Home&Garden Industry | Brand Awarness
Services
Market
Germany
Sneak Peek
In our partnership with a global manufacturer in the garden and patio equipment industry, we focused on amplifying their brand in Poland’s expanding market. Our client, operating across 19 markets and boasting over a thousand products, recognized Poland’s potential due to its growing economic landscape and investment trends in home and garden spaces.
Our strategy centered on leveraging digital marketing tools like Google Analytics 360 and Display & Video 360 to enhance brand visibility. We implemented a comprehensive approach, encompassing seasonal promotions, display and video campaigns on platforms like YouTube and Spotify, to broaden the brand’s reach. This approach was designed to support sales through the client’s established distribution network in Poland, not solely through online store traffic. Our efforts led to a significant 57% reduction in session cost, a 116.08% increase in ROAS, and a 93% decrease in conversion cost, underlining the effectiveness of our data-driven strategy and tailored campaign execution.
Team Involved
Project Manager
Programmatic Manager
About the client
- The client is a global manufacturer in the garden and patio equipment industry, actively operating in 19 markets in Europe, the USA, Australia, developed economies in Asia, New Zealand, the United Arab Emirates, and Central America.
- They offer a wide assortment – over 1,000 products, all under their own brand.
- Their target audience includes people who enjoy spending time outdoors and care about the highest quality items in their garden or patio. The product range offers high-end, durable solutions with a quality guarantee for years.
- The client’s characteristic feature is seasonality – the most intense marketing and sales period is from March to July.
- As a result of the growing wealth of Poles and their predisposition to invest in their property, the client identified the Polish market as attractive in terms of increasing its share in 2021, thus investing in brand building. In marketing activities in the Polish market, they use precise data collected through carefully prepared website analytics and experience gained in other markets, where we have been supporting them for years.
- The client wished to remain anonymous, so we do not provide their name, the exact segment in which they operate, or their competition. Therefore, this case study is based on the broader industry, namely garden and patio equipment.
Beginning of the cooperation
A friendly software house recommended us for cooperation with the client. We started by helping in the areas of Web Analytics and tag management in Google Tag Manager. We also conducted training on these topics. Over time, we became so involved with the client that they engaged us in more and more areas. Through strong engagement in analytical areas and the ability to observe all of the client’s e-marketing activities, we began to move very efficiently through their analytical/e-marketing setup. The mentioned setup was complicated due to the number of agencies operating on individual markets and platforms.
When the client decided that e-marketing activities would be centralized, they began searching for an agency that could handle their campaigns in European markets. Ultimately, they chose our agency, thanks to the trust gained earlier and our reputation as a problem-solving organization, familiar with many people and processes within the company.
Problems, challenges, and goals
The client was already actively operating in many European markets. After analyzing the potential, they decided to invest in branding in Poland to increase sales.
Having their own e-commerce, they were able to provide us with consumer data. However, the online store was not their main source of income, and the client did not want to change that. The revenue was largely based on a well-developed distribution structure of independent resellers.
The goal was ambitious: we were to increase sales, but not from campaigns, but from the distribution network that the client had in Poland. Therefore, the results of the online store were secondary.
Another challenge was strong competition, which heavily invested in branding and had been operating in the Polish market for years.
We also faced a technical challenge related to the existing cookie bot on the website, which effectively limited our audience lists and insight into data. In the case of a brand awareness channel like programmatic, solving this issue was particularly important.
Strategy
The main assumption of our programmatic strategy was to allocate the maximum budget for brand awareness campaigns, generating potentially the highest traffic to the website and raising awareness and recognition of the brand. We launched:
- Seasonal campaigns – promotions for the beginning of the spring season, offering a gift for those who purchased the client’s product (not only in their online store).
- Display campaigns – based on both Google audience lists and 1st party data and machine learning from Google Analytics 360, considering not only click events but also view events.
- Masthead – campaigns to build reach on YouTube’s main page, ordered and set up directly from the Display & Video 360 panel.
- Video campaigns – on YouTube, based on remarketing lists from Masthead campaigns, GA360 data, and Google audience lists, aimed at strengthening brand recognition.
- Product campaigns – dynamic remarketing based on a feed from Google Studio, using remarketing lists from branding activities.
- Private Deals – video campaigns on Spotify.
Project work organization
We wanted to start our activities as quickly as possible. Therefore, immediately after the decision to start marketing activities, we began working with all the involved departments on the client’s side (regional managers in Europe and the analytics department in the USA). To ensure maximum control and transparency, we immediately agreed on a schedule of joint meetings.
