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Richer Sounds

Adding an extra line of revenue to Richer Sounds with Google Shopping

The Challenge

Richer Sounds had undergone a new site migration with Space 48, where we re-platformed them onto Magento 2. As part of their next stage of ecommerce growth, they were looking for another marketing channel to add to the mix. With the pandemic and other external factors, it was essential to find an additional channel that could drive success in hitting their KPI metrics. 

We noticed that they weren’t using Google Shopping which is unusual for an ecommerce retailer of their kind as they are the perfect candidate. They sell branded products that a consumer might not necessarily go directly to the site to find the product they are looking for in their purchase journey. The advantage of Google Shopping is that it’s demand-driven. A consumer could search for a specific model of a Samsung TV as an example. With Google Shopping set up correctly, a Richer Sounds Samsung TV would show up in the shopping listings, providing another route to purchase.  

Richer Sounds explained they had tested Google Shopping in 2020 and did not see a return on investment. It was caused by a lack of strategy and understanding of the intricacies of Google Shopping. The process they had in place was very manual, with the feed and data being time-consuming to keep track of and becoming outdated fast. 

The challenge was to change Richer Sounds’ mind on Google Shopping and show them the opportunity while also providing them with a more automated strategy for their team to keep track of that would drive results to their bottom line.

Richer Sounds Speaker Case Study

The Brand

Richer Sounds were founded by Julian Richer in 1978 when he opened his first shop on London Bridge Walk with the help of the late Vic Odden, a photography retailer. In May 2019, he sold 60% of his shares in the business (thus handing control) to an employee ownership trust.

They now trade from 51 stores nationwide, online and through its Telesales and Business to Business departments. When you step into a Richer Sounds store, you’re greeted by someone who knows all about audio and visual entertainment and how to make it work beautifully in the home or workplace. It was essential to continue this excellent customer service online. 

Richer Sounds Logo

Automating with Google Shopping

Google Shopping Logo

Utilising Google Smart Shopping, we helped Richer Sounds automate their product feed, keeping it up-to-date for stocks and price changes. Smart shopping is much more flexible than manual shopping campaigns. It takes your product feed and utilises the data you’ve got, and adjusts the auction on a per-product basis on every single auction. It automates the bid on each auction dependent on the opportunity it sees using Google’s algorithm. 

The main difference in how we structured it compared to what they had done in the past is that we went for a more automated approach. Creating a better quality automated product feed to minimise management time, maximise time to revenue generation, and, more importantly, profitable revenue generation.

Providing them with the training and boilerplate

Using Smart Shopping made the approach less manual and less demanding for Richer Sound’s in-house team to take control of it from us. We set up everything for them and had it running for three months to prove the concept was a success before handing it over to them to manage themselves. In the meantime, we did remote interactive training sessions with their team weekly over the initial period. 

As part of the training sessions, we helped them implement a module that generated an automated problem that keeps it up to date for stocks and price changes. We made sure that in Merchant Centre, everything was approved, and we taught them if there were any warnings, how to address them so that they could keep their feed in total health. The importance of feed data is vital to ensuring products appear and are relevant for the search term that customers are searching.

They now have a process where they can continue to use Google Shopping and generate revenue through a new channel.

Upgrading to Performance Max

Google announced Performance Max in November 2021 and later stated that all Smart Shopping campaigns will upgrade to Performance Max between July-September 2022.

Performance Max is a merger of Smart Shopping with Dynamic Search Ads. It utilises a mix of automation and machine learning to help brands execute their specific conversion goals. You can reach customers on Display, Search, Maps, Discover Feed, YouTube, and Gmail.

Google gave advertisers the option to either upgrade the Smart Shopping campaigns to PMax ourselves before the deadline or wait until the deadline when Google will automatically upgrade it themselves. We chose to upgrade Richer Sounds’ campaigns ourselves because we would keep control over what ad copy, assets and video we can use in the ads rather than Google just picking and choosing.

The beauty of this process was that we could collaboratively work with Richer Sounds regarding the content – from writing the ad copy to deciding which specific assets to use.

Richer Sounds TV Case Study

The results are in

This channel has become Richer Sound’s third-biggest channel for driving revenue. This project was a great success for Space 48’s ecommerce marketing team and for the client. We’re pleased to continue our relationship with Richer Sounds and are looking at other marketing channels we can bring into the mix.

14
%
Increase in revenue
2200
%
ROAS
10
%
New users to site
16
%
increase in transactions

OIlie at Space 48 helped us set up our Google Shopping account and trained our colleagues so that we could manage it ourselves going forwards. Ollie broke everything down into straightforward training sessions and made sure we were comfortable with the processes before moving on. Nothing was too much trouble and he was always quick to reply when we emailed with questions! We now have a thriving Google Shopping account and are confident we can continue to improve and develop it.

Charlie Wray
Digital Marketing Manager, Richer Sounds

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