Travel Industry | Client A3 ~ PPC & Data Science

Saskatchewan Travel Industry

Client A3 in the travel industry wanted us to test the hypothesis that their investment in brand terms could be spent more adequately elsewhere.

Our objective

Our client wanted to know if they could make their Pay Per Click (PPC) budget go further. The ELNCO Data Science team specializes in assisting quantify and understand the influence that strategic decisions can hold commercially. Our team was designated with measuring what the consequence would be if the brand stopped investing in Core Brand terms.

Collectively, the ELNCO PPC & Data Science team alongside the client hypothesized that if Core Brand Pay Per Click (PPC) terms were switched off, there would not be a drop in total search sales since the brand’s strong ranking in organic search would recompense for these lost clicks.

If this hypothesis proved valid, it would indicate that a significant amount of budget would be cleared up for investment in non-brand terms, aimed at shoppers earlier on in their path to purchase. In other concepts, we thought that numerous of the clicks for Core Brand terms were coming from consumers that may have contrarily gone on to convert anyway through the natural search results. The capability to reinvest this budget would allow our client to influence a larger number of buyers that may be more undecided in who they would purchase from as they searched for more generic terms.

What was achieved?

As an outcome of our examination, the decision was taken to cease Core Brand terms, with the teams trusting that the budget could be spent more adequately elsewhere. Through this savvy re-investment, ELNCO was then capable of producing significant growth in non-brand areas, including a 120% YoY revenue boost in a well performing non-brand category with a 76% YoY budget increase subsidized entirely by cost savings.

In aid, this produced a significant increase in incremental search revenue as the reinvestment of budget led to SEO and PPC operating more efficiently together.

Summary Results

ELNCO presented the information required for a client to make a large scale business resolution with confidence and with the data to demonstrate that any risk involved was insignificant.

The budget gains from removing business investment in Core Brand terms permitted us to increase the spend on leading performing non-brand categories by 76% YoY, which in turn drove to a 120% YoY revenue increase.

Although in this case, we were studying the impact of a distinct customer in the travel industry. Excluding investment from bidding on Core Brand terms in PPC, the same strategy could be applied to afford authoritative answers to other questions, such as how valuable Display activity is, or whether investment in mobile returns in sales across other devices.

PPC’s cannibalisation of SEO has been a ranting point for a long time in the digital marketing community, and this provides a tangible illustration of a particular scenario in which a definitive answer could be discovered.

Travel Industry ~ From The Client

“ELNCO produced a 120% YoY revenue boost in a high performing non-brand category with a 76% YoY budget increase supported entirely through cost savings.” Client A3 | Saskatchewan Travel Industry Client