Southeast Asia’s leading online shopping mall, Lazada, used Google’s target outranking share bid strategy to increase its website traffic by 30%, growing market share for key product categories. Read on to find out how.
GOALS
Acquire new customers while competing more effectively in key product categories
APPROACH
Employed programmatic Google Ads flexible bid strategies
Used the target outranking share bid strategy to automate cost-per-click bids with the goal of outranking competitors on strategic search terms
RESULTS
Increased traffic by more than 30%
Multiplied position above rate threefold
Improved target outranking share against specific competitor domains by up to 280% in four weeks
Grew ad impression share by 50%
Lazada.com is part of the Lazada Group, which operates Southeast Asia’s leading online shopping and selling destination. With presence across Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam, the company has been pioneering e-commerce in the region since 2012 and currently offers an extensive list of products ranging from consumer electronics to household goods and fashion. In addition to providing customers with an effortless shopping experience via mobile and web access, its service allows multiple payment methods (including cash on delivery), extensive customer care, and free returns. To its sellers, the company provides simple and direct access to 550 million consumers through one retail channel.
An edge on the competition
Lazada targets consumers accessing the internet via desktop, smartphone, or tablet, and the goal of its performance marketing activity is to acquire new customers and generate revenue while defending its position as a market leader. To achieve these goals, Lazada embraced Google Ads’1 flexible bid strategies.
These flexible bid strategies present options that allow businesses to automate their cost-per-click bids in order to achieve specific goals including ROI maximization, conversion maximization, cost per acquisition, and visibility.
Specifically, Lazada used a strategy called target outranking share, which enabled the online retailer to outrank its competitors on strategic key search words. The target outranking share bid strategy allows companies to raise or lower their bids up to a specified maximum cost-per-click with the objective of “outranking” those of others. In other words, to help their ads show above other domains’ ads on search results pages or better yet, to show when others’ ads don't.
The team used this technique to position Lazada’s keywords in new categories. The strategy also conveniently offered the team the opportunity to bid against strategic competitors, securing visibility and traffic amongst a new set of customers by targeting competitors’ keywords. This strategy enabled Lazada to specify the maximum cost-per-click it was willing to pay, thereby controlling the cost necessary to outrank competitors’ domains.
Winning through outranking
This automated approach saved Lazada about two hours per week, but more importantly, made it possible to closely monitor and make automated adjustments to auction dynamics. Lazada quickly increased its market share within the new categories: ad impression share rose by 50% and traffic increased by more than 30%.
“By setting the right target outranking share strategy, we were able to outbid our competitors on strategic keywords, triple our position above rate, and increase our outranking share by more than 280%,” says Baptiste Le Gal, Lazada Group’s senior vice president of search and display marketing. “This allowed us to position our brand and grow our traffic steadily within our ROI targets.”
With these results, what future strategies does Lazada intend to employ? “We will not hesitate to rely on Google solutions when launching new product categories or markets because Google’s bidding solutions offer great possibilities to automate and optimize campaign management to meet our performance goals.”
Thanks to the target outranking share bid strategy, we positioned Lazada’s brand and quickly increased our market share within new product categories. We were able to increase ad impression share by 50% within a new competitive market, which resulted in an overall increase in traffic of more than 30%.
- Stein Jakob Oeie, CMO, Lazada Group
