It’s not magic! How the Gandalf.com.pl bookstore discovered the power of Microsoft Advertising thanks to Sempai

Is it worth looking for new advertising channels on the Internet? Always! We started with this assumption by establishing a partnership with Microsoft Advertising.

Effect:

4x larger scale of operations with a stable CPC of PLN 0.25

About our cooperation:

Gandalf is an ambitious e-commerce, originally focused on selling books. Now – it is the one of the leading suppliers of products not only from the world of culture and entertainment, but also from other areas of everyday life.

Współpracujemy od 2022 roku.

The book industry is extremely competitive. In order to acquire new customers for Gandalf and constantly develop its business, we recommended expanding our actions to include paid advertising in Microsoft. We already knew the potential of Microsoft Advertising in Poland, which is why we chose this direction.

Goal

The goal we set for ourselves at the start of our activities in the Microsoft Advertising advertising system is:

• Maximizing profits while maintaining sales effectiveness at a level that satisfies the customer

How do we do it?

We started our activities in July 2022. The beginnings were not the easiest – the result in July was just over 3,300 clicks on ads.

We knew that we could get much more out of a Microsoft Advertising campaign. As a Channel Partner, we know perfectly well the potential of this advertising ecosystem. We regularly participated in meetings with Microsoft specialists, and we also had access to materials reserved exclusively for partners. That’s why we were convinced that we would achieve even the most ambitious results for the Gandalf.com.pl store.

Activities we have introduced in campaigns for Gandalf:

• verification and improvement of conversion tracking implementation,
• gradual expansion of campaigns in the search network,
• expansion and multi-stage optimization of remarketing campaigns based on collected lists, including primarily dynamic remarketing,
• maximizing the potential for obtaining the most important conversions in shopping campaigns, as well as continuous work on improving the quality of the feed,
• advertising optimization,
• excluding irrelevant keywords,
• improving keyword segmentation,
• budget rotation.

The above implementations allowed us to…

…achieve great results!!

At the end of March 2023:

Although in the context of our client’s history, magical associations come to mind, the effects we achieved were very real and – most importantly – quantifiable. We have increased the scale 4 times, maintaining a stable average CPC of PLN 0.25.

Activities carried out in this way allowed us to collect valuable traffic, not based on brand-related queries.

Results:

• July – September 2022
  • ROAS: 1316%
• October – December 2022
  • ROAS: 1065%

To sum up: over 100% higher revenues, with budgets ranging from several to several thousand per month!

Thanks to many months of efforts, the campaigns are achieving outstanding sales results throughout 2023. Appropriate preparation for the textbook season allowed us to generate record revenues. We are looking forward to the last quarter!

Specialist’s opinion

Microsoft Advertising campaigns are an excellent proposition for e-commerces that want to reach new customers – after all, the Bing search engine is used by 10% of Internet users (on desktop) in Poland, so it would be a pity to ignore them. In my activities for Gandalf, I focused on:

• first of all, to sort out technical issues (e.g. improving conversion counting),
• proven and effective activities in Google Ads, e.g. using the general campaign structure created for Google Ads,
• experience with Google Ads was very helpful and made conducting activities much easier. The general mechanisms of operation are similar, but Microsoft Advertising also has its own specificity, the knowledge of which I used to maximize results, e.g. selecting appropriate keywords, aggregating smaller campaigns into a larger structure.
• adjusting the account structure and settings to higher sales seasons, e.g. adjusting budgets. We look at all campaigns from a long-term perspective, taking into account the client’s business goals first and foremost. Example: we know that a hot period in the bookselling industry includes, among others: “textbook season”, therefore we prepare appropriately for this moment of the year, and we can reap the fruits of our work longer.

Clients’ opinion