When BookRenter launched in2007, the company’s main challenge was
that the concept was so new, students didn’t know to search for “text
books for rent”. By 2012, however, several deep-pocketed players entered
the market including Skyo and Amazon. The pioneer suddenly became the
underdog, which forced them to be more proactive and thoughtful about
their PPC efforts.
By this August, the new market reality was reflected in BookRenter’s
AdWords costs. Their average cost-per-click (CPC) was 20 percent higher
than last year, while average positions were 20 percent lower. The
keyword “rent textbooks” jumped from a pre-season average CPC of $1.83
to an August 15th peak of $5.63 — a 208% increase. Last year that same keyword maxed out around $2.80.
Still Boujon says, “We had a good season with paid search. Media was
more expensive due to competition, but we managed to keep costs down
thanks to innovation.”
Here are the key tactics Boujon’s team at BookRenter implemented to
work around skyrocketing CPCs without sacrificing volume during its peak
season:
1. Proactive Keyword Discovery: Boujon says, “We try to stay a
step ahead with keyword discovery because we don’t get the performance
we used to from head terms. We lost click share on head terms, but more
than made up for it with longtail keywords. It’s about trying to
anticipate what people will be searching for each season.”
For instance, his team bid on a set of keywords (and not all
long-tail) in a category that accounted for 30 percent of their paid
search volume. Their competitors were bidding on just 40 percent of
those keywords, so they were able to get more volume at a lower cost.
“There are plenty of angles to get people to your site,” he says of
testing tangential keywords that his target audience of students may be
searching for.
2. Start Retargeting Early: Students begin
searching for textbook deals in July, but conversion rates are low
because they aren’t ready to buy until class book lists are released in
August. Boujon says the company invested heavily in retargeting early in
the season to start building lists of browsers during the consideration
phase.
“If you’re running holiday campaigns, don’t wait until Black Friday
to start advertising and running remarketing campaigns,” advises Boujon.
“Consumers are looking for deals ahead of time.” This year, Boujon felt
Google’s retargeting capabilities had improved enough to rely on as
their primary retargeting vendor. By starting early and with refined
list segmentations, BookRenter spent 20 percent less this year than last
on retargeting, and saw conversions increase 1,400 percent from last
year.
3. Have A Plan For Mobile Even If The Conversions Aren’t There Yet:
BookRenter’s mobile traffic has increased from 10 percent of traffic in
August 2011 to 25 percent in January 2013, and 52 percent of email
opens now happen on mobile.
Like many merchants, however, BookRenter’s mobile conversion rates
are half of what they are on desktop. Boujon says he knows students are
finding BookRenter on their smartphones and completing purchases on
desktop. He adds, “I support the theory that conversion rates on mobile
will go up with the better lifetime available on the devices,” states
Boujon. “If it is 3pm, you have one bar left and need to organize your
night out with friends, you are not going to start shopping on your
mobile.”
BookRenter’s goal this season was to apply tactics that included
mobile optimized landing pages that they had tested in January to see
how high they could get mobile conversion rates with fairly basic
campaigns and landing page implementation. “The optimizations triggered a
20 percent increase in conversion but we are still far from desktop
experience.” However, he says, “Mobile is relatively cheap, so it’s
still good for branding” even if you can’t clearly attribute
conversions. BookRenter is planning to continue in its mobile site and
testing ways to reduce the friction on mobile devices to increase
conversion rates.
4. Identify Cheap Sources For Branding: In addition
to using mobile for branding efforts, this season BookRenter ran
pre-roll ads on YouTube. “We’re still analyzing the impact on behaviors,
but it was a low-cost way to get eyeballs and an efficient way to get
branding,” says Boujon. As with retargeting, he recommends starting
video ads early. “There are so many competitors; we think this helped us
stay top of mind when the season started rolling.”
5. Set Aside Budget To Experiment: “I have a rule.
Allocate at least 15 percent of your spend to new programs. You don’t
always win, but it is the only way to discover new effective ways to
market your audience,” Boujon emphasizes. “Should all your tests bomb,
the 85 percent of your spend that you know is effective will swallow the
bad performance of the 15 percent.”
This season, the company’s paid search tests included remarketing
lists for search ads (RLSA). Boujon says they still need to fine tune
their efforts with RLSA, but having tested it this year, they’ll have
learnings and benchmarks to measure against next year.
<h6>(Stock image via <a
href=”http://www.shutterstock.com/”>Shutterstock.com</a>. Used
under license.)</h6>
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