Ad Spend
Scale advertising with increase spend which achieving ROI
Conversion Rate
Increased online conversion rate to over 4% average.
Sales
Increased sales from Google Ads to over 30K per month
IMPERIAL CANDLES
Back Story
Imperial Candles, a brother and sister venture, established themselves as a viable, profit-making business in their first year. However, sales started to fade in the second and third year when it decided to approach the Dragons Den team in search of a £100k equity stake. The £100k was invested by two of the Dragons on the strength of their product which was indeed a beautiful, much sought after, unique and delightful product.
The weakness was not in the product but in advertising becoming more expensive, at first set up by an agency then taken over by themselves, but which had fallen behind.
Living on credit cards, on the edge of a financial abyss, and suffering severe family and personal strain, they, having been thrown a lifeline by the Dragons, approached OnePPC in the hope of rescuing the company from the dire sales situation they found themselves in.
This turned out to be a perfect match of their high-quality product and our expertise in marketing it.
During our initial analysis, we identified these key challenges;
- The Google Ads account had no historical conversion data for online sales or leads for offline sales.
- The range of products within each category was too wide.
- The keyword list was extensive but inaccurate – without a setlist of best selling products to lead with.
- A Niche Target Audience and selling an unknown brand.
Goals
Imperial Candles needed a partner that could help them improve their Google advertising ROI, and were therefore keen to work with an agency who was results-driven.
They found One PPC on a jobs marketplace with shining client reviews, professional certifications and provable qualifications..
Initially, Imperial Candles primary goal was to get as much sales revenue as possible by improving their ROAS which was, at the time, in serious decline. Secondary goals were to grow brand awareness and attract newsletter subscribers across Google Search and Display Networks.
They had used other advertising agencies and gotten results but suspected that both sales and return on ad spend profitability could be increased significantly.
- As a gift company, seasonality had originally impacted sales
- Search volume on Google could be higher for a niche market
- More competitor advertising making Google ads auction more expensive.
During our initial analysis, we identified three key weaknesses/opportunities:
- A niche area of e-commerce with a finite amount of searches. Google Ads had been used in the past, but most campaigns were paused.
- Profits were previously low – averaging less than half the required ROAS of 400%.
- Remarketing was running but underperforming, while other Display targeting options lay unused.
- Datafeed for Shopping needed to be rebuilt to ensure titles and descriptions contained the main keywords for each respective product.
Solution
Google Search
To achieve Imperial Candles goals, we started by rebuilding their data feed for Google Shopping. getting the fundamentals in place with a more scaled out account structure to improve ad relevance, increase CTR and quality score. These changes reduced the cost per click significantly while helping Imperial Candles show in the top position on Google for just about every keyword search. Even before the website was e-commerce ready with revenue tracking, offline sales were seen to increase rapidly. Over 95% of the keywords were showing in the top position with a very high-quality score.
To maximize sales, we needed to set up a large Google Ads account to build campaigns. Not just for thousands of keywords, but to build the other targeting options such as YouTube Ads, Google Display Network etc. The first rapid increase in sales revenue was due to planning which improved communication, testing and review. Next, we refined our plan to incorporate new business opportunities and feature upgrades of Google Ads.
The introduction of these changes has dramatically and rapidly improved the ROAS for Imperial Candles, and it is now consistently maintaining an average above 4.0 since we began our partnership, and is driving increasing sales.
Our next step was to create standard search campaigns targeting people searching in Google with keywords and text ads. We configured settings for each specific campaign to increase return on ad spend. We set up a range of campaigns including:
- One Search campaign with ad groups covering all product categories an extensive list of keywords grouped into themed ad groups with relevant ads and landing pages.
- RLSA (Remarketing for Search): Targeting past website users as they search again in Google, sometimes with wider keywords that are not part of the main keyword list for increasing traffic.
- DSA (Dynamic Search Ads)- We set this up combined with search remarketing to increase the qualified audience.
- Google Shopping
Bidding Strategies: It was important to achieve the required return on ad spend while increasing the number of leads. Over time we tested a range of bidding strategies to get to the optimum approach for each campaign.
Audience targeting for Search: We set up campaigns with audiences such as demographics, as well as interest targeting such as past website users, in-Market Audiences and Similar Audiences to achieve a better ROI
Google Display Network
After seeing significant success from the Search Network campaigns, Imperial Candles was keen to explore Google Display Advertising in more detail. The goal was to grow brand awareness with a much larger audience than just the Search traffic, and to achieve ROAS of 700%.
To build a complete sales funnel we needed to set up campaigns that targeted cold traffic, as well as warm and hot traffic. If we could reach people at all stages of the marketing funnel we could grow sales much faster than just using Google Search. We set up campaigns at different stages of the funnel such as:
Website Remarketing: We created a remarketing funnel with recent short-term traffic, as well as a separate campaign for long term traffic up to 540 days.
In-Market Audiences: We targeted audiences with interests such as garden furniture and outdoor living which increased impressions and reach into the millions very quickly. Over time the campaigns improved continuously and exceeded the required ROAS.
Similar Audiences: We set up an audience that is most similar to conversion tracking purchasers then ran ads across the Display Network. Dynamic vs static ads were tested and compared in practice.
Results
This approach has driven explosive results for Imperial Candles in the time we have been working together. Consistent Facebook advertising has been developed with the ad budget increasing proportionally with the extensive increase in sales.
Since working with Imperial Candles, we have:
- In 1 month we achieved the target return on ad spend of 400% ROAS.
- Continued increasing sales while consistently achieved profit target of 400% ROAS (Spend £1, get £4 back. Also written as 4.0%).
- Increased conversion rates to average above 3%
- Ranked number 1 for 95%+ of the main Google Ads keywords dominating competitor impression share.
- Implemented Search keyword campaigns, Google Shopping, Dynamic Remarketing campaign to retarget website visitors
- Created a consistent and effective ad creative that focuses on key USP and brand messaging.
- Worked closely with the client, and internally throughout the duration of our campaigns