Debenhams: Christmas Spectacular
Paid Search maximises impact of Debenhams pre-Christmas
promotion
As part of Debenhams' overall marketing strategy during
the crucial Christmas period, STEAK was tasked with increasing
revenue generated from paid search during the pre-Christmas
sale.
To complement the retailer's integrated search strategy;
revenue and ROAS targets were to be achieved without bidding on the
brand term "Debenhams" on exact match on Google.
Approach
The significant additional Christmas event budget (the
largest 8 day budget ever spent by Debenhams.com) presented both an
opportunity and a challenge:
- The opportunity was clear: to showcase how Steak's proven
PPC methodology generates impressive ROI despite intense
competition in a high-demand period.
- The challenge: to expand the AdWords campaigns to increase
Debenhams' reach whilst maintaining control.
Strategy
Aggressive account expansion that married the best of
human analysis and editorial with automation, putting STEAK's
experts' time where it would yield the best ROI for Debenhams and
using technology to do much of the updating for long-tail product
terms. Steak worked with Debenhams to deploy a technology solution
(the Ad Wire system, supplied by Ad Precision), which took the
website's product feed and, using rules created by STEAK,
automatically generated keywords and ad copy, with human quality
control at every stage of the process.
In preparation for peak trading, STEAK:
- Increased the number of paid search accounts by 93%
- Increased the number of AdWords campaigns by 1051%
- Grew the number of keywords by 365%
Results
Total revenue target was exceeded by 58%, at a ROAS that
was 45.7% above target.
"I'm really impressed with the results STEAK achieved at
this crucial time of year, smashing our revenue target whilst at
the same time almost doubling the return on investment. Paid Search
is a key part of our ongoing digital strategy, and continues to
outperform our expectations!"
Senior Search Marketing Manager, Debenhams
