RS Components is a leading distributor for engineers. Their products include electronic components, electrical, automation and control, and test and measurement equipment, and engineering tools and consumables. Operating in the B2B space, the company was looking for ways to increase brand awareness online.
About RS Components
Distributor for engineers across Europe and Asia Pacific
Part of Electrocomponents plc
Headquarters in Corby, UK
Goals
Increase brand awareness
Reach relevant B2B audiences
Approach
Targeted consumers on the Google Display Network
Engaged users with responsive ads
Results
82.5 million impressions
10.7% uplift in brand interest
RS Components developed a digital campaign based around the tagline “For the Inspired”. The campaign aimed to show how the brand supports customers in achieving their goals, demonstrating that RS is more than just a middleman.
The team ran the campaign on the Google Display Network, making it possible to reach users as they browsed millions of websites, news pages, blogs, and Google websites like Gmail and YouTube. Opting for flexibility with minimal setup, they used responsive ads, which automatically adjust their size, appearance and format to fit available ad spaces.
“By talking about what aspirations the audience have rather than the products they should buy, we wanted to tell a story that was less functional and more inspirational to engage our audience.”
– David Merrifield, Global Head of Digital Acquisition, RS Components
“The Google Display Network was the key enabler of us achieving brand awareness and communicating directly with our audience of engineers and potential customers at scale”, explains RS Components’ David Merrifield, Global Head of Digital Acquisition. The team utilised interest, topic, keyword, remarketing and lookalike targeting to reach these B2B consumers.
“We utilised the insights from our Google conversions and remarketing pixels to understand who our existing customers and website visitors were before we started the campaign”, he says. “This allowed us to understand the types of topics and interests that would be most relevant for our audience.”
With reach a primary KPI, RS Components focused on impressions and used view-through conversions on the Google Display Network as an indicator of the quality of brand awareness uplift they were driving. In all, the activity produced 82.5 million impressions, while a BrandLift Study demonstrated a 10.7% uplift in brand interest.
“The Google Display Network enabled us to reach a lot more of our target audience than other channels at scale, whilst also providing us with a wider variety of insights which we can utilise in our planning stage moving forward”, David affirms. “We gained insight into which imagery was most engaging based on the different targeting options. We also learnt a lot about our target audience, for example what device they browse the internet on, what times of the day and days of the week they engage with different content and which targeting approaches are most likely to lead to view-through conversions.”
Going forward, the ability to measure the impact of the branding activity on awareness has been fundamental in gaining additional budget to replicate the activity across further markets.