EPIC Museum is one of Dublin’s most treasured tourist attractions. Located within the CHQ building, its exhibits explore what drove 10 million people to leave Ireland and the impact this move had on the world. During our time working with EPIC, our team has created and implemented strategic PPC, SEO, Social and Digital PR campaigns.
The VROOM Digital PPC team began working with EPIC Museum in February 2019 with the aim of improving their Google Ads strategy and in turn, increasing their online revenue.
EPIC had set ambitious targets with the goal of increasing online revenue by 100%, Year on Year.
The VROOM team got to work analysing the existing strategy, engaging in an in-depth audit of the museum’s existing Google AdWords campaign, and worked on creating a new strategy in order to rebuild EPIC’s Google Ads account.
This campaign then went on to win us two awards at the DMAS. Silver for Best in Big Data & Analytics and Bronze for Best Search!
The primary challenge our team faced was budget. EPIC provided us with the same budget as the previous year, and with this, the goal was to increase online revenue by 100%.
Our Objective:
To identify top-performing brand and non-brand keywords, and create a funnel to re-engage and convert these users at a later stage through Display Remarketing and RLSA (remarketing lists for search ads).
Target 1: Brand Keywords
Through Google Search, we identified that branded keywords were responsible for 97% of EPIC’s online revenue in 2018, though accounted for only 20% of the total Search Campaign ad spend.
We also noticed that competitors and resellers were bidding aggressively on EPIC brand keywords, resulting in a high volume of impressions being lost due to rank. This was bringing total impression shares for top-performing keywords at only 51%.
Target 2: Non-Brand Keywords
We then analysed non-branded keywords and could see that they accounted for 80% of Google Search ad spend, whilst only generating 3% of total Revenue.
To get a full representation of performance we looked at “All Conversions” taking into account user actions such as “Directions”, “Phone Calls” and “Book Now” button clicks. We also looked at ad copy, landing pages, demographics and locations.
In order to meet our objectives, VROOM analysed the following areas of EPIC’s Google Ads campaign: Search, Display, Gmail & Video
Step 1: Our first step in helping EPIC Museum reach their performance targets was to rebuild their Google Search Campaigns so budget could be allocated towards best performing campaigns & keywords. We used a granular approach to segment brand and non-brand campaigns that would allow us to adjust budget and location targeting, depending on performance.
Step 2: We took a similar approach throughout the build, and segmented all keywords and match types into separate ad groups, allowing us to match our ad copy to user search queries leading to better CTR’s & Conversion rates.
Step 3: We then moved to the Display Network and built new campaigns using improved audience targeting such as improved remarketing lists, machine learning using Similar Audiences and In-Market Segments. These Audiences were again segmented into different campaigns allowing us to allocate budget towards the best performing audiences.
Step 4: Our team also worked closely with EPIC to create new campaigns for events such as corporate venues and Santa’s grotto to help boost sales during off-peak seasons.
Optimization Tactics:
To maximise our impression share for top revenue keywords, we increased bids making sure we were getting close to 100%.
For non-brand keywords, our main goal was to look for quality signals based on the action a user took on the website. We then captured these audiences in a remarketing list and used it for search & display to capitalize on engagement.
Ad Copy & Landing Pages:
We identified ad copy that had an excellent Click-Through Rate (Over 20% CTR) however the conversion rate was very low. We noticed the landing page was for “Top 10 things to do in Dublin” despite the landing page being very relevant to search queries it lacked focus on EPIC Museum and was costing significant Ad spend. We updated all copy to focus on booking tickets for the museum and updated the landing pages so users could review the benefits of visiting the museum with an option to book online.
We used the display network for driving a high volume of traffic and captured these users into remarketing lists so that we could move them down the funnel and towards a sale using video, display, and finally search.
Google Ads Revenue Increase
Online Revenue Increase
This was achieved across all sources.
Increase in website sessions
Average session duration increase
Budget increase
These results were achieved with only a 3.2% increase in the EPIC budget.
Despite very ambitious targets and no increase in budget, the VROOM Digital team exceeded expectations and increased Google Ads Revenue with a 532.31% Year on Year growth.
This growth was the main driver behind a total 148.77% increase in overall online revenue taking into account all channels mainly organic and direct sources which Google Ads assisted conversions played a large contribution.
This resulted in a large increase in both organic & direct revenue. Total increase in assisted revenue value came in at 1,192.54% YoY.
E-commerce Google Ads Growth Overview:
Ad Copy Engagement (CTR):
By selectively decreasing bids on certain campaigns we were also able to increase overall traffic volume within the same budget as 2018.
Total Ad Spend: +3.53% Increase
Digital Media Awards Won:
When you visit any web site, it may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. Control your personal Cookie Services here.
