Crucial.com

 

Crucial.com Experiences SEM Success with Efficient Frontier

Crucial.com, part of Micron Europe Ltd, sells high-quality computer memory, providing over 35,000 upgrades for more than 250,000 systems. The Crucial.com website features innovative online tools and an intuitive design that makes it easy to find compatible memory and recommended upgrades.

Local Specialists

Modelling historic search data

Crucial.com has been running PPC campaigns since 2003. However, there was a frustration with the incumbent search agency’s ability to service the US and Europe satisfactorily. After a detailed pitch process, Efficient Frontier was selected as Crucial.com’s new SEM agency. Fabrice Sabo, E-Commerce Marketing Manager at Crucial Europe said, "We needed local specialists who had the ability to deliver on service. We were attracted to Efficient Frontier by their unique technology and wanted to tap into the time saving portfolio-based bid optimisation. The key was being able to model our historic search marketing data and
make business decisions based on understanding what every keyword would cost and yield at each bid position."

Understanding Individual Goals

Granular data analysis

When it comes to advertising, Crucial was interested in the impact that time of day, and day of the week had on campaigns. Its hypothesis was that there was no need to advertise overnight. Efficient Frontier's search marketing specialists were able to investigate this hypothesis based on conversions as well as volume. The analysis confirmed that during the hours of 3am and 6am Crucial.com's campaigns was not converting so the action was taken to switch off the campaigns during this period.

Efficient Frontier's in-depth data analysis also revealed that the percentage of cost to sales was too high on the weekend. Reducing spend over this period would then allow Crucial.com to utilise that budget more effectively during the week.

Sabo explains, "We are careful of course that the reduction in spending over the weekend doesn't impact conversions during the week. There is a delicate line to tread but the team at Efficient Frontier were able to analyse the spend and conversion data and make our budget work harder. Every advertiser is different and what is successful for some may not be for others. We put the effort into testing a hypothesis and in turn we found out additional valuable information, ultimately driving more efficiency and saving us money. That is why you need to employ an agency that understands your individual goals."

Changing Business Objectives

As simple as pushing a button

In the technology hardware industry there is the ever present challenge of the depreciating price of merchandise. It was discovered that measuring the inverse of ROI was not a dependable metric to understand SEM success or failure as the merchandise price was a constantly moving target. When Crucial.com decided to change objectives and optimise to a CPO (cost per order) target to remedy this, the new objective was swiftly implemented by Efficient Frontier. Upon making a decision, Efficient Frontier's technology reshuffles bids accordingly and goes hunting after the new metric within minutes. Sabo explains,
"One of the great attributes of Efficient Frontier’s bid optimisation technology is that changing business objectives is as simple as pushing a button. It allows for us to be flexible in our approach and respond quickly to changes."

European Expansion

Thinking strategically

After successfully optimising Crucial.com's PPC campaigns for three months, the campaign was expanded to include France and Ireland. The local language French campaigns were built from scratch across Google and Yahoo using Efficient Frontier’s international reach.

Sabo concludes, "Efficient Frontier's unique technology allows them to spend time thinking strategically about our account rather than pushing bids around. There is no hidden data with EF and everything is completely transparent. We show them all of our data and they work with it to give us the best possible results. We consider Efficient Frontier as partners and we trust them as if they were an extension of our marketing department."

Benefits summary:

• Using unique portfolio optimisation technology, Crucial.com has been able to determine what every keyword would cost and yield at each bid position
• Data analysis revealed that reduced spending over the weekend would allow better utilisation of budget during the week
• Analysis also highlighted that there were no conversions between 3am and 6am so decision was taken to switch off campaigns during this period
• Working with an international SEM specialist, Crucial.com has been able to manage UK and US campaigns through one supplier, as well as launching new campaigns in France and Ireland