A Content campaign is an integral component of the Search Marketing mix. While Content campaigns are considered primarily as a vehicle for general branding, they can be leveraged to efficiently increase direct sales as well. Targeting the Content campaign to specific branded products and optimizing with a focus on conversions not only improved ROI but continued to drive traffic for branding.
Situation
A multi-channel retail client offered a line of celebrity-branded cookware and kitchen tools. A small mix of brand and product keywords was included in a single Content ad group for testing purposes. While the initial launch delivered sales and a positive ROI, the overall traffic was low, and therefore the branding goal was not met.
Challenges
The brand name value of the product line was under-utilized; the campaign needed optimizing for growth in traffic. At the same time, the ROI needed to be acceptable in order to develop a scalable Content campaign strategy for the rest of the branded product lines.
Solution
Thirty days after the initial launch, we implemented specific Google-recommended campaign optimizations designed to grow volume and increase brand visibility. The number of ad groups was expanded, with each group targeting a specific product. Also, Google added a large number of general keywords, high traffic product-level keywords, and celebrity chef-related keywords to each ad group. We tracked traffic to help determine which non-converting ad groups, keywords and ad copy needed to be changed or removed.
After thirty days of running the Google-optimized Content campaign, we made more changes aimed at decreasing the non-converting traffic and lowering the cost of the campaign. Because the Content Network does not allow the use of negative keywords and match types, the delivery of ads for general keywords could not be sufficiently targeted. Consequently, most of the general keywords and other non-performers were removed, while the overall structure of the new ad groups remained. After optimization, each ad group was limited to 5 – 8 keywords for a specific product. In addition, the ad copy was updated to include promotions and calls to action, so that researchers would be more likely to become buyers. The test continued for another thirty days.
Results
Optimizing with a focus on direct sales via product and celebrity name-specific keywords resulted in an improved ROI, while driving significant traffic for branding purposes. Although the general keywords Google recommended for the Content campaign increased the number of impressions and clicks (and the costs,) it was not a scalable, efficient, or targeted program.
The optimization performed by Google drove a 1200% increase in traffic but at a return of less than 100%. After our second round of optimizations, the ROI improved upon the Google optimization by over 300%. In addition, the revenue remained consistent and traffic increased by 380% over the initial launch period.
