Given the volume of global sports apparel brands flooding the market with product innovation and new releases, the need for specialist PPC agency support is paramount to brands that want to be successful and drive sales.
But whilst the industry continues to grow and more cash is injected into the industry, new competitors will continue to flock to the space hoping to capitalise on a booming market.
So the question is, what can new emerging brands and household brands do to keep the competition at bay and continue to grow audience size and drive ROI throughout the year.
With this in mind, we take a look at how working with a PPC agency can help to drive sales whilst continuing to grow audience size throughout the year for brands and ultimately keep competitors at bay.
Building a Paid Search Strategy
Pick your Focus Themes – We advise working closely with your agency and merchandise team to align on what to push and when. What is the next collection being launched? Build out a campaign in advance of this to build an audience to target.
Peaks outside of Christmas – Whilst Black Friday and Christmas period are usually lucrative, there are plenty of opportunities throughout the year. Depending on your global coverage, seasonal events like Ramadan, Easter, Independence Day offer in-market users looking for a new addition to their wardrobe – these are often less saturated in advert results too.
Product Launches – New shiny products will often catch users eyes and can help create compelling and fresh advert copy. Definitely a time to be aggressive and broadcast this to potential new customers – don’t forget lapsed and returning customers either though!
Key Competitors/Wholesale Partner Activity – This is a time where you should consider pulling back spend. If you know your value proposition is weaker than your competition, save your budget for when you can compete, or better yet surpass competitor USP’s.
Judging Success – What should good performance look like?
Audience Size – The easiest and most tangible form of analysis – how many people have clicked on your advert and engaged enough to form part of your audience segmentation? Be sure to archive reports so you can check back on progress over longer timeframes.
Click-through Rate (CTR%) – A great way to see how users are responding to your advert copy. A low CTR% does not mean performance is bad; broader searches e.g. ‘trainers will always have a lower CTR% than a more qualified one where competition is lower e.g ‘men’s white running trainers’.
Average Session Duration – The job isn’t done once the user is on the landing page, average time per session is an important metric in judging whether the user is suited to the Brand and products displayed. Consider combining all users sessions together into a ‘total time on site metric’ – 3 hours of total time on a landing page is a nice statistic to share.
Impression Share – A bit more complex, but useful nonetheless. Using Google’s Auction Insight functionality, you can see how often you are showing relative to search traffic. For example, a 40% impression share states that 4 in 10 times your advert is showing when the given keyword is searched.
Reasons for a low impression share are usually budget-related, but can also be due to a low relevancy, in which case it’s time for an ad copy change.
Annual Review – Bringing the above together in an annual review helps display long-term success, as well as opportunities for growth. Whilst audience size can be seen straight away, KPI’s such as revenue and Brand search uplift are more long term, but important metric to consider.
Spend now to avoid spending later
With audience functionalities allowing for year-long harvesting of search intent, the value for money for audience building is in the earlier months of the year. Simply put, spending early in the year means less spend is needed in the competitive months for the same outcome.
Analysis can be difficult and time-consuming, but it’s not about finding all the answers every time. Focusing on improving one or two metrics for the next campaign cycle leads to incremental growth, and as processes become familiar through teams, this will scale, and product launches and audience builds will become seamless and second nature over time.
If you are an apparel brand looking for advice on your PPC strategy. Get in touch today to discuss further.