Each project is unique with its special aspects in the settings that you should pay attention to. In the Mattino project, we are working with a site where e-commerce is not installed. At the beginning of our cooperation (May-July 2022), we worked with an installed e-commerce block on a web resource, and with a further change in the site platform to a self-written CMS, for technical reasons we were forced to abandon the use of the e-commerce report, so the transaction was installed static value. Also, as a result of implementing a self-written website platform, we are faced with a lack of automatic updating of the product feed from the website. When changing the assortment, the client must manually perform this action independently. Now, even with Static Value, the project produces significant results. However, e-commerce settings would allow the client to get even better results from advertising.
At the initial stage of the project (May-July 2022), we added the Transaction, Add to Cart, and Checkout metrics to the conversion indicator. As of August 2022, Google Ads accounts use Checkout with a static value as a conversion metric, and we leave bid adjustments to automated campaign strategies. Therefore, in the screenshots, we will focus specifically on the number of conversions.
Advertising is a powerful and effective tool for attracting targeted traffic. Contextual advertising allows you to quickly attract the attention of your target audience — those who are looking for certain products on the Internet and are ready to buy them. That is, contextual advertising helps businesses achieve the desired KPIs.
Paid advertising helps increase brand awareness, which is especially important for companies just entering the market and still unknown to the general consumer. Constantly being at the top of search results will help potential customers become better acquainted with products or services and remember the brand.
Flexible budgeting in contextual advertising allows you to set a budget that meets your business needs. You can start with a small budget and gradually increase it as you see positive results.
Paid advertising allows you to quickly adapt to changes in the market, seasonality, or business priorities.
Today we’ll look at a case of setting up contextual advertising for a clothing store with its production.
About the Сlient - a clothing store with its production in Ukraine
The Mattino online store entered the Ukrainian market in 2018 offering products for sleeping on the road. At the beginning of work, the company’s product range consisted of:
- face masks;
- neck pillows.
With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company decided to change the direction of its work and focused on developing and creating high-quality and comfortable clothing. Mattino's mission is to help people feel comfortable and confident in any environment. The company helps everyone express their individuality and style.
A significant advantage of our client is our clothing production, which allows us to quickly produce a large number of product items and satisfy increased consumer demand. The Client's product is clothing with mostly patriotic prints, and the demand for it is only growing.
Mattino company offers clients:
- oversized T-shirts;
- oversized sweatshirts;
- oversized sweatshirts;
- zip-up sweatshirts;
- long sleeves;
- women's bodysuits;
- bombers;
- vests;
- trousers;
- caps.
The owner of the company contacted ITForce in May 2022 with a request to set up and implement contextual advertising on the website.
2. Setting up Google Ads advertising
Before contacting ITForce, Mattino had not worked with advertising in Google Ads but had experience with targeted advertising on Facebook.
The Client set the goal of promotion to increase sales. Moreover, an important condition for promotion is the cost of conversion - it should not exceed 250-300 UAH. We set the initial advertising budget at UAH 30,000 per month, and with the development of campaigns in the account and scaling the effect of paid advertising, the budget gradually increased.
Preparatory work before launching advertising consists of two important stages:
- creating a Google Ads advertising account (for all types of campaigns);
- creating a Merchant Center account (for shopping campaigns).
The owner of Mattino already had a Google Analytics account installed on the website, so our task was to set up tracking goals in the account.
We agree with the Client on all keywords selected by the PPC specialist. The designer is responsible for creating advertising banners. We began preparing and launching advertising campaigns based on these initial data.
Advertising campaigns set up at the beginning of cooperation (May 2022):
- search engine for the entire range of the site;
- trading;
- remarketing.
All ads were launched in Russian in the Ukraine region with a 24-hour display schedule on mobile and desktops.
Examples of customized Mattino ads:
Fig. 1 – Examples of ads from Search, YouTube, and brand campaigns
A planned audit of advertising campaigns at the beginning of cooperation made it possible to formulate a list of works to be performed:
- expanding the list of negative keywords from non-target queries, disabling non-target queries;
- adding target queries to the list of keywords;
- adding keywords according to system recommendations;
- adding keys for search queries;
- adjusting keyword bids and budgets if necessary;
- disabling expensive keywords that do not bring conversions;
- checking extensions/getting new ones if necessary;
- disabling ineffective products in a shopping campaign;
- creating a copy of the product feed in the Merchant Center for the Performance Max campaign;
- cleaning remarketing sites;
- adding responsive ads;
- creation of a special segment based on queries.
Subsequently, subject to Google's requirements for launching a Performance Max campaign, namely the required number of transactions, we set up a PMax campaign with a separate product feed, as well as a search brand campaign.