We summarized the situation and collected signals about offline external distribution on weekly video calls with the client. Additionally, we planned and executed all work on a separate Asana, and the current communication was conducted with the client on Microsoft Teams, the client’s default communication tool.
Implementation
The first few months were not the easiest, as compared to established foreign markets, Poland had much worse results, especially e-commerce results across all channels, not just DV360. The client, having worked with us for years, knew that activating a new market is a process that does not happen overnight. They were aware that each market has its own rules and dynamics.
In the first months, we focused on collecting and analyzing data and researching competitive advantages. We looked for the best sources of traffic, locating our target group, and building brand recognition among them.
After the first two months, branding activities began to bring satisfactory results, also in the online store.
Channels like Google and Facebook Ads benefited the most, but most of the traffic came from DV360 activities.
After the first few months, the problem became the growing bounce rate and the decreasing session rate after the click, which is normal for any new market in programmatic activities. We managed to mitigate it thanks to better-targeted audiences, which we combined with data collected in GA 360 (mainly view-through conversions, which are the most accurate data source in programmatic).
- Implementation of KPI division and optimization in prospecting and remarketing campaigns
By collecting data on website and online store users, we began to create separate strategies and segment users into fresh traffic and remarketing. We focused not only on budget allocation, but also collaborated with the client’s analytics department to create customized bidding algorithms.
- Implementation of custom bidding algorithms
We defined micro-conversions and assigned them appropriate values, calculated based on consumer behavior. We built a script to maximize the ROAS of users visiting the online store. In parallel, we also created a script aimed at minimizing the cost per session in prospecting activities.
Additional action
Brand Lift Surveys – monthly research on YouTube, aimed at analyzing the impact of ads on brand recognition and competitive advantage.
Having the appropriate budgets and video materials, we conducted monthly research available on YouTube. This is especially important at the beginning of branding activities when data is based not only on website traffic measurement tools but also on market research and competitive advantage. As a result, we were able to pinpoint the most effective videos, the recipient list with the best results, and the demographic group in which our brand has the highest recognition.
Results
57% reduction in session cost
116.08% increase in ROAS
93% reduction in conversion cost
Programmatic activities in Poland in 2021 lasted from February to August. During this period, we collected enough data to open the season in March 2022:
- Using the infrastructure built last year;
- With defined recipient lists;
- With appropriate materials, campaign types, and customized algorithms for determining prospecting and remarketing action rates.
As a result, we were able to define our KPIs and implement optimization for ROAS and session cost.
The results exceeded expectations – after the first three months of our programmatic campaigns, the KPIs were met, with a simultaneous budget reduction of 60% compared to the same period last year.
The effects are best illustrated by data from Google Analytics 360 in the e-commerce section under DV360.
The comparison of the first three months of the 2021/2022 season, i.e., March/May, showed:
- A 57% decrease in cost per session
- A 116.08% increase in ROAS
- A 93% decrease in conversion cost
All of this was mainly achieved through the introduction of custom rate-setting algorithms. During the year, especially off-season (September – February), we did not conduct any activities other than dynamic remarketing in DV360. We collected all insights during the 6-month of running campaigns in 2021. Not only the quantity but mainly the quality of data affects optimization possibilities and user segmentation, and consequently, business development.
Conclusions
What has entering a new market taught us?
- The digital world, especially in programmatic advertising, is based on collecting as much data as possible, providing advertising tools with the necessary resources for campaign optimization. In our case, utilizing data played a crucial role in setting up custom algorithms aimed at specific goals. This allowed for precise determination of the return on investment and highly effective scaling of activities, which was the client’s primary objective.
- Custom display and video algorithms often require several months of data collection for effective implementation. When entering a new market and focusing on brand awareness activities, we base our efforts on data concentrated at the top of the sales funnel. However, this doesn’t mean that this data is less important for the overall business. Without building a foundation and brand familiarity among the audience, it is difficult to create effective sales-closing activities.
- Automation of programmatic campaigns is the basis for actions on these platforms. By combining data from Google Analytics 360 on post-view actions, we were able to build a complete campaign structure, not relying solely on post-click analysis. As a result, we gained more data necessary to create the right strategy, which engaged multiple channels.
- It is essential not to be discouraged by higher expenditures on increasing brand awareness, even if they initially outweigh more performance-oriented activities. Developing an appropriate strategy tailored to the client’s distribution structure and delivering precise data in combination with technical knowledge makes achieving goals possible, though it often requires a significant amount of time and effort.
Testimonial
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