About the client

Our client is one of the leading e-commerce companies, which has been growing by 130% year on year since 2013. It specializes in the online sale of furniture and home furnishings. With over 20,000 products available around the clock, 7 days a week, the brand offers a wide range of solutions at affordable prices, giving its customers the confidence that they will make the right choice.

Advertising creations

In terms of formats, in September 2020, two types of campaigns were launched – static square ads and a catalog ad in the form of a carousel. During this year, however, we managed to diversify our advertising creations and introduce visually attractive novelties, such as carousels with pictures of furniture in specific arrangements. In September 2021, the client had already launched such formats as:
– static ads from Stories,
– carousel with static graphics,
– carousel with products from the catalog in arrangements,
– animations and video,
– carousel with products from the catalog.

At the same time, we have kept a comparable advertising budget, and when we compare it with the expenses from September 2020, you can even see a decrease of a few percent. This shows that diversification does not have to come at a high cost. The longer we operate, the better we get to know the target group and its needs, so we can better adjust advertising messages.

The synergy of the client’s and agency’s activities is also important. Our actions include full transparency, long- and short-term planning, and a full understanding of what the business goals are and what the benefits for the consumer are.

Compare the results

Let’s compare the results from September 2020 with the results we achieved in September this year. This year, Facebook ads brought 19.92% more new users than in the corresponding period in 2020. The bounce rate fell from 45.21% to 39.82%, i.e. by 11.93% – a sign that the ads are better and better suited to the user’s needs.

Most importantly, good advertising results also translate into real profit for the company. Compared to September 2020, in September this year, revenues from Facebook campaigns increased by as much as 20.60%, while expenses decreased by 6.95%.

Who can count on success with Facebook Ads?

Facebook is a specific channel and not in every industry of advertising, in this particular medium, bring measurable profits. It is especially suitable for those product categories that are visually attractive and which are usually a pleasure to buy. That’s why Facebook Ads works well for our client. The success of advertisements in this channel can also be counted on, in particular, by companies from the clothing and cosmetics industries, with garden accessories, sports equipment and toys for children. These types of online stores can present their assortment in an interesting way, and thus gain the attention of customers.

My conclusions are based on cooperation with nearly three thousand clients that we have had or have had the pleasure to run from the very beginning of
Paraphrase Online. As an organization, we meet dozens of business owners every day and exchange hundreds of emails with people responsible for marketing. We also know everything about budgeting in most industries and about the ratio of marketing expenses to revenues in general. Ultimately, we have a preview of how certain types of activities work, and how others hinder scaling or the ordinary communication flow.

Sin # 1: Marketing specialist

The proverbial marketing specialist is a dinosaur who does not know yet that an asteroid is flying towards him. Once upon a time, a marketing one man show was possible. The competition was smaller, advertising and analytical systems easier to use and offering very limited possibilities. Ba! There were simply fewer advertising channels we needed to know about. Therefore, in many companies, several people could take care of everything and possibly replace each other. Also, hiring someone was much easier due to relatively general market demands. Someone obtained approval from the Management Board, someone launched a prom on FB with a discretionary budget, someone else ordered leaflets or started cooperation with an influencer. There was usually no time for analytics in such a system. Everything was going forward anyway, so for several years no one asked any questions, and marketing departments were covered in a spider web of stagnation.

It ended, however.

Today we are dealing with a completely different battlefield. Every team member must specialize, be well paid, and be good at what they do. It does not have to be a social media ninja or a content visionary of the decade. However, he must be a solid craftsman, which – contrary to appearances – is really difficult to do.

Everyone wants to have everything “here and now” without a minimum of persistence and without working on themselves. Finding people who know Rome wasn’t built in a day is insanely difficult.

Given the current complexity of marketing tools, it is currently not possible to be good at everything. You have to test, search, read and experience to get to know a given platform inside out. And sometimes this is not enough, because there is, for example, an algorithm update or a new company policy and … you have to do it all from scratch, and using old schemes will result in reduced effectiveness.

But why is it necessary to be good at something?

Because there are more and more companies like yours on the market. Because advertising budgets are getting higher and there are more of them. Because the number of advertising space or places does not increase as much as the number of companies that want to develop them. This implies competitiveness that requires optimization of its activities. If we rely on the same behavior for several years, we will consistently lose reach among potential customers.

Sin # 2: Budget

We often come across a situation where a company hired someone to handle Google Ads, with a payout of $ 5,000, spending $ 3,000 or $ 4,000 on the advertising budget alone …

In the case of a paid channel like Google Ads or Facebook Ads, it’s completely absurd. It is not possible to hire a specialist for $ 5,000 who, with such a low budget, will become profitable by optimizing such a campaign. Someone with such skills simply has to earn and spend more in the campaign.

With this type of relationship – where the cost of a person for paid channels is, for example, 50% of the company’s total marketing expenses, it is much better to shift the budget to a proven agency or freelancer. Quite simply – a sensibly targeted budget of $ 3,000, say $ 7,000, instead of $ 3,000, will do a lot better for most industries. Servicing this type of budget in marketing agencies is between 20 and 30% of this sum, so you will close to $ 9,000 for the whole, but you will spend twice as much on pure marketing than if you hire an in-house specialist.

