When Office Depot Europe stopped relying on an agency to conduct their search advertising activities, the in-house team knew they had to become as efficient as possible while gaining maximum business impact.
About Office Depot Europe
Retailer of office supplies
Two main brands: Viking and Office Depot
Headquarters in Venlo, Netherlands
Goals
Increase revenue
Save effort and time while optimising cost per click
Maintain optimum return on ad spend
Approach
Increased Shopping Ads revenue by 33%
Established campaign goals, defined product groups, set bids, and identified negative keywords
Reduced dependence on business hours and staff availability
Results
Increased revenue by 33%
Gained 45% more impressions
Reduced costs by 31%
Improved return on ad spend by 201 percentage points
Time previously spent on manual bidding now goes into strategy development
Office Depot decided to adopt Smart Shopping campaigns to reduce the team’s workload and help them hit their business targets. Smart Shopping campaigns combine standard Shopping and display remarketing campaigns, using automated bidding and ad placement to promote products.
During the setup, the team established campaign goals, defined product groups, set bids, and identified negative keywords. From that point forward, Office Depot relinquished manual control of the campaign, minimising their previous dependence on staff availability and business hours.
The new campaign requires less maintenance than before, which gives the team more time to devote to areas such as their mobile and audience strategy. Key metrics have improved too.
The new approach has increased Shopping Ads revenue by 33% and impressions by 45%, while costs have fallen by 31%. Overall, the in-house Office Depot team is delivering a return on ad spend that was 201 percentage points better than before.
Their recommendations to other teams hoping to make similar gains? Office Depot offers three lessons they’ve learned:
- Test one campaign and gain sufficient data to start.
- Give the algorithm enough time to optimise.
- After you have sufficient results, analyse your data to move forward in a considered way.
"Some advice to fellow online marketers: have patience for the data and algorithm to kick in, and enjoy the work of the machines outperforming labour-intensive manual bid management."
– Matt Sieben, Manager Online Paid Advertising, Office Depot Europe
