TradePoint, the trade only arm of B&Q, uses Google’s suite of audience products to expand reach, improve targeting and lower costs.
THE GOALS
Improving cost efficiencies by reducing ad wastage and refining targeting
Expanding reach to tradesmen to increase sales/revenue
THE APPROACH
Developed an audience-first strategy with 70% of search ads being driven by audience signals
Used Dynamic Search Ads (DSA) to expand reach by filling potential keyword gaps and serving bespoke ad copy to each user
THE RESULTS
52% increase in web sales conversion rate
37% decrease in cost per web sale
503% increase in average monthly revenue
191% ROI increase period over period
TradePoint is a trade only proposition selling all the products that tradesmen need at competitive prices, whose target audience includes builders, plumbers, decorators and electricians. As non-trade consumers are not eligible to make purchases from the company, effective targeting of ads is essential to avoid wasted marketing spend and customer frustration.
“Distinguishing tradesmen from consumers within search was a real challenge for us,” explains Lisa Wise, Customer & Marketing Manager at TradePoint. To address this issue, TradePoint turned to media agency MEC, who helped them establish a strategy that placed audience signals from their own customer data, along with audience insights from Google, at the heart of their search campaigns.
TradePoint’s audience-first strategy began with taking their own CRM data and uploading it into AdWords Customer Match, which enabled them to upweight bids on searches conducted by existing customers of the brand. In this way, the brand ensured optimal coverage of their existing customer base, before expanding their prospecting into additional audience groups. Next, the campaign turned to Remarketing Lists for Search Ads in order to increase bids for users who had previously engaged with the TradePoint website, adding a further layer of coverage. Building on these known audience segments, MEC then proposed using Similar Audiences for Search to identify potential trade customers based on their similarity to members of the top performing remarketing lists. Finally, demographic data was also used to target men aged between 25-34, who had traditionally been a high converting group. By taking a layered approach with their first-party data as a foundation, Tradepoint were able to intelligently target likely customers even when they’d had no prior interaction with the brand.
Beyond targeting, TradePoint also expanded their keyword lists to include product-specific phrases and terminology that were unlikely to be in the everyday vocabulary of non-trade customers. The ads themselves utilised Dynamic Search Ads to cover keyword gaps and generate additional incremental traffic, while serving bespoke copy to each user.
The Results
TradePoint’s key goal for this project was to add incremental sales while reducing marketing wastage, and in this respect the audience-first strategy was hugely successful. The site’s web sales conversion rate increased by 52%, while cost-per-sale decreased by 37%. In total, average monthly revenue for the website increased by 503%, leading to a 191% increase in ROI compared to an equivalent period before the move to audience-first targeting. “Our adoption of Google’s new audience products resulted in 70% of TradePoint’s PPC traffic being driven via audience signals, with 33% of sales coming from Customer Match,” says Alison Cook, Performance Director at MEC UK.
Reflecting on the results of the campaign, Lisa Wise is in no doubt as to the value of TradePoint and MEC’s approach. “Our sophisticated audience strategy meant we were able to reduce ad wastage by focusing only on potential customers. Then, despite having a small target audience, we were able to use Dynamic Search Ads to ensure we served them highly relevant ad copy.”
