By This case study first appeared in the ebook “The Global Guide to Native Advertising Technology 2018”
The results opened their eyes to the potential of using branded content distributed through native ads to breakdown friction during the decision journey without relying too heavily on promotions and discounts.
Summary
Daniel Gibbings, a fine luxury jewelry brand, and Forevermark, from the De Beers Group of companies, wanted to generate awareness and leads for their new bridal jewelry line.
After careful evaluation, the team at Daniel Gibbings chose to work with Storygize to help them develop a campaign strategy and achieve their marketing goals.
The resulting strategy was to reach engagement ring buyers early in their consideration process. Because the value/cost relationship for diamonds is a mystery to many, Daniel Gibbings utilized the 4Cs (Color, Cut, Clarity, Carat) content to share the things you should know before making an important ring purchase.
Both prospecting and remessaging executions were used to attract audiences and convert them into leads. For prospecting, the aim was to reach new audiences on contextually relevant, brand-safe, mobile and desktop sites. For engaged audiences that didn’t convert on the first visit, remessaging was used to help increase conversion rates.
The Daniel Gibbings team was excited with the outcome of the campaign. The results opened their eyes to the potential of using branded content distributed through native ads to breakdown friction during the decision journey without relying too heavily on promotions and discounts.
The idea was to engage diamond engagement ring buyers early in their decision journey and convert them into sales leads.
Mission
The mission of the campaign was to generate awareness and leads for the new Daniel Gibbings for Forevermark bridal jewelry line. The idea was to engage diamond engagement ring buyers early in their decision journey and convert them into sales leads.
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A short format content piece would deliver a simple message and establish buying criteria that favored Daniel Gibbings and Forevermark Diamonds.
The goal was to look beyond the click and measure user engagement with the landing page and other site pages.
KPIs
The primary goal was brand engagement. The goal was to look beyond the click and measure user engagement with the landing page and other site pages (e.g. about us, blog, product pages, product detail pages, wishlists and the cart).
The secondary goal was to generate sales consultation and wishlist leads. The Daniel Gibbings team was unsure what CPA goal to set at the start of the campaign. Using content and native ads was new territory for them. So, they came up with an initial CPA target based upon previous paid Social campaigns (i.e. $250 for consultation leads and $25 for wish lists).
The target audience included high-income millennial men and women considering an engagement or bridal ring purchase.
Target audience
The target audience included high-income millennial men and women considering an engagement or bridal ring purchase. The extended audience included friends and family that might influence the purchase decision.
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Male and Female 18-34, 35-64
High-income households
Context: wedding, luxury travel, home
US audiences/all devices
Strategic approach
Daniel Gibbings chose to work with Storygize on this campaign and, during a joint planning meeting, the Daniel Gibbings team decided to develop a short content piece that would provide a stand alone value for readers while generating awareness and leads.
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To capture the attention of in-market buyers, the Daniel Gibbings team produced a landing page that helped prospects evaluate the quality of a diamond, knowing that Forevermark are the highest quality diamonds on the planet. Less than 1% of all diamonds qualify to be a Forevermark diamond.
Storygize’s native in-feed and image ads formats were used to get the content in front of target audiences, in context. The campaign ran for 90 days in early spring 2017 and again for an additional 60 days during the early summer months.
Platforms:
Examples of contextually relevant sites used in the campaign:
apracticalwedding.com
instyle.com
theknot.com
cosmopolitan.com
insideweddings.com
harpersbazaar.com
Native headlines and images used real-time multivariate creative testing to optimize click through and content engagement rates.
Content distribution and promotion efforts
Proprietary page and keyword level contextual targeting technology placed ads in editorial context. For engaged users that didn’t convert, ads featuring eye-catching “hot off the bench” ring designs were used to regain attention and get users back to the site.
Prospecting campaigns included a performance optimization blend of click-through rate and the depth of content engagement. Remessaging executions were optimized using a performance blend of click-through rates, content engagement times and both lead and sale actions.
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Ad spend was allocated to the best performing site pages, in real-time, to reduce waste and improve performance. Native headlines and images used real-time multivariate creative testing to optimize click through and content engagement rates.
Click Through Rates (CTR) were driven higher throughout the life of the campaign by real-time headline optimization, resulting in an 87% increase in CTR from start to finish.
Results
- The Daniel Gibbings for Forevermark 4Cs campaign was seen as a success.
- During the final four weeks of the campaign, CPA results were $158 for the consultation leads and $37 for the wishlist leads.
- Click Through Rates (CTR) were driven higher throughout the life of the campaign by real-time headline optimization, resulting in an 87% increase in CTR from start to finish.
- Content engagement times were measured by active content engagement and engaged user sessions. The user session count was 98% higher than the benchmark for the same period.
Another key takeaway was that using click-through rates and time on page stats were misleading and not the best performance metrics to measure content engagement.
Learnings
Both the Storygize and Daniel Gibbings teams came away with takeaways to help them improve future campaigns.
One such takeaway was that native advertising is a great prospecting channel, with 93% first-time site visitors. And in back-end reporting, Daniel Gibbings saw a sizable uptick in both direct load and branded search traffic during the campaign.
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Another key takeaway was that using click-through rates and time on page stats were misleading and not the best performance metrics to measure content engagement. The active content engagement technology, Storygize, which was used provided much deeper insights into traffic value and helped to make improvements to landing page and site content.
Overall, the campaign had a positive impact on the Daniel Gibbings team. It helped them to think differently about the kind of content they were producing. As a result, they started producing new content targeting different buyer personas and buying stages, which they currently plan to deploy during future native advertising campaigns.
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