Tassel Depot is an international E-commerce store dedicated to providing USA-made tassel products for graduations, holidays, events, and more to various customers across the globe. This family-owned company is considered the world’s leading manufacturer of tassels, cords, stoles, and trimmings for over 150 years. Tassel Depot is a top supplier to grade schools, colleges, and universities throughout the United States.
Their product lines consist of tassel accessories, graduation attire, award medals, diploma covers, bookmarks, and more. Most of their selection is customizable or comes in more than 30 color options making them versatile for nationwide graduation ceremonies.
Tassel Depot is most attractive to buyers approaching graduation or who know someone graduating soon. Oftentimes, their low prices gain interest from school boards wishing to order graduation attire in bulk for their student body. Their products also support decorating for various occasions and holidays.
THE CHALLENGE: Increase Q1 Marketing Spend at Pace With CPL & ROAS, YOY
As we move toward an era of digital integration, we see major increases in the scale of the ecommerce industry. Tassel Depot is a well-established business fit to sustain the capacity of a growing market, hence why increasing its marketing budget was a necessary effort at this point in time.
According to Shopify, an eommerce systems management platform, the market growth for online shoppers will continue to generate favorable increases.
“Two years ago, only 17.8% of sales were made from online purchases. That number is expected to reach 20.8% in 2023, a 3 percentage point increase in e-commerce market share. Growth is expected to continue, reaching 23% by 2025, which translates to a 5.2 percentage point increase in just five years.”
That being said, Tassel Depot faced a considerable growth opportunity but struggled to expand its reach to its potential customer base. Within Google Ads, the account performs in a seasonal style, with Q2 being their most profitable time of the year due to the increased number of graduations in May and June. The issue here is maintaining profitability year-round. Most often, the 1st, 3rd, and 4th quarters fall off in performance.
Tassel Depot collaborated with its marketing agency, Tandem Buzz, to take on the task of improving its advertisement spending within Google Ads. They wanted to attain an acceptable cost per lead (CPL) and return on ad spend (ROAS). After strategizing, it was determined that Q1 was an area of specific growth that would add value to Tassel Depot as they rolled into their prime selling season. We developed and implemented a number of solutions over the course of the fiscal year, some of which we’ll discuss next.
THE SOLUTION: Account Restructuring & Implementing Advanced Audience Targeting
It is fairly easy to spend money on Google Ads. However, spending money and getting accurate leads is not nearly as easy. Increasing a marketing budget and maintaining the same CPL and ROAS entails careful execution of strategy. It is also noted that keeping up with the ever-evolving Google Ads platform can be a big game changer when it comes to ad performance.
To meet the desired goals of Tassel Depot, Tandem Buzz’s PPC team implemented the following campaigns:
- New Search campaigns containing Responsive Search Ad (RSA) ads to target favorable audiences
- A new Search campaign with RSA ads to target graduation years (2018 to 2023)
- Another Search campaign with RSAs to target specific products
- A Performance max campaign
Each campaign had a specific goal that would ultimately help to lasso more users and potential consumers. Tandem also decided to optimize existing campaigns that had the most potential for growth. Within these new Search campaigns, the team experimented with different landing pages, testing whether customers prefer ads sending them to a product page or the home page. In addition, price extensions were introduced to attract low-cost buyers. As for their existing shopping campaign, target ROAS was adjusted periodically, with a total increase of 300% over the year.
The most impactful transformation within Tassel’s account came from a new version of campaigning: Performance Max – Smart Shopping. The Performance Max, or Pmax, type of campaign was released in the summer of 2022 and integrated machine learning with advanced audience targeting. This type of campaign is perfect for expanding the reach and increasing conversions while automatically adjusting bids using advanced targeting. The overall management of a Pmax campaign is simple and just needs to be monitored for accurate lead generation.
THE RESULTS: Improved Ad Spend & Conversions
The data exhibited compares findings from Q1 2022 vs. Q1 2023.
For the time under consideration, the Tassel Depot account saw the following results:
- 12% increase in spend
- 7% increase in conversions
- Only a 0.02% increase in Cost Per Lead
These outcomes were a direct result of the campaigns recently created/optimized to drive this growth.
During Q1 2023, we saw that:
- The Search Campaign with the newly created RSAs to target audiences was ultimately unsuccessful in lead generation and transitioned into a remarketing campaign. This helped to drive product and brand awareness as Tassel was looking to expand in the market.
- The new Search campaign targeting graduation years generated 40 conversions and an increased ROAS of 51%.
- The campaign targeting specific products saw an increase of 74% in ROAS and a 92% increase in revenue.
- The new Performance Max campaign produced over $20,600 in new revenue and an increased ROAS of 935%.
As our predictions hoped, Tassel Depot has optimized its Q1 spending at pace with the cost per lead and return on ad spend.
IN SUMMARY
Tassel Depot saw a notable increase in KPIs over 2023’s first quarter in comparison to that of 2022. The company’s goal was to expand reach, increase advertising spend and maintain the pace of lead generation. Through these implementations, the PPC team at Tandem Buzz Marketing Agency was able to fulfill these goals and set them up for an even more successful second quarter.
