Fighting in a price competitive line up

-52%

In ad waste for branded queries

+1 point in ROAS

On non-branded queries in sale period

xx%

Increase in new customers on non-branded

Situation

SRFACE is a Dutch company on a mission to create the ultimate wetsuit for every surfer. Founded in 2017, the company rapidly grew as professional and enthusiast surfers got seduced by its highly qualitative, yet affordable wetsuits. Surfers themselves, who better to challenge an industry dominated by a few players which has been stagnant for the last decades!

Today, SRFACE strictly operates online and help customers to pay less and surf more in over 50 countries.

Challenge

SRFACE purely operates online, across +50 markets, and in a market that used to be dominated by only a few (highly) diversified mainstream brands:

Competition is fierce;
Seasonality is high;
Repurchases of wetsuits is low.

Secondly, SRFACE inventory fluctuates a lot based on seasonality, marketing operations, collections being regularly upgraded with new editions, and new products being launched.

Lastly, with branded and non-branded queries mixed and Performance Max campaigns in the mix, the structure needed a clear strategy to focus on the business priorities.

As a result, it becomes more complicated to manage marketing efforts and digital channels as the company grows.

Solution

The account strategy was redefined to effectively cover SRFACE markets within existing budget and prioritise key marketing goals.

By separating branded from non-branded queries we could consistently improve branded traffic protection while controlling incrementality of non-branded queries - focusing on customers contributing to growth.

With high CPCs and competitive pressure, we created a custom Google Ads automation to steer Shopping campaigns towards highly relevant queries. As an additional layer, we used Performance Max to retarget users while keeping Performance Max stable in spend and results.

Google Ads x Channable x Shopify

Account strategy with Google Ads tailored scripts

Focus on non branded key queries while combining acquisition and remarketing

Creation a feed management system

Real-time product updates and ad rank improvement

Setting up of a marketing experiment framework

A/B testing system creation

Result

With the new structure and automation it allows us to reduce spend wasted on branded queries by -52%, already one month after working together, before continuing to improve brand protection later on.

Campaign interactions and conversion data demonstrated clear patterns in non-branded acquisition which shifted the conversation towards aligning media channels and marketing operations (funnel, pricing, CRO, branding).

Early A/B testing results suggest incremental performance for complementary products when using different creatives, opening the door to new growth opportunities.