Continued PPC success for F1 Authentics

In a previous case study, a few months back, we touched on the outstanding PPC results we achieved with the F1 Authentics Google Ads account.

We mentioned that we had seen improvements in all KPIs for the account. 5 months later, we are pleased to say these results have kept growing.

For those of you who are just joining us, F1 Authentics, run by The Memento Group, is an eCommerce platform that sells memorabilia and sporting goods to Formula One fans worldwide.

Continued PPC Success for F1 Authentics

Since we took over the account 8 months back, we have made over 1,500 changes to improve performance. Among these, we have introduced a couple of new campaigns.

Dynamic Search Campaign

Dynamic campaigns are a powerful tool to expand your search query coverage and drive more volume to your site. These types of ads are a great way to show dynamic content to interested users. Once set up correctly, they look identical to regular text ads in search results but are gathered by using the information on your site to match the user’s queries to the type of product on your site, showing a dynamically generated, tailored ad.

Results

Display Search Ads (DSA) sound great, you are probably wondering why you should even bother with other types of text ads? The two main reasons why you should not only run dynamic campaigns:

• The performance will suffer if a DSA is your only search campaign. This results from a very broad reach, as opposed to selective, manual keyword targets
• Dynamic headlines are generated by the system. You do not have total control over the brand’s messaging.

So while dynamic search ads should be part of your PPC strategy, they should never be the only strategy.

Here’s an example of a Dynamic Ad triggered by a desktop search for f1 Kimi Raikkonen shop:

Brand Search Campaign

We introduced a ‘brand’ search campaign with the objective to increase brand awareness and traffic to the site. The strategy for this was to bid on keywords that would not necessarily bring in first click conversions – for instance ‘F1 Store’ and ‘F1 Official Store’ – but would introduce the site to users who are in the awareness/research stage.

While we warned the client that this would reduce the ROI on PPC – we also made them aware that we will likely see benefits from this campaign from these users once they have moved further down the buyer’s cycle, although that revenue may be associated to other traffic, for instance remarketing social campaigns.

Let’s look at an example: Someone wants to buy their dad a cool F1 gift for their birthday, and they find the F1 Authentics store through searching ‘F1 Store’ and clicking on one of the Brand Campaign ads. They may not purchase right away because they want to look around. Thanks to the Facebook Pixel installed on the site, we can now show targeted ads on Facebook to this user, reminding him that the ultimate F1 gift to buy his dad is on our site. A week or two later, he decides to purchase.

Seasonal PPC Campaigns

The last five months included November and December, arguably the two busiest months for eCommerce! In November, we have Black Friday, then straight into Holiday ads for Christmas in December.

We created targeted ad copy for Black Friday – these ran for a full week, ending on Cyber Monday. Straight after that we switched to targeted Christmas gift ad copies.

It is interesting to see the effect of sales leading up to Black Friday. It seems that this year especially, throughout October and the beginning of November, many were holding out to do their holiday shopping until they saw Black Friday deals. But as soon as Black Friday hit – the sales went through the roof!

We could see that people were still interested, and probably doing research leading up to Black Friday by looking at the CTR (click-through-rate) over the same period.

Of course, we must consider that the second COVID lockdown went into effect for the UK in early November. While this probably has a positive impact on sales, we do not think it was a significant impact, but it will be interesting to compare next Black Friday.

All-time campaign performance

While the results are great, when we look at the all-time performance (since we started working on the account) we could really visualise the improvements we have made in a few short months.

What’s next?

We have had an exciting start to the year with this client, and we’ve got some great things planned for the next few months. Stay tuned to see more promising results!

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