Works on January 2023:
- creating an account in Google Analytics 4;
- connecting Google Analytics 4 to the Client’s website;
- setting up conversion tracking.
Next, the Client provided our team with a list of the most relevant competitors for him, from which we created a special audience segment used in audience signals for certain groups of PMax objects.
Fig. 2 – Allocation of a special segment for Performance Max campaign objects
During our cooperation, we tested the simultaneous launch of several Performance Max type campaigns, which showed that we get the best results when working with one PMax with a large budget.
Performance Max campaign optimization involves:
- adding new groups of objects with new audience signals;
- periodic suspension of less effective groups of objects;
- adjusting your bidding strategy.
Also in May 2023, the ITForce team conducted a test run of the Discovery campaign, and it did not bring the expected results, so the campaign was suspended within a month.
In June 2023, we set GA4 conversions as primary in the ad account.
Results of contextual advertising for the Mattino clothing store
The niche of tailoring and selling clothes is extremely competitive in Ukraine and is growing from year to year, offering consumers new manufacturers.
The main competitive advantage of our Client is own production, which allows us to quickly meet rising demand. The client’s goods are clothes with mostly patriotic prints, and during the Russian war in Ukraine, the demand for such goods only increased.
Our cooperation is established, the Client is open, listens to the advice of the PPC specialist and Project manager, and if necessary, the owner of Mattino is ready to make timely changes to the advertising campaigns.
Let's evaluate the effectiveness of our settings: whether ITForce achieved the KPIs that were defined by the client. And first, let's look at conversions for the entire period of cooperation: from May 2022 to October 2023. Since the transition to Google Analytics 4 took place in June 2023, only the Google Ads account will provide us with correct data. So, let's look at the total number of conversions for the entire period of cooperation.
Fig. 3 – Conversions May 2022-October 2023
The graph of the number of conversions over 18 months of working with the project is quite smooth and is increasing. We also see that growth began in May 2022 - precisely from the beginning of our cooperation. But it should be noted that for the first 2 months of work, we also took into account Add to Cart as a conversion, that is, the likelihood of a small error when calculating conversions.
As of October 2023, we have 4 working campaigns in our account.
Fig. 4 – Work of all AC for the period May 2022 – October 2023
Of all the advertising campaigns, the Performance Max campaign performed better - it has the highest number of interactions and the number of conversions.
- 9,791.98 – total number of conversions for all campaigns;
- 3.9% – conversion rate;
- 62.54 UAH – the cost of conversion in the account.
Moreover, the cost of conversion Performance Max 60.18 is approximately at the account level - 62.54 UAH, which is an indicator of the effectiveness of the configured campaigns.
Regarding data on Client traffic channels (information from GA4, January-October 2023):
Fig. 5 – Data on traffic channels for January-October 2023
We see that advertising channels, namely Paid Search, Paid Shopping, and Cross-network, together bring a significant number of conversions to the Client 16,567. And thus they occupy 2nd place in terms of the number of conversions in the account.
Compare the advertising period in October 2023 and October 2022:
Fig. 6 – Comparison of the work of the Republic of Kazakhstan for the period October 2023 and October 2022
- +4.26% to ad impressions;
- +77.90% to the number of conversions;
- +59.28% increase in conversion rate;
- -36.74% to the cost of conversion;
- +12.48% to advertising costs.
With an increase in ad spend of 12.48%, our client received 4.26% more ad impressions, but the number of conversions increased by 77.90% and the cost per conversion decreased by 36.74%. That is, all the work done and settings in the account brought tangible results - ads are shown to a more targeted audience, resulting in more conversions at a lower cost.
The Client's main KPI is increasing sales. Moreover, the owner of Mattino needs to set the cost of conversion no higher than 250-300 UAH. As of October 2023, the cost of conversion in the account is 64 UAH.
This is exactly the goal we were striving for - to increase the number of conversions and client income which is impossible without increasing advertising costs.
Plans for the following periods:
- analyzing and, if necessary, adjusting bidding strategies and campaign budgets;
- working with system recommendations to improve the account quality score;
- working with search queries: expanding the list of negative keywords based on non-target queries and adding new keywords based on targeted queries;
- pausing underperforming keywords, ad groups, and products in Shopping campaigns and campaigns as needed;
- adding new groups of objects to the Performance Max campaign if necessary;
- improving the quality of adaptive ads in search campaigns and Performance Max campaigns, if necessary;
- checking goods in the Merchant Center.
We continue to work with existing campaigns by optimizing them. There are also plans to implement and test the Demand Gen campaign, and we are currently working on this task.
