How in 5 months it was possible to increase monthly income from 72,000 UAH to 1,750,000 UAH. Increase transactions by 16.5x and reduce their cost by 55%.

Client

An online store of designer brand clothing, shoes and accessories of mid and luxury segment in Kyiv.

The client has had difficulty increasing sales over the past few years. There were several reasons for this: high competition, lack of growth in purchasing power due to the downturn in the economy, weak brand identity and high fastidiousness of an insufficiently broad audience.

Our goals were quite classic: increase the number of sales, increase the average check, lower the transaction price. The small budget of the project imposed many restrictions, but the more interesting it was to achieve the result in such difficult conditions.

First two months: improving Search advertising campaigns.

One month prior to our partnership, the client had 15 active Search ads structured by brand. The campaigns ran for a long time, were well set up and cleaned up.

They brought 7-8 thousand clicks monthly, which were converted into 30-40 sales. CPC was 3.3 UAH, sales price – 670 UAH.

Not the best results, but consistent.

Our first obvious suggestion was to incorporate Standard Shopping or Performance Max ad types, as well as media advertising campaigns. This would work well for a product such as clothing, which it would be preferable to show visually to a potential customer as soon as possible. But the client only considered Search Engines to be effective for their business, so we had to focus on them first, and achieve results in that field.

Semantics expansion

Budget constraints forced us to limit ourselves to branded keys. However, we decided to increase their number and expanded the semantic core for branded queries from 1,456 key phrases to 2,100.

We added previously unprocessed ad campaigns with relevant brands, getting +5 new campaigns at the end.

Offer enhancement

In order to build off the numerous competitors in our advertising campaigns, we proposed and agreed with the client a rather strong offer. Now customers could try on an item during delivery and pay for it only if it fits.

Where it was possible to arrange it, there was even a service of home visits by a stylist, who helped the store’s customers to choose a stylish look, and in the process even motivate them to buy additional accessories successfully matching the main purchase.

Focus on branded traffic

We decided to switch campaigns to the Maximize clicks strategy instead of the used Maximize conversions strategy with a CPC limit of 5 UAH. It’s not quite intuitive, but in practice, focusing on traffic to well-defined branded keys can work better in terms of increasing leads.

It worked: we got 2x more traffic and conversions went from 39 to 99.

At the same time, however, the cost per conversion increased by 15%. But the work had only just begun, it was not critical against the background of the results achieved.

Third month: new types of advertising campaigns

The initial results strengthened the client’s trust, allowed him to more confidently rely on our recommendations and, by the start of the third month, to allocate budget for testing other types of campaigns: trade and media.

We chose one of the highest performing brands and launched it in a Performance Max campaign. It allows to run Standard Shopping type ads as well as regular banner ads on relevant sites, in videos and Google apps (such as YouTube).

It’s important to clearly define audience signals and eliminate sites, topics, and add-ons that could drain your budget. We settled on just two signals: women, 25-54 years old. And we added key phrases by brand.

Of course, we were ready to test other ones, but they also showed a better result than we got in Search campaigns. A month later, we received 38 orders at a price of 266 UAH each.

Fourth and fifth months: an increase in the number of Performance Max campaigns

A subsequent increase in our monthly budget for Google Ads campaigns allowed us to launch 3 more Performance Max campaigns in the fourth month and 5 more campaigns in the fifth month. Each focused on one specific brand of clothing or accessories. This allowed us to create more targeted unique creatives for each of the campaigns.

During the whole time we never stopped creating and testing new creatives, determining the most understandable and attractive for the target audience, simply put, the most clickable.

Website optimization.

From the very first month, we offered the client recommendations to improve and optimize the store’s website, which they implemented on their own. First of all, we improved the quality of photos, the main selling element on the site. We optimized the UX/UI design, making site navigation easier and more understandable.

In addition to the already mentioned unique in-home stylist services and the addition of in-home pre-purchase fitting options – the client has significantly increased their clothing and accessory assortment over the months.

And the client also introduced a loyalty program for regular customers in the form of accumulative points for each purchase, giving discounts on future purchases.

An attractive website, professional customer service, quality product, and reliable delivery all increase the effectiveness of any promotional tools.

For this reason, we at Regis Team always strive to help clients comprehensively improve and grow their business where we have the competence to do so.

Results.

Results Before:

  • Received conversions (transactions) – 39;
  • Cost per conversion – 671 UAH;
  • Expenses – 26,167 UAH;
  • Revenue – 71,804 UAH.

Results After:

  • Received conversions (transactions) – 645;
  • Cost per conversion – 368 UAH;
  • Expenses – 237,217 UAH;
  • Revenue – 1,756,771 UAH.

Conclusions

With the right approach, Performance Max can be a great advertising tool. It allows you to place ads on a large number of different platforms: search, cards, YouTube, Google Discover, Google Display Network. At the same time, it achieves reach that is unattainable with other tools.

It uses Google technologies such as Smart Bidding and Conversion Value Rules to optimize the campaign and improve conversion results. Optimization is based on a machine learning approach that analyzes user behavior across all available indicators and signals.

However, all this is only in skillful and diligent hands. Like any other tool, it requires testing: creatives, offers, audiences. It is important to test correctly, and not to drain the budget in the process, disproportionate to the future result.

Same as always, the maximum result will require optimization of the entire project as a whole, comprehensive work not only on the advertising campaign, but also on the site, on the business.

This is exactly what we have been doing at Regis Team for the past 15 years. Contact our manager if you would like to discuss possible cooperation.