How to reduce advertising costs and increase ROMI by 772% — Autobaza case study

The process of changing a logo and renaming a project is always stressful for a team of internet marketers since the customers are persistently looking for a familiar name and design of an online store. So, the first thing to do is to update the content and inform as many target users as possible. Otherwise, they may see a new store name and leave the site.

We will show you how to improve conversion rates after implementing a new logo of an online store, how to reduce advertising costs and redirect the rest of money to branding

Project peculiarities

We have been cooperating with Autobaza online store (the former “Baza Avtozvuka”) since 2014. This is the largest network of сar accessories in Ukraine that works only with the proven brands and official suppliers (we’re sorry for screens in Russian, the English version of the site is unavailable).

The “Baza Avtozvuka” store chain entered the market in 2001. Since that time, the range of products has considerably increased, and now the online store can cover all the requirements of car lovers. Therefore, the company decided to change its name to Autobaza.

Promotion goals

Since a user accustoms to brand visualization, moving to a new logo can’t be "painless". Therefore, we resorted to all kinds of conversion sources before changing the name and the logo.

What we did

We used Google Ads tools to accomplish the Autobaza’s goal on increasing sales within the current budget.

Marketers are usually wary of new products from Google Ads — sometimes they have insufficient knowledge and experience, and sometimes there are no suitable projects.

For Autobaza, we decided to test two relatively new tools:

• Shopping campaigns;
• Smart Shopping campaigns.

Let’s learn more about each of the tools.

1. Shopping campaigns

An ads example (we’re sorry for screens in Russian, the English version of the site is unavailable):

Setup

We have recently published an article on how to set up Shopping campaigns.

First, we added all the products to an advertising campaign. This allowed us to collect statistics for making further decisions on the campaign structure and optimization.

Optimization

1. We singled out the categories of products with the highest sales results and created individual campaigns for them. This helped us focus on efficient goods only.
   
   Products with lower demand, being a part of the campaign that includes all products, receive less traffic: the budget is mostly spent on goods with higher demand.
   
   

2. We added remarketing lists with bids adjustments of 30-50% that target both a wide (all site visitors) and an overly narrow or specific (product card visitors/buyers) audience.
   
   Bids adjustments are different at each stage of the sales funnel. The closer to a purchase a user is, the higher the bid is. Site visitors who viewed several product cards are more likely to make a purchase than those who just visited the homepage of an online store.

Results

2. Smart Shopping campaigns

Smart Shopping campaigns encompass both traditional Shopping campaigns and remarketing campaigns on the Display Network. When showing ads of Smart Shopping campaigns in various networks, the system resorts to feeds, downloaded objects and Google machine learning. Unlike traditional Shopping campaigns, the products ads will be shown in search results, on the Display Network, on YouTube and in Gmail.

An ads example (we’re sorry for screens in Russian, the English version of the site is unavailable):

Some more samples (we’re sorry for screens in Russian, the English version of the site is unavailable):

Requirements:

1. Providing transaction-specific values for each conversion and tracking them.
2. Getting at least 20 conversions over the past 45 days for traditional Shopping campaigns. This is a strong system requirement (official Google Ads Help). 
3. Adding a global tag to the site and creating a remarketing list which includes at least 100 users. The dynamic remarketing will allow to show personalized ads to those who have visited the site before.
4. Calculating ROAS (Return on Ad Spend).
   ROAS = profit from an advertising campaign / costs for an advertising campaign.

Results

We met the tool requirements and obtained the following results for all Shopping campaigns after connecting Smart Shopping:

The client’s feedback

Yana Merkotan, a leading marketer of the Autobaza project:

The project team

• Oksana Verlan — Team Lead of PM Team;
• Dmitriy Chernous — PM of PM Team;
• Anna Sergeeva — Senior PPC Specialist.

Conclusions

Any changes on the site are stressful for a PPC specialist because innovations affect the quality of advertising campaigns. If the site is globally reworked, marketers often have to collect statistics from scratch, change the campaigns structure, strategies and the overall approach to the promotion.

Rebranding is not an exception since a marketer has to update the content and inform as many target users as possible to keep the customers on the site.

We managed to improve conversion rates, as well as to reduce advertising campaigns costs. And the rest of the budget we redirected to branding — with the help of media tools, we notified users about the logo change.

Shopping advertising shows excellent results in many topics in the area of e-commerce. Take note of our case study and expand your company.

We’re especially grateful to the PPC team leader Andrey Koval (Netpeak) and PPC specialist Julia Nakonechnaya for the enormous contribution to the project development.