About Client and Campaign Goal

In the summer of 2022, a regular client, Bayadera Group, one of the largest alcohol holdings in Europe producing and importing alcoholic beverages, approached us.

The client needed a campaign for Jägermeister, a German liqueur brand. Typically, we worked on Jägermeister’s media advertising – developing awareness so that retail or bar customers recognized and chose this beverage. But in 2022, after the start of a full-scale invasion, media campaigns for the brand were irrelevant.

This time, the client wanted to focus on a classic performance approach, where advertising leads the user directly to conversion on the newly created Bayadera online store website. Our goal was, firstly, to increase online sales by 300%. And secondly, we had to find ways to optimize existing campaigns.

Our Approach

Цільова аудиторія кампанії була широка — ми таргетували оголошення на всіх мешканців України у віці 18-39 років (крім жителів окупованих територій).

Tools

At the beginning of our work, we analyzed the Google Ads account, and created a campaign strategy and media plan. In this campaign, we used:

• Search advertising in Google Ads,
• Performance Max format,
• Banner advertising on Facebook and Instagram.

And for greater effectiveness of search advertising, we integrated Search Ads 360.

Conditions

The campaign lasted for six months, from August to December 2022. Many external factors influenced its course, to which we had to adjust.

Since February 2022, some regions imposed restrictions on the sale of alcohol in offline establishments. People couldn’t simply go to the store at night, so they approached alcohol purchases more planned, which contributed to online purchases.

On the other hand, during the campaign period, there were shelling and blackouts in the winter of 2022, which affected all spheres of life, including marketing. People across the country were left without communication and light, saving the charge of laptops and phones, so they used the internet less. Based on this client’s example, we saw traffic drops during power outages. The number of users and the target audience during periods of power restoration decreased by 35-50%, impacting audience acquisition.

Such a trend was not unique to this campaign; we observed similar changes across all our advertisers 

Additionally, we had to consider general regulations for promoting alcohol, legal restrictions imposed by the law, and specific advertising systems. Throughout the campaign, we continuously optimized and adjusted it to the surrounding conditions.

Optimisation

Throughout the campaign period, we tested various strategies in Google Ads and additionally launched advertising on Facebook. We focused on hot audiences: Jägermeister enthusiasts and catalogs to increase sales. Later on, we tested other audiences, segmented users by operating system (Android and iOS), added remarketing and lookalike audiences, and in December, added a New Year segment to stimulate seasonal sales.

The core of our performance activities were campaigns in Performance Max and Search Ads 360. To increase sales efficiency and ROAS, we divided the Performance Max campaign into one with feeds and one without feeds. The feed campaign worked similarly to Smart Shopping and brought the majority of conversions and revenue. In the Performance Max campaign without a feed, we tested different audience signals, occasionally replaced creatives to enhance effectiveness, and refreshed ads. It’s worth noting that PM is a “smart” campaign, where the algorithm needs time to learn. Therefore, our optimisation of these campaigns had to be precise to avoid disrupting automated systems.

Firstly, we worked with keywords, segmented and expanded negative keywords, and conducted cross-minus to avoid internal campaign competition. Since we promoted alcoholic products, we faced the challenge of collecting remarketing audiences in Google Ads. Therefore, we used custom intent and search query audiences. We also added audiences of interested users based on Google Analytics data.

We only used remarketing on Facebook. Furthermore, we tested various remarketing audiences: based on cart additions, purchases, product views, etc. We also experimented with user retention periods. Additionally, the main focus in remarketing was on users with “abandoned” carts.

We also addressed the issue of “creative burnout”. Throughout the six-month campaign, we regularly refreshed videos and banners to better capture viewers’ attention.

Results

The main KPI of the campaign was sales, and this indicator increased significantly during the campaign. Compared to the first month of the campaign, the number of Add to Cart conversions in December increased by 1791%, and Purchases increased by 2650%. Such rapid growth was due not only to our expertise but also to the “youthfulness” of the store. We cannot provide quantitative sales data; instead, we will describe the campaign’s success in metrics related to sales.

For example, throughout the use of Search Ads 360, there is a positive trend in the number of Add to Cart conversions month-over-month. Specifically, in November, the number of conversions increased by 88.2% compared to August-September. The cost per action for Add to Cart decreased by 61.6%, and the CPA for Purchase conversions decreased by 54.5%.

In December, the effectiveness of CR and CPA significantly improved compared to August. Specifically, the CPA for Purchase conversions decreased by 79%. In December, we achieved an average ROAS higher than 100%, and for associated conversions, it reached 137%. Additionally, we noticed the highest growth in CR and revenue in December. Compared to August, CR increased by 81%, and ROAS almost tripled.

It was a big project, and we are glad that our permanent contractor for awareness advertising did a good job with performance advertising. The proposed tools turned out to be quite effective, especially Search Ads 360, which exceeded any of our expectations from search advertising. We continue to use and improve the approaches developed during the campaign and continue to work with newage. on this and other projects.

Oleksandr Perera, Brand Manager of Jägermeister Ukraine