It should come as no surprise that ecommerce BOOMED in 2020. When stores, showrooms, and offices closed due to the pandemic, virtual storefronts took their place. A majority of sales moved from in-person to online.
Ecommerce businesses that already existed entirely online had a leg up on the rest of the business world. Our client StandDesk was one of those companies. StandDesk is a direct-to-consumer ecommerce store that sells office furniture, with a special focus on height adjustable desks.
Capitalizing on online sales during the holidays
We were asked to assist StandDesk in driving an increase in online sales for Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Our client knew its competitors—with stronger brand recognition—would hit the ground running with Black Friday and Cyber Monday advertising and promotions.
StandDesk is a relatively new company and its leadership knew the company’s limited brand awareness added to this challenge. But the market was primed for purchasing, and height-adjustable desks were a huge draw for those working from home. We believed the potential for strong sales existed, and all it would take was the right approach.
A coordinated omni-channel campaign
This particular campaign had a very specific timeline. Four days to be exact. That sort of timeline meant brand awareness tactics wouldn’t be as effective. Therefore, we deliberately focused our efforts on consumers who were more likely to purchase and already had familiarity with the StandDesk brand.
We implemented digital advertising tactics to re-engage past website visitors and targeted those who added items to their cart in recent months but never made it through check-out. We also built an email campaign for StandDesk’s current email subscribers.
Other tactics we used were paid search, Facebook re-marketing and look-alike targeting, and organic social media posts. For paid search, we focused on competitor search terms to engage users lower in the funnel who were presumably looking to buy a desk from a competitor.
Advertisements were aligned and coordinated with organic social media posts and email campaigns to maximize frequency of messaging throughout the weekend. All of these channels pointed users toward website pages with consistent promo messaging. Everything worked together to ensure the holiday promo was communicated consistently and reached the right audiences.
The ultimate goal of the campaign was sales. So, we made it easy for consumers to purchase with direct calls to action and few clicks. We wanted to make the sale easy and painless for buyers.
It takes strategy, planning, and teamwork
In a nutshell, the campaign was a huge success for StandDesk. Total website sales increased by 240% compared to the same four days last year. The digital campaign produced an ROAS of 14.82, which is a great return. We knew the market and the demand was there, and StandDesk capitalized on it.
It’s important to know, campaigns like this aren’t built overnight. Building an effective strategy and a plan to execute it is essential. This was a confirmation of our philosophy that building an integrated marketing strategy with coordinated efforts is how goals are reached.
We talk a lot about cross-functional marketing and this campaign exemplified that. It’s not about throwing a dart at the wall and seeing what digital marketing tactics you hit. It’s about careful planning and understanding who your audience is, what will motivate them, where to reach them, and allocating your budget to efforts that will give you the best results.
From our account leader and project manager to the digital media, website, email, and creative experts, our ddm team worked together with our client to execute a successful digital sales campaign.