is a great format to advertise individual products with an accompanying image which is appealing to customers. Together with price, brand and promotional offers, customers are even more prequalified compared to a text ad. Therefore, the Ad Platform also built out a product feed alongside Google Shopping campaigns to drive in-market consumers to the website to purchase. The feed is also automatically updated regularly.

Alongside the text ads, Mannys now has high impression share when it came to page real estate. When you search for manufacturer plus model, a text ad as well as a shopping ad would now appear. Even if a consumer didn’t click on our ad, we were able to get the customer’s brand name out there and associate it with the products.

To build upon this, as a Premier Partner we were able to test Smart Shopping campaigns when still in beta. We immediately saw an opportunity and transferred the customer from Standard Shopping campaigns to Smart Shopping during the beta. The results were amazing.

Results:

Return on Ad Spend increased by a further 66%, now achieving over a 10:1
Cost per Click decreased by 22%

Display Ads

To support this growth, we suggested running display campaigns to promote the new store openings as well as continue growing brand recognition. Using Google responsive display ads, we showed ads to users in Sydney and Brisbane who have previously visited the website. We also used in market audiences to show ads to users who have shown interest and are in-market to buy musical instruments and equipment. This has not only helped online results, but in store as well, with the new store opening being a success!

Results so far have been positive:

Impressions increased by 44%
Clicks increased by 37%
Local actions have increased by 7%
Cost per Click on the display ads are low at $0.10

Budget Growth

With the unprecedented growth in just over a year, Mannys doubled their media investment in Google. They’ve even been able to maintain their 1000% Return on Ad Spend while doubling their budget, doubling their profit contribution. During the holiday season they managed to break their own records, achieving over a 12:1 Return on Ad Spend. During this time, we actually had to stop advertisement in all channels, as the fulfilment team could not keep up with the amount of sales.

Maintained ROAS while doubling their budget
100% increase in profit contribution

Meeting Mannys’ Objective

Through improvements to advertising efficiency, freedom to increase advertising budget with a profitable return, and an uplift in conversions, Mannys have been able to compete at a national scale. Built on the basis of this success, they have since opened 2 new stores in Sydney and Brisbane with one soon to be opened in Perth. They have also hired more employees in the fulfilment team to keep up with the online demand.

3 New Stores

How Our Ad Tech Works Alongside Machine Learning

Our Ad Tech is uniquely positioned to unlock the power of Machine Learning. Our Google Search Ad campaign templates and our Google Shopping optimizations are designed to take advantage of Google’s Big Data to help eCommerce businesses grow and scale.

As discussed in this case study our strategy involved the use of Smart Shopping and Smart Bidding in conjunction with our Ad Tech. We began Smart Shopping during the beta testing stages to remain competitive in the market dominated by many major brands. This was a new and exciting opportunity as it combined both standard shopping and display remarketing campaigns, therefore allowing us to advertise Manny’s 9000+ products to consumers with the strong buying interest. Furthermore, as Smart Shopping uses automated bidding, it allowed us to simplify our campaign management, giving us more time with Mannys to plan and implement new strategies for growth. Smart Shopping really gave us the competitive edge, allowing for national coverage in the Google search and display network, overcoming our challenge and hitting our goals.

Smart shopping Return On Ad Spend increased by 66%
By the holiday season, Return On Ad Spend increased a further 20%

Another automated solution discussed in the case study is the use of Smart Bidding. Our search campaigns use a mixture of Target CPA and Maximise Clicks. We chose to utilise Smart Bidding as our highly granular campaigns allow for enhanced Machine Bidding. The Machine Learning algorithm is able to factor in a wide range of parameters and contextual signals that have impacted performance in a positive way, more than a single person or team could compute. Since making the switch from enhanced CPC: