Powerlogy

Initial situation

Black Friday was around the corner and Powerlogy needed someone for performance marketing and analytics. They needed to oversee the execution of PPC campaigns on Facebook and Google and ensure a smooth handover of the workload from the agency Performics. They also tried working with a freelancer, but the desired results did not arrive.

They were looking for a partner for a strong internal marketing team, someone who understood the product perfectly and was well-versed in retention marketing, creatives and had a vision for Powerlogy going forward.

The collaboration with Dexfinity was born following turbulent changes and just before the biggest season. As such, our team was facing a real challenge.

Changing agencies and campaign settings in the risky period before Black Friday sales and Christmas was a bold move on Powerlogy’s part. But on the other hand, when does marketing make the most money? In the top season, or during the down-time?

We were not afraid and we went straight to work.

What were we faced with after the data was made available?

The sales strategy was built on the combined strength of the Powerlogy brand and founder Dušan Plichta, a collaboration with influencers and strong retention marketing. Nevertheless, the company appeared to have reached a certain ceiling in online sales.

After thorough preparation, once we had completely analysed the entire Google Ads account and Google Analytics and had gone through an in-depth review with the client to see how things were, what was working, and most importantly, what he had ready for the busy season, we came up with a few suggestions.

We proposed an increase to the share of the performance marketing budget in the purchasing phase. If you are familiar with the SEE-THINK-DO-CARE model, this is the “DO”. We did this at the expense of campaigns that spread awareness (the Awareness or SEE phase). We could afford to take this step thanks to strong “brand” traffic via Google search (organic) and direct visits.

“Our main goal was to dramatically increase ROAS for Google Ads and at the same time increase turnover in absolute numbers. That’s why we optimised campaigns to build initial reach and awareness,  focusing not only on final sales, but also utilising assisted conversions (or micro-conversions), such as adding to a basket or signing up for a newsletter, or conversions based on the time a user spends on a particular page,” reveals Vladimíra Giláňová, Project Manager for Google Ads.

The data in Google Analytics was disappearing and incorrectly assigned conversions were complicating the analysis. Existing Google Ads campaigns were already full of errors in their basic setup. At first glance, the Powerlogy product range was running a large variety of different campaigns in comparison to their sales (in our experience, far too large). However, many of these were without any measurable results.

“Splitting a Google Ads account into a multitude of campaigns was once seen as “best practice”. Until algorithms and machine learning entered advertising management, specialists had to granulate, or in other words divide the online store offer into as many small but meaningful units as possible. Sometimes to the level of a single campaign per each product. It was the only way to see what was working and what needed to be turned off.

But those days are long gone, and accounts that have not undergone this transformation are now suffering. Artificial intelligence needs the exact opposite. It requires large campaign units, where it can collect a lot of data about how the path from click to conversion works based on a large number of products. This makes it possible to display ads precisely where they is useful to people,” says Pavol Adamčák, marketing consultant on the project.

We saw huge potential in shopping campaigns (Google Shopping)

If we look at the period of the first season of Powerlogy in Dexfinity from 01/10-31/12/2021,

Google Shopping had a 29.24% share of the total turnover. The comparable period before that, when another agency had it (July 1st, 2021 – Sep 30th, 2021), the share of total turnover was only 21.58%.

Why does it make sense to look at % share of turnover?

Vladka Giláňová, the specialist responsible for Google Ads on this project, explains:

“Percentage share of turnover can filter out the impact of the season. It is irrelevant whether it is summer or Christmas. Although G shopping turnover may vary in absolute terms in the off-season, its percentage should remain stable. That’s assuming no significant changes to campaign settings are made, which can both improve and negatively affect the overall performance.

I also compared the data year-on-year, as these three months are the biggest season for Powerlogy (Black Friday, Christmas, St. Nicholas Day), and the difference here was really extreme. Just for the record, G shopping was introduced to the market back in 2020. And therefore, in my projects, which are well set up, I don’t see a sharp increase in the share of G shopping in the turnover. That is why I attribute it to the campaign setup.

Nor do I know of any other circumstances that would cause G shopping to be completely dysfunctional in 2020. And even if we look at the % share year on year from “01/10/2020 – 31/12/2020″, back then G shopping only had an 8.6% share of turnover.”

Where was the stumbling block?

“Until we came on board, the entire account was running more or less on a “brand” campaign, which was generating “76.65%” of the Google Ads turnover. In the previous reference period, it had generated “65.91%”.

When we were handed the campaigns, we immediately had to literally “blow up” the conversion measurement on the Homepage.

But even with temporarily non-functioning tracking and “redirects” to the Homepage page and other stock pages, we had a 40.74% increase in revenue for this period (Oct 1 – Dec 31, 2021) in “non-brand” campaigns compared to the previous period (Jul 1, 2021 – Sep 30, 2021). Year-on-year growth was +110.49%,” adds Vladka Gilaňová.

The first challenges and their resolution

We were pressed for time. The main season was coming. The work was piling up and we quickly realized that we needed to set up flawlessly functioning internal communications. After a few misunderstandings, we created a separate e-mail channel for communication between Powerlogy’s internal marketing team and Dexfinity’s team of specialists.

Top tip: For faster and direct communication of important matters, we use “groups in G apps”. This way the client can quickly send important info to the entire Dexfinity team.