Project overview
Initial Position
As a main sponsor, Swiss Post finances the expansion of Swiss hiking trails. To draw hikers’ attention to individual trails, the Swiss Post ran a Google Ads campaign in the summer of 2019. Generic keywords such as “hike” or “tourist attraction” attract high cost per click rates and fierce competition, as tourism destinations and hotels often share similar search terms. Swiss Post wanted to use the available Google Ads budget as efficiently and effectively as possible, and show users relevant text ads on its homepage, where the hiking trails can also be downloaded as free PDFs or ordered as a brochure.
- Sector:Logistics
- Webrepublic customer since:2011
Goals
- Positioning Swiss Post as a national and family company
- Reducing cost per conversion
- Increasing relevance and visibility of the ads
- Efficiently using the budget to intercept as many relevant search queries as possible
"A limited budget and the campaign’s long runtime presented an exciting challenge. The campaign mechanics designed by Webrepublic enabled us to reach our goals at a very efficient rate during the entire duration of the campaign and get the most out of the advertising budget."Michel Sulser
Digital Advertising Account Manager, die Schweizerische Post
Measures
Webrepublic created a script for Swiss Post, which automatically includes weather forecasts and the location of hiking routes, increasing the relevance of the ads. During the morning, the ad shows the weather forecast for the rest of the day and for a search query made during the afternoon, the current weather is shown. Likewise, if the search query is made in the evening, the weather for the following day is shown. If the weather isn’t looking good, the cost-per-click bid is automatically reduced – meaning that less of the media budget is invested, which concentrates the budget and consequently leads to greater visibility and more playouts on days when the weather is good. Ads appear when the weather is suitable for a hiking trip, which ensures they are totally relevant to users.
Swiss Post’s hiking campaign
Results
- -35% cost per conversion (PDF downloads, establishing contact, ordering brochures) in comparison with the previous year
- +12% visibility in comparison with the previous year
- 600 automatic ad adjustments on bad weather days carried out, and 26% of the budget was automatically deferred to use on good weather days
"This innovative approach enabled us to prominently position ads for hiking – an ultra-competitive market – exactly on the days when it counts the most – during perfect hiking weather. Thanks to automatic budget allocation and enriching the ads with data about the current location, not only has the visibility of the ads been increased but the relevance for users has also surged."Webrepublic AG
