Julian Bakery Leveraged Google Display Network To Increase Impressions By 330%

About Julian Bakery

Julian Bakery specializes in producing fresh low-carb, gluten-free, vegan, paleo, primal and other specialty bread. Founded in 1900, by Barbara Squier, this California-based company is best known for making breads that are not only nutritious and organic but are also easy to digest. As per their website, www.julianbakery.com, their product offerings also include vitamins and supplement, wraps and bars.

Business Objectives of Julian Bakery

Julian Bakery had been making efforts in online marketing in the past but now they wanted to extend the reach of their online marketing campaigns so that they could ramp up both offline and online sales.

They were looking for a strategy which could drive a qualified traffic to Julian Bakery’s online store, so that the online conversions are increased at the lowest possible price. They wanted to promote the products to a relevant, local audience in order to boost the in-store conversions. Also, by increasing impressions of their ads online which had their brand logo and the details regarding their product offering and location of a nearby store, they wanted to generate brand awareness.

“We are always looking for new ways to reach more customers,” says Heath Squier, head of marketing, Julian Bakery. “Many of our customers research our bread online before making an in-store purchase, so having a large online audience is very important to us.”

Strategy Adopted by Julian Bakery

When Heath Squeir started searching for a solution to increase offline and online sales, before long, he came across Google Display Network, which is a collection of millions of publisher partner websites and specific Google properties – including Google Finance, Gmail, Blogger, and YouTube – where AdWords ads are shown. Mobile sites and apps are also a part of this network. As per DoubleClick Ad planner, the Display Network reaches more than 83% of unique Internet users around the world.

Google Display Network offers various targeting and bidding options depending upon the business objectives of a company. As Julian Bakery aimed to drive relevant traffic to their online store, by using placement targeting option, they placed their ads on the specific websites, across the web, whose content they thought are the best match for their business and product offerings. Through keywords like low-carb, high-proteins, fitness and other relevant keywords, Julian Bakery targeted their ads on specific websites, where people are reading and researching about such relevant topics. It enabled them to connect with the most engaged audiences at the right moment.

In order to grow in-store sales, Julian Bakery chose geo-targeting or location-based targeting to show their ads only in specific geographical area with focus on in-store sales. That way, the ads of the campaign appeared to users located only in those cities or states where bread was sold, so that those who saw the ad online could walk in the store and make purchase.

“With placement targeting, I can focus my campaign spend on the most effective websites. And geo-targeting let’s me spend more in areas where we have in-store locations,” added Heath. “We can have a national presence but still can target our campaigns on a local level.”

By using Display Ad Builder (now known as AdWords Ad gallery), an ad creation tool, Julian Bakery could easily create ads having their brand logo, pictures of their bread and some text, which helped customers recall their brand each time they saw their product in store and also helped in generating brand awareness.

The flexible pricing model of Google Display Network which includes CPC (cost-per-click) for increasing site traffic, CPM (cost-per-mille-impressions or cost-per-thousand-impressions) for raising brand awareness and CPA (cost-per-acquisition) for increasing conversions, helped Julian Bakery achieved its targets effectively and efficiently. Julian Bakery used performance measurement tools like AdWords Conversion Tracking and Conversion Optimizer to know how much every customer is costing them. They were able to track how many people saw their ads, clicked on them and bought their bread online. They could also follow sales to evaluate and optimize their campaigns further and connect better with customers.

Results Achieved by Julian Bakery

The strategy worked for the Julian Bakery in a big way.

In a short duration, they could see their conversions increasing by 35% and impressions by 330%. Both their online and offline sales leaped up. Customers were calling them up on phones, placing orders, making in-store and online purchases. Through their ads and online-store locator on their website, customers could easily find a distributor or a store located near them. The ads raised awareness about their brand, leading customers to search for Julian Bakery more often and recognize the brand which encouraged them to make a purchase. The strategy also resulted in a comparable CPA to search.

This study was published in the year 2011-2012. In the three years when Julian Bakery had been advertising with Google, the company grew from 10 to 35 employees and revenue more than doubled than the previous year.

Julian Bakery also reported a growth from 40 distributors and 100 customers to 1000 distributors and 3,00,000 customers nationwide.

Learning

Any company which is looking to drive both offline and online sales will do well by implementing the strategy which Julian Bakery adopted. By using Google Display Network, businesses can extensively reach their potential customers, who are engaged with content spread on the publisher partner websites and other Google websites. As the placement of ads on these websites seem natural to readers, the ads look less intrusive and readers are more likely to click on such ads. Advertising on GDN can be used by those companies which are targeting to generate awareness of their brand or are seeking a direct-response like a purchase on their website through a transparent tool, which not only provides a performance measurement feature but also encourages optimization of the ad budget.

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Image Credit: Julian Bakery Facebook Page