Client:
Ecommerce Website in the Toys Industry
Situation:
Our client, an ecommerce website in the toys industry, was bidding on their branded terms using paid search text ads. However, there were no natural competitors running conquesting campaigns on these branded searches. From a holistic search perspective, this presented an opportunity to capture branded traffic organically and reallocate paid search spend towards more incremental activities.
Challenge:
Branded text ads often deliver a high return on ad spend (ROAS) for minimal investment. To convince our client to stop spending on branded text ads, we needed to demonstrate that this traffic could be captured through organic search (SEO) without negatively impacting total search traffic and revenue.
Solution:
In collaboration with the client’s paid media team, we proposed a test: pause branded text ads for one month and measure the impact on total branded search traffic and revenue. We compared post-test results to pre-test metrics to determine whether SEO alone could maintain total branded traffic and revenue.
Implementation:
The client’s paid media team paused all branded text ad spend for one month. We measured the impact by comparing branded SEO and paid search metrics before and after the test period.
Results:
The results of the test were immediate and positive. We observed a spike in SEO traffic and click-through rates with no negative impact on total search performance. In fact, significant improvements were seen across both SEO and paid performance metrics:
- Total Search (SEO + Paid) Revenue: Increased by 53%
- Paid Search ROAS: Increased by 94%
- Total Search (SEO + Paid) Orders: Increased by 83%
- Total Search (SEO + Paid) Clicks: Increased by 5%
- Total Search (SEO + Paid) CTR: Increased by 20%
- Paid Search Spend: Decreased by 20%
Conclusion:
This test successfully validated our hypothesis: branded text ads could be paused without harming search performance, resulting in upside for both SEO and paid search. This case was unique in that our client had no natural competitors bidding on their branded terms, allowing us to reallocate the budget effectively and improve overall search performance.
