Admazing Campaign
by Joel Hawkins

Northwest Furniture Account

Background

Northwest Furniture (fictional company), a leading high-end furniture retailer, has contracted with the (non-existent) marketing company "Admazing" for paid search marketing services. NW Furniture has six locations in the Pacific NW: Portland, Bend, Eugene, Seattle, Tacoma and Olympia. They sell the following major brands: Aireloom, Baker, Councill, Guy Chaddock, Hancock and Moore and Henkel Harris. They sell basic furniture types: sofas, loveseats, dining room tables, chaises, bed frames, armoires, etc. Their competitors are The Furniture Company, Breydn Furniture, and Modern Furniture.

Contract Terms

Services

development and management of paid search campaigns in Google AdWords Term: 12 months

Paid search budget

$8,000/month

Sales territory

Oregon & Washington

1. General AdWords Account outline

All campaigns

Type:

Search Network

Locations

Oregon, Washington (focus on those within 5-10mi of a showroom)

Bid Strategy

Focus on clicks

Ad extensions

Location (to drive customers into stores), Sitelinks (to highlight product pages, brands), and Reviews (if existing)

Campaigns for furniture types

Campaigns for brands & designers

2. Budget allocation among campaigns

Budget based on the popularity of items or promotions in-store. If NW Furniture is selection-driven, then allocate more to the Furniture type campaigns or vice-versa.

Store sales records/reviews could guide the budget initially, perhaps start with a 60/40 split towards Furniture campaigns.

Furniture campaigns

( ($8000 * 60%) / 30.4 days ) / 3 campaigns = $52 per day per FT campaign

Brand campaigns

( ($8000 * 40% ) / 30.4 days ) / 6 campaigns = $17.50 per day per Brand campaign

Use daily CTR/Analytics data to adjust bids as needed.

3. Example ad group, keywords, and ads

The ads below are written for the "bed frames" ad group under the Bedroom campaign.

Below are possible keywords for the "bed frames" ad group.

1. bed frames
2. full bed frames
3. queen bed frames
4. king bed frames
5. high end bed frames
6. fine bed frames
7. designer bed frames
8. modern bed frames
9. contemporary bed frames
10. bedroom furniture
11. high end bedroom furniture
12. modern bedroom furniture
13. contemporary bedroom furniture
14. fine bedroom furniture
15. designer bedroom furniture
16. bedroom sets
17. designer bedroom sets
18. headboards
19. footboards
20. mattress frames
21. mattress foundations
22. bed foundations
23. local bed frames
24. local bedroom furniture
25. bed platforms
26. wooden bed frames
27. handmade bed frames

4. What about display and remarketing ads?

Given high-quality (read sexy) product photos/information and wish to promote their brands, they would benefit from display ads to reach potential customers. However, since NW Furniture is not seeking name-recognition, they may prefer to stick stick with Search Network ads to bring in ready-to-buy customers.

Remarketing ads could help bring back website visitors who didn’t convert: by using competitor's keywords, remarketing could entice those who began searching alternatives.

5. Google Analytics Strategy: key conversions and variables

Possible conversions: landing on a location info page (perhaps a "Portland Showroom" URL), clicking driving directions link, signing up for mailing list, or viewing other contact info.

Analytics: look at Bounce Rate and Click-Through-Rate. This would give us an idea of whether or not customers are finding the information they need, e.g. a list of brands or store locations.

Examine Average session duration and Pages per session to see if we should focus on improving keywords (low duration and pages per visit) or landing pages (high duration and pages per session).

6. Account structure breakdown: campaigns vs. ad groups & advertising priorities

Since NW Furniture is already a leading high-end furniture store, shift focus to selection of high-end brands and types of furniture available.

Separate campaigns for furniture types (e.g. bedroom, dining room) + each notable brand would capture two types of customers: those interested in one type of fine furniture + those that need to know where to buy a designer piece.

With both campaign approaches, we can bring in users who wish to research styles/brands and those who know what they’re looking for and ready to buy.

Ad groups then break down into specific furniture pieces for each. Example: Both the “Bedroom Furniture” and “Aireloom” campaigns would have specialized “bed frames” ad groups; the Aireloom campaign version would promote only Aireloom bed frames while the Bedroom campaign version would highlight all bed frames.

7. Ad strategy: points of emphasis

Main goal: bring customers into the store with ads that are relevant to the keywords. Lead web traffic to information about what furniture or services are available in store since NW Furniture does not deal online. Ad extensions such as Location or Reviews could boost web-to-store conversions.

By promoting the selection of furniture types and information about top-designers with content-rich pages, the user would then be compelled to visit the store and get the unique experience of feeling the product.

8. Proving success: looking at data & potential points of failure

Examine AdWords and Analytics data! See what users are doing after they click on your ads. Analyze CTR for each ad, consider altering or eliminating low-performing ads (see part 11).

One difficulty is that web-to-store conversions are hard to track, and NW Furniture relies on brick-and-mortar sales. Increased web traffic is great, but it may be difficult to tell if that translates into more foot traffic.

9. Excel Ad Report

11. Daily, weekly, and monthly maintenance

Daily

• Check budget limits at the campaign level to make sure we’re not overspending
• Adjust bids for low-performing keywords, check bounce rates and lower bids or pause if necessary

Weekly

• Review ads – identify which ad versions have the best CTR and Cost-per-conversion
• Optimize keywords – research ideas for negative keywords, or keywords to pause that aren’t generating clicks
• Examine Impression share – ensure we aren’t losing impressions due to our budget settings
• Test new landing pages

Monthly

• Create reports for Keywords and Ads to monitor success, catch anything we missed in the daily/weekly analysis