470%
470%
Increase in sales during christmas 2020 period compared to year previous
300%
Increase in roas in google ads
500%
Average roas from social media ads
64%
of all online sales generated from paid advertising platforms
Their story
Tierney & Co. is an Irish based gift shop with two brick and mortar stores in Dublin as well as a full-scale online e-commerce shop which ships items throughout Ireland. Tierney’s initially approached Everbold during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic to assist in growing their online business due to the uncertainty of their storefront remaining open. While they had been running an online store for numerous years, it had not previously been a priority to the business, and with the global pandemic it quickly became their main source of revenue. While small budgets for advertising had previously been put into place, a full scale developed strategy had not been fully initiated. The team at Everbold would work to change this in the coming months and work to increase Tierney & Co’s digital footprint and grow their online customer base.
Audience and business analysis
Everbold began by reviewing all current ad accounts which were focused on Google Ads and Facebook Advertising. A thorough crawl of the accounts was performed by our team where we focused on the set up, display, product offering and audience targeting of the ad accounts. By combing through the current accounts, we could begin to identify areas for improvement to increase sales through to the e-commerce platform.
When performing our analysis, we also had to consider the current economic climate and the potentially volatile market during the latter months of 2020 which saw brick and mortar stores repeatedly opening and closing their doors, click and collect being suspended and reinstated, and online shopping becoming a prevalent way people in Ireland shopped even if they were previously unengaged with online shopping. This provided us with a challenge as the market proved it difficult to forecast campaigns in the future with the frequently changing states of lockdown.
By determining all aspects of the current market, business trends, audience and current marketing tactics this provided Everbold with the tools to create a strategy designed around growing Tierney & Co’s online presence and increasing their ROI.
Strategy Development
Once we had the opportunity to review the Google and Facebook advertising accounts, we noted that while ads were up and running on both platforms, they were utilising a data source which featured old stock. This meant that some items were out of date which caused the ads to display items that may have changed price or be no longer available thus reducing the opportunity for the e-commerce platform to generate sales. Everbold strategised to implement a third-party API which allowed us to connect a live feed to both Google Shopping and Facebook E-commerce accounts which meant that all products were consistently up to date.
An overall strategy was developed to utilise both Google ads and Facebook ads to promote Tierney’s products, coupled with email campaigns for their nearly 20,000-person customer base. While our main budgetary focus would be on Google shopping, we felt that Facebook was a great platform for smaller purchases, overall brand recognition and remarketing campaigns with email being the perfect way to promote products and continue to engage with customers.
Google Ads
With Google Ads we determined that with the large number of inventory that Tierney & Co. held, Google shopping and text ads would be our main and most effective platform.
Shopping ads were developed by creating a data feed product and we placed a substantial budget behind these to increase the amount of impressions and clicks through to specific items on the site. We found this to be a successful tactic which quickly resulted in the shop seeing unprecedented sales in the first month.
In conjunction with Google ads, we strategized to run several text ads utilising brand and occasion specific keywords. We noted in our audience analysis that a large amount of traffic came from those who were searching for gifts based on a holiday or were searching for a specific brand that Tierney & Co. carried. By focusing part of our budget on these keyword specific campaigns this allowed us to increase our opportunities for conversion and capture sales from users who were utilising high level search terms.
Search Engine Optimisation
With Google ads being in the forefront of our campaign, we also felt that as Tierney & Co. already had a strong presence on social media, that advertising on Facebook and Instagram would provide us with an opportunity to generate more sales as well as increase brand recognition for the company. While this avenue had been lightly explored previously it had not been a paramount focus in their advertising strategy.
We began by running a series of carousel campaigns featuring lower budget items which allowed us to drive customers to the website who had an interest in specific products. We also ran a series of generalised traffic campaigns which lead to the websites home page to increase the amount of traffic from social media to the website as well as increase brand awareness.
We knew that to retarget previous customers and have them return to the online store that enticing them with promotions through email would be key to our return-customer strategy. Everbold developed an email content calendar which was designed around sales, promotions, and holidays throughout the year. With this calendar we could design and perfectly time campaigns to reach the Tierney & Co. customer base with specific products which were relevant to the season and were timed ideally throughout the week to convert the most users.
We ensured that our email campaigns were captivating from both a design and content perspective and featured products which were popular in the online store and theme appropriate to entice customers to visit the shop and purchase. Discounts and promotions were also featured to provide customers with a reason to shop.
Monitoring
Throughout the initial weeks and months of our engagement, monitoring was at the forefront of our strategy. As our engagement began in September, we knew that the Christmas season was the busiest time of year for Tierney & Co, and due to the volatile market from the COVID-19 pandemic, this was a completely unique holiday season for Tierney & Co. and would be unlike what they had experienced before.
As our campaigns launched, we focused on how customers interacted with our ads and behaved on site as we approached December. The focus on customer interaction allowed us to garner some small insight into user behaviour and how we could leverage our ad strategy to increase the number of sales through the website over the holiday period.
While the pandemic caused uncertainty for all businesses and Everbold, nor anyone else could predict what would occur we ensured that our ongoing monitoring of campaigns, user behaviour and website interactions would provide us with the tools to increase conversions and continue to drive business through the Tierney & Co. Website.
Ongoing Relationship
We have been proud to continue our work with Tierney & Co. by consistently working to develop new strategies and campaigns to grow their business and increase their ROI, coming up with new and creative ways to promote their business and increase their digital footprint throughout the online space. While online shopping had never been the “bread and butter” of their business, throughout the pandemic it has become essential to continuing their operations throughout numerous lockdowns in Ireland.
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