Crucial Drives Global Expansion Through Agile Paid Search Strategies

The boom in com­put­er gam­ing glob­al­ly, fol­low­ing the pop­u­lar­i­ty of esports, is fuelling the appetite for new prod­ucts and tech­nol­o­gy with the val­ue of the video game mar­ket esti­mat­ed to hit $300 bil­lion by 2025. This means huge oppor­tu­ni­ties exist glob­al­ly for com­pa­nies who man­u­fac­ture gam­ing relat­ed tech­nolo­gies. One piece of hard­ware crit­i­cal to a great gam­ing expe­ri­ence is com­put­er mem­o­ry. This must be capa­ble of han­dling real-time graph­ics pro­cess­ing with split sec­ond respon­sive­ness to make the game­play expe­ri­ence as seam­less as possible.

For Cru­cial, one of the world’s largest man­u­fac­tur­ers of com­put­er mem­o­ry, har­ness­ing paid search adver­tis­ing has been essen­tial to cap­tur­ing new cus­tomers as they search for com­put­er hard­ware online.

Since its found­ing in 1996, Cru­cial has been com­mit­ted to the belief that every­day con­sumers can and should have the abil­i­ty to improve their com­put­ers through do-it-your­self mem­o­ry upgrades.

“Our goal is to edu­cate con­sumers so that they don’t need to spend hun­dreds of pounds on a new com­put­er to get bet­ter per­for­mance,” says Lucy Wit­tlif, Per­for­mance Mar­ket­ing Man­ag­er Glob­al Search. “We help cus­tomers to decide whether a sim­ple hard­ware upgrade could make their com­put­er run like new, or whether they need to lev­el up for mem­o­ry inten­sive activ­i­ties like gam­ing – all for a frac­tion of the cost of buy­ing a new computer.”

Using Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud Search, part of the Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud, Cru­cial is able to react to con­sumer demand quick­ly, posi­tion its brand front and cen­tre and dri­ve demand to its e‑commerce site.

Automa­tion capa­bil­i­ties dri­ve per­for­mance uplift for paid search campaigns

Only hav­ing a small in-house team, Cru­cial work close­ly with Adobe experts to for­mu­late and man­age its paid search strat­e­gy through Adver­tis­ing Cloud Search. This exper­tise is crit­i­cal to opti­mise paid search cam­paigns with the speed and agili­ty need­ed for Cru­cial to stay ahead of its com­peti­tors in this com­pet­i­tive market.

Pow­ered by Adobe Sen­sei, Adobe’s pow­er­ful AI, Adver­tis­ing Cloud’s automa­tion fea­tures ensure the best-suit­ed trans­ac­tion mix for Cru­cial. Through Per­for­mance Opti­miza­tion, the Adobe account team con­tin­u­ous­ly mon­i­tors Crucial’s cam­paigns to auto­mate bid­ding and opti­mize the deliv­ery and effec­tive­ness of its search ads.

Spend Rec­om­men­da­tions also rec­om­mend how to best allo­cate Crucial’s adver­tis­ing bud­gets across dif­fer­ent cam­paigns, whilst Per­for­mance Fore­cast­ing pro­vides insight into the impact of dif­fer­ent bud­get sce­nar­ios on the business’s clicks, con­ver­sions and rev­enue, so the best strat­e­gy can be used.

Across Crucial’s top four mar­kets — UK, Ger­many, Italy and France — the busi­ness has seen impres­sive results. Impres­sions vol­ume YoY has increased by 54%, whilst traf­fic to Crucial’s site surged by 37%, with­out increas­ing the cost-per-click. YoY impres­sions vol­ume and clicks across mobile observed an increase of 153% and 101% respec­tive­ly, result­ing in a click-through-rate spike of 66%.

“Being able to imple­ment cam­paigns and mon­i­tor their effec­tive­ness so effi­cient­ly means we can now focus our atten­tion on cre­at­ing con­tent that sup­ports con­sumers at dif­fer­ent stages of their hard­ware upgrade jour­ney,” says Wit­tlif. “This is what keeps cus­tomers on the site, engag­ing with our prod­ucts and impor­tant­ly, our brand.”

Expand­ing glob­al foot­print through cap­tur­ing emerg­ing opportunities

High­ly effec­tive paid search cam­paigns, bid­ding more on rev­enue gen­er­at­ing key­words, cou­pled with the grow­ing demand for more pow­er­ful com­put­ers, has pre­sent­ed a huge growth oppor­tu­ni­ty for Cru­cial to reach new cus­tomers and expand into new markets.

“Just four years ago we had a dig­i­tal pres­ence in four mar­kets and today we are in four­teen,” saysLucy. “We’re dri­ving real­ly suc­cess­ful paid search cam­paigns that allow us to jump on growth oppor­tu­ni­ties in new mar­kets and be the brand front of mind for con­sumers look­ing for memory”.

Great results for Search result­ed in a quar­ter-on-quar­ter jump in ROI of 21%, dri­ving more invest­ment in the chan­nel and expan­sion into new mar­kets. Since the intro­duc­tion of Japan, Korea, India, Rus­sia, Tai­wan and Spain last year, the site man­aged a month­ly addi­tion­al vol­ume of 2.1 mil­lion visitors.

Adding val­ue for cus­tomers beyond its products

Through time­sav­ing automa­tion, Cru­cial has been able to chan­nel more time towards build­ing its web­site around cus­tomer needs. Whether a com­put­er novice or seri­ous tech geek, edu­ca­tion­al con­tent on Crucial’s site helps its cus­tomers to select the best prod­uct and guides them through the DIY upgrade process with ease.

For online retail­ers, deliv­er­ing excep­tion­al cus­tomer expe­ri­ences and ser­vice such as this feeds heav­i­ly into the effec­tive­ness of their paid search cam­paigns. With­out rel­e­vant con­tent, prospec­tive cus­tomers will sim­ply land and leave; head­ing else­where to find what they are look­ing for.

Crucial’s com­mit­ment to pro­vid­ing cus­tomers with expert advice, cou­pled with its agile paid search strate­gies, has not only allowed it to win new cus­tomers across mul­ti­ple mar­kets, but will ensure the busi­ness con­tin­ues to cap­i­talise on new cus­tomer oppor­tu­ni­ties and con­tin­ue its glob­al expansion.

Cru­cial uses Adobe Adver­tis­ing Cloud to take an agile approach to paid search mar­ket­ing and win cus­tomers in new geographies.