Kristina Strimaite and Hüseyin Oğrak work at the Lithuanian web hosting company Hostinger. Strimaite is the chief marketing officer, responsible for innovative marketing strategy and communication. Oğrak is head of pay-per-click (PPC), with expertise in digital and search engine marketing.
For nearly a decade, our marketing strategy at Hostinger focused on reaching high-intent, conversion-ready audiences, which helped us achieve strong short-term results. However, over time we reached the ceiling of this approach. While conversions remained strong, we began to struggle with sustaining growth in markets where our brand was still relatively unknown.
This is when we realised that our focus on people close to making a purchase meant we were missing potential customers who weren't actively searching for web hosting today but might be tomorrow. The "aha" moment came when we analysed our campaign data and saw that even small increases in brand familiarity significantly improved performance across all stages of the funnel.
The challenge wasn't just about reaching new people. Over the years, Hostinger had evolved from a single-product company into a suite of seven tools, all designed to help people succeed online. Consequently, our narrow, product-specific campaigns were creating a fragmented picture of our brand. We needed to take a step back and unite all our products under a single, powerful brand promise: making website building simple and intuitive.
Shifting from offers to showing value
Our first major test came with the New Year. It’s a time when people are inspired to start new projects, whether it’s a new fitness routine or a new online business. We knew people wouldn't be searching for “best web hosting” on January 1, but they might be looking for inspiration on how to turn their ideas into reality. This was the perfect moment for an upper-funnel play.
We developed a full-funnel strategy on YouTube for seven key markets: the U.S., Spain, France, the U.K., Mexico, Colombia, and India. We identified these countries as high-impact opportunities based on three key factors: audience size, digital maturity, and alignment with our product’s value proposition.
Our approach was twofold. In mature markets, like the U.S. where competition is high, our goal was brand recognition — making sure Hostinger stood out. In developing markets, like Mexico, our focus was also educational, building awareness not just for our brand, but for the very idea of online success.
What our homepage initially looked like:
And this is what it looked like once we shifted focus to that messaging of “online success”:
Redefining KPIs for long-term brand impact
Initially, our KPIs focused on billings and profitability, which suited our lower-funnel approach. However, as we shifted toward brand awareness, we redefined our measurement framework.
We began prioritising Brand Lift and Search Lift studies, along with view-through conversions, unique reach, impressions, and view counts — metrics that better reflected long-term brand impact rather than immediate conversions.
Using a combination of Video reach campaigns for broad awareness and Video view campaigns for better consideration, we moved away from our traditional, feature-heavy ads.
Instead of focusing on technical details, we told stories that highlighted the value we provide. We highlighted to customers how quickly they could launch a website and showcase their business and activities.
Adapting to cultural preferences
One of the biggest discoveries we made is that what works in one market doesn’t necessarily work in another. True localisation goes beyond translation. For example, through testing, we learnt that ads in India perform better when we use a secondary colour palette with bright yellows and greens, rather than our typical corporate purple.
This upper-funnel investment didn't just build brand awareness in isolation; it had a direct impact on our performance campaigns. We saw a significant increase in view-through conversions — people who saw our brand ad, didn’t click, but later came to our site to become customers.
Across all markets, we observed strong and consistent results: brand awareness activities directly strengthened both upper- and lower-funnel outcomes. Overall, we recorded 39% sales growth year-on-year.
Brand Lift studies showed increased product consideration, including a 16% rise in the U.S. and 10% rise in Spain. Search Lift results further confirmed this success, showing higher search interest in the “Hostinger” term, with gains of 251% in the U.K. and 86% in France.
Additionally, our unique reach became up to twice as cost-efficient while maintaining performance.
Scaling success and hyper-localised creatives
Building on this success, we have already started preparing for Black Friday, scaling VVC and VRC campaigns ahead of the early Black Friday offers.
In line with our previous campaigns, we took cultural differences into account. For example, we switched the name of the campaign to “Blessed Friday” in Muslim countries.
For Black Friday and Cyber Monday, we plan to increase our investment across 17 regions around 4X compared to our first New Year sale campaign. We will continue to scale up investment and upper-funnel activities for the New Year sale to maintain visibility and growth.
We are also planning to expand into new and high-potential regions, focusing on the Middle East and North Africa, Southeast Asia, and developing African markets. These areas represent strong opportunities for growth due to their rapidly increasing digital adoption, growing e-commerce activity, and expanding online user base.
