INCREASED TRAFFIC 4.5 TIMES FOR BOARD GAMES WEBSITE

The story of how to increase traffic 4.5 times in 8 months. And also the story of how to turn a hobby into a full-grown business with an offline store and a staff of employees. Read and apply life hacks.

PPC, SEO


Service

Board games


Business area

Kyiv, Ukraine


Location

Results

4.5 times


Traffic growth

more 100 articles


Created

Video review in Russian. Please turn on subtitled in English

VICTORIA KOZUMLYAK
Founder of webstore lordofboards.com.ua

We saw SEO-results after half a year. Our traffic this year has grown more than seven times. Sales has grown more than 15 times. Working with marketing.link for us is about partnership.

Client

Lord of Boards company sells board games. The main advantage of this company is a large assortment of goods in stock.

Before starting to work with us, the promotion was implemented by the owner himself. From time to time, Victoria gave the website for analysis to various digital companies, but received formulaic answers. Therefore, the client was in no hurry to cooperate with any studio.

We started our partnership with Lord of Boards in January 2019. We performed SEO analysis. The Google AdWords Editor has reviewed the ad set up. Gave recommendations for optimization. The client saw our expertise and attention to detail. From that moment, cooperation with Lord of Boards began.

There are only a few large warehouses with games in Ukraine. Most competitors post information on their websites that games are in stock when in fact the good is in someone’s warehouse. In such a situation, online stores compete in the speed of delivery. Who has time to book the goods in stock will receive sale. Anyone who is late will have to make excuses to the client and return the payment.

To not be in this situation, Lord of Boards buy goods in advance.

Монтажная область 11

Goals:

✓ increase the number of applications;
✓ brand promotion.

Монтажная область 13

Tasks:

✓ set up Digital Advertising and SEO;
✓ increase traffic.

Strategy

It was important for us to show that the advertising budget can be used more efficiently and receive more applications. Therefore, we started with optimization in Google Ads, then we started SEO and Paid Social.

An SEO specialist, a link builder, a content manager, copywriters, and an PPC specialist are working on the project.

Digital Advertising

The Lord of Boards website had a feed ready for ads and a Google Shopping was set up. Initially, with an ad budget of $ 500, our client had 131 sales. But because of incorrectly configured analytics, we can not now say clearly what marketing channel to generate these sales.

Digital Advertising before optimization from December 1 to December 31, 2018
Digital Advertising before optimization from December 1 to December 31, 2018

We started with a marketing budget of $ 830, of which $ 335 was payment for our services.

We have identified the target audience: adults who play board games and parents.

Now, in addition to Google Shopping, Smart Shopping is working, about 20 different campaigns (by game genre, season and other filters and headings), remarketing.

We tested Dynamic Search campaigns, but we have put them on hold due to low sales. We use Display ads. From the point of view of the cost of conversions, it cannot be called profitable, they work on of the brand recognition.

Start

We started with a marketing budget of $ 830, of which $ 335 was payment for our services.

We have identified the target audience: adults who play board games and parents.

Now, in addition to Google Shopping, Smart Shopping is working, about 20 different campaigns (by game genre, season and other filters and headings), remarketing.

Testing

We tested Dynamic Search campaigns, but we have put them on hold due to low sales. We use Display ads. From the point of view of the cost of conversions, it cannot be called profitable, they work on of the brand recognition.

Most of the applications come from Smart Shopping. But we do not stop other campaigns so as not to depend on one sales channel. It happens that Smart Shopping ads fail, and thanks to our strategy, the situation does not become catastrophic.

With the Google updates that came in 2019, we immediately updated the advertisements. Added Sitelink extensions and DSA.

The budget grew from $ 830 to $ 2,800 per month. At the same time, the cost of the application decreased.

Nick Lukashuk, CEO of marketing.link

Interestingly, some categories of games sold differently depending on the season. In the initial stages, only those categories of games were promoted that gave the most sales. Now we have reached the level where we can spend part of the budget on experiments. We reconfigure and restart campaigns that did not produce the desired results.

Nick Lukashuk, CEO of marketing.link

SEO

The site was developed on the SEO-friendly Horoshop platform, so we easily made edits to uniqueize titles and descriptions. Fixed empty meta tags, removed duplicates and adjusted masks.

Due to analytic issues, we did not know the exact number of website visitors during the earlier period. We set Google Analytics and Google Ads integration, added goals, set up attribution model and method of calculation of conversions.

The first correct analytical data was received in March 2019. At that time, the website had 370 visits per month. As of December 2019, visits have grown to 1,578 people.

Without set Google Analytics and Google Ads integration, all paid traffic was displayed in organic.

Organic traffic from January 2018 to December 2019
Organic traffic from January 2018 to December 2019

Content

For 8 months of work, we have created 88 texts per category and 13 articles per blog.

We followed strategies to publish content on all major product categories. As a result, all possible pages that users were looking for were created.

We started this work by analyzing keywords search volume for board games. We worked in the first place the most popular product goods. Then we created content for long-tail keywords that we linked to the main categories.

Such a number of categories on the website helps to reduce the risks of business seasonality.

Link building

Link building is at the heart of an SEO strategy. During the period of our work client’s web site got 69 backlinks.

case SEO Results of work with Backlinks Marketing Link
Backlink results

Marketplace

We tested the work with Hotline. The cost of applications for the client is acceptable, but their number wants to be better. In the future, we plan to experiment with other marketplaces.

Paid Social

We’ve set up Facebook Catalog ad campaigns and dynamic retargeting on Facebook and Instagram.

Cost per lead turned out to be more expensive than expected. Now we are allocating a small budget for Paid Social just to maintain brand awareness.

Google My Business

During the time of working with us, Lord of Boards has turned from a hobby into a full-fledged business. The staff has increased, an offline store has appeared. In this regard, our team with the client began to work out the company profile in Google My Business. We pay special attention to customer reviews. When people come to shop, they are automatically prompted to leave a comment. All reviews about the company are written only by real customers.

Google My Business case study Marketing Link

Plans

Lord of Boards still has room to grow. We plan to work on search campaigns, test several ideas for targeting competitors.

  • SEO: we will continue to grow the blog, update the previously written content, make reviews.

Conclusions

  • Business needs to constantly expand the range of products, expand the site categories. Thus, the risks of seasonality are reduced (after the holidays the number of sales drops). It is important to test several advertising campaigns and not depend on one sales channel.
  • Advice to our readers. To grow your business, don’t be afraid to increase your ad budget. Regularly check statistics and analyze the demand for goods to anticipate trends in consumer behavior.

What questions do you have about the case study? Write to us in the comments or leave a request and we will share our experience.

Get a consultation