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Overview

Specialty retailer increased online orders 64 percent when adding newspaper to direct response efforts using Google Print Ads.

Business

With consumers' mailboxes bursting with catalogs, direct retailers are always looking for innovative ways to reach their target audiences and generate new leads. Direct response merchants acknowledge that the growing power of the Internet calls for integrated marketing strategies that straddle online and traditional platforms. With the addition of a high-impact newspaper campaign, marketers can sharpen their competitive advantage in the crowded consumer goods marketplace.

The Land of Nod, a subsidiary of Crate and Barrel that relies heavily on direct selling channels, has carved a niche for itself by specializing in children's furniture, bedding, and all things baby. The company is always on the lookout for ways to boost brand awareness and reach its affluent customer base, comprised of parents in their late 20s through 40s.

Approach

Previously, The Land of Nod's marketing efforts consisted entirely of direct mail and internet search. However, as the company began to expand, the marketing and advertising team was seeking new ways expand the brand's advertising reach. Search Engine Marketing Analyst Betsy Warburton and her team turned to Google Print Ads, a marketplace that enables advertisers and agencies to easily plan, procure, and traffic newspaper advertising over the web. "We wanted to deploy our advertising dollars as efficiently as possible to reach a new audience that our current efforts might not have penetrated," Warburton explains.

By using Google Print Ads, The Land of Nod launched a successful, targeted campaign in a medium considered most trustworthy by consumers: newspapers. "Newspaper advertising yielded outstanding, immediate results for our business," says Warburton.

As part of the Google Print Ads program, The Land of Nod ran newspaper display ads in six geographic markets considered to be a good fit for the company's upscale consumer base. Taking advantage of the interest-based characteristics of newspaper sections, Ads appeared in Home and Garden sections. The ads highlighted a free shipping promotion—with unique order source codes for tracking and measurability. The newspaper ads were run in conjunction with national direct marketing and search activities.

Results

With Google Print Ads, The Land of Nod immediately began attracting new customers. In the markets that ran the newspaper ads, the year-over-year growth in the number of orders received was 34 percentage points higher than markets where print ads did not run. All six geographic areas saw dynamic increases in sales – with two markets realizing more than 100 percent gains. "The superior results in these two markets indicate greater opportunities for us to develop integrated sales initiatives leveraging the results we recognized with Google Print Ads," says Warburton. As well, markets that combined newspaper with Google AdWords campaigns experienced a 38 percent boost in revenue, compared with a 28 percent increase by deploying AdWords alone. "Google Print Ads gave our company an extremely efficient media- buying solution to get our message across," says Warburton.