Using Google's enhanced campaigns, Miller's Bakery in New Jersey was able to manage bids across devices, locations, and times of day. This more targeted approach led to a significant increase in both online and store traffic, with in-store sales growing by as much as 100% during peak hours. The best part? It's advertising budget didn't budge.
Case study summary
• Bakery wanted to bring more customers in-store
• Upgraded to AdWords enhanced campaigns
• Adjusted location bids for nearby, local and mobile searchers
• Used mobile-specifc ads
• Site visits rose 10 - 20% with local clicks up by 20 - 35%
The solution
Miller’s Bakery went online with its website in January 2011, and started using Google AdWords just one month later. Situated across the Hudson River from New York City, both bakery locations are in busy commuter towns that have a constant stream of new residents. Dwight Miller, who runs the bakery’s online advertising program, signed up for AdWords to raise awareness of the bakeries in these towns and to drive more customers into the stores. Miller knew AdWords would help him target customers who were new to the area, as well as those who might be passing through on their commutes.
Dave and Dwight Miller traditionally take most of their orders either over the phone or face-to-face in-store, so they made sure to include both location and contact information in their AdWords ads. They also created ads with “Get Directions” links and click-to-call functionality when they added mobile ads to the marketing mix in June 2011. “Our customers interact with our business using multiple screens,” notes Dwight Miller. “They’ll look us up on their phones when they’re out on their lunch break. Then they’ll head back to the office and research cake ideas on their work computers. After work, they come into the bakery with photos of cake designs on their phone. If we didn’t advertise on both desktop and mobile, we’d miss out on a lot of customer touch points.”
Enhanced campaigns
Dwight Miller likes to stay up-to-date with the latest AdWords releases, so he upgraded to enhanced campaigns in April 2013. Enhanced campaigns are designed for today’s multi-screen world, offering the ability to manage bids across devices, locations, and times of day, all from a single campaign.
Miller used the upgrade center in AdWords to merge the bakery’s mobile and desktop campaigns into a single enhanced campaign. He quickly realized the benefits saying, “Enhanced campaigns are a lot easier, simpler, and more efficient. It makes sense because people are searching on their phones, tablets, and computers, and now you can reach them all with one campaign.”
Dwight Miller took advantage of enhanced campaigns’ device, location, and time-specific features to hone the reach of his ads. For example, he uses location bid adjustments in combination with location extensions to increase bids by 50% for customers searching from within a 2 mile radius of either bakery location. He also increases bids by 25% for customers searching from anywhere in Cliffside Park or Tenafly, the towns where the bakeries are located.
Since much of the bakery’s business is driven by phone calls, Dwight set his device bid adjustment so he could bid 25% more for customers searching on mobile phones. He also uses new enhanced campaign features to show slightly different versions of the bakery’s ads to customers searching on mobile. Mobile customers see a click-to-call button, a call extension, which allows them to easily take action — whether it’s placing an order or asking for more information.
Dwight took advantage of enhanced campaign features to schedule his extensions. In the case of call extensions, Dwight Miller enables the call button between the hours of 4 a.m. and 9 p.m., when he and Dave can to respond to customer calls. After hours, the call button is removed and the ad instead directs searchers to a website contact form. The bakery can show the right ad to the right user at the right time.
The results
Within a few weeks of the upgrade to enhanced campaigns, the results were clear. Overall website visits were up by 10-20%, and conversions — which measure something the business considers valuable, like a call or an order — increased by as much as 100 percent during peak midday ordering hours.
Increasing bids on local searches also improved results, and local clicks went up by 20-35%. “With a limited budget, it's important for us to concentrate our investment on searches occurring close to our bakery locations. We spent 50-65 % more in our target cities after turning on the location bid adjustment feature without raising our overall budget,” Dwight Miller notes.