Based on conversations with companies and taking over accounts that were managed in this way, I can guarantee that only then you will feel the real power of paid channels (of course, the budgets given here are hypothetical, because they largely depend on the industry).

Sin # 3: We employ the wrong places

Currently, no company can afford a situation where it relies on only one advertising platform. In the case of giants such as Facebook or Google, we must be ready sometimes for the fact that, for example, the possibility of advertising certain products within them will be limited overnight, as has been the case recently, e.g. with masks or sanitary devices.

There are also topics – such as underwear or dietary supplements that can block accounts for up to several weeks. It happens that even advertising accounts in neutral industries are suspended for a week or two, because the algorithm decided so, and the support was just lazy.

Your customers are also present in more than one channel, and marketing must make sure that you meet them wherever possible, not just where… we consider it best. In the case of outbound marketing, the more often they encounter your homogeneous message, the greater the probability that they will finally decide to buy your product or service. Shopping is definitely more impulsive than measured from top to bottom.

That is why most businesses must diversify the channels of reaching a potential customer. Depending on what we do, what budget we have and what we want to achieve, there is a more or less sensible methodology for selecting people for work. Basically, it can be presented simply by answering the question of who is worth having in the company, and what topics are better to be sent to external entities.

I know a company that has an advertising budget of $ 40,000 per month. At the same time, it employs:
– A social media specialist who runs a FB profile and deals with superficial advertisements.
– A marketing specialist who runs instagram and pinterest, orders printed materials and collects invoices from various subcontractors.
– The second marketing specialist who coordinates the filming and basically also acts as a graphic designer.
– SEO specialist who is also a copywriter, but does not have a separate budget for reasonable linking.
– Marketing Manager who embraces them all and reports them higher.

The total monthly cost of maintaining these employees, in this arrangement, is 38,000 dollars. Therefore, monthly, this company spends ~ $ 80,000 on marketing, of which only half of this money goes to advertising channels. Of course, organic work on Insta, FB, or Pinterest can be worth a lot of money. In general, however – the people from the example – do not even know if what they are doing works …

In such a case, it would be wise to reduce employment by one or two people and leave strategic resources within the company, and release the rest of the funds to additional channels that can only be selected after a meaningful audit of the activities carried out so far. You can also decide on a new division of competences and send specific people to specialized training. In this example, they should probably start with a meaningful web analytics course to delineate further axes for acquiring new competences.

In conclusion, in most cases, it will be a good idea to have a mix that will accommodate both internally employed specialists and agencies that can provide selected services. What is most important in this system, however, is the fact that in the end the costs of servicing and maintaining agencies and specialists do not exceed 30% of the company’s total marketing budget. If we hire for a company, remember that it should give us a specific skill due to its presence. The fact that we add an additional person to the project does not mean that the project will speed up and will have a positive impact on its effectiveness. It could, in principle, be the other way around.

Discrepancies in the analysis of the number of clicks and user sessions

The first differences between Google Analytics statistics and Facebook statistics can already be seen in the method of counting clicks and user sessions. So let’s start by explaining these concepts.

– A click is a parameter that sums up all users’ reactions to a given ad. So if you click the ad once and then click again, Analytics counts that as two interactions with the ad.
– The session, in turn, shows how many users clicked on the ad. Two or more clicks of the same user will be considered by the system as one session, provided that they occur within a 30-minute time window. Only when the time interval between clicks is greater, will the actions be considered as two separate sessions.

Up to this point, everything is quite simple and it would seem that there is no room for discrepancies in the counts here. And yet. Because when can you start counting users who actually reacted to the ad? Google Analytics claims that only when the user is on the page to which the ad is referring him. After all, he might have clicked the ad by accident and stopped loading or closed the tab in the browser before the landing page was fully loaded, and this is hardly an ad success. Therefore, such “incomplete” transitions are not counted in the Google Analytics system.

Facebook, on the other hand, will record each click, i.e. the user’s interaction with the ad, even if the recipient does not fully see the landing page or does not go beyond the Facebook platform at all. It is true that in the Facebook Ads Manager you can measure not only all clicks, but also clicks on links that lead beyond the platform – to the advertiser’s website. However, the Facebook system will also count those clicks that did not fully load the landing page. What is the conclusion of this? The number of clicks reported in the Facebook Ads Manager may be greater than the one we see in Google Analytics.

Tracking users between devices

Analytics is therefore much more accurate when it comes to counting sessions and clicks on a single device level. What about the situation when the user is using different devices and clicks on the ad, for example, first on the phones and then on the computer? Here, Facebook is much better at counting. This is because in order to use Facebook and thus click any advertisement there, the user must be logged in to his account. Most users use the same account on all devices, so Facebook’s algorithm has no problem distinguishing when it is dealing with the same user and when not.

In Google Analytics, the default data collection is based on cookies, and these are assigned to a specific device. Hence, each change of the device by the user qualifies him as a new person.

What does this mean in practice?

If the recipient first clicks on the ad on their phones and then reacts to it again on their computer, Google Analytics will register the ad as two separate users from different traffic sources. On the other hand, Facebook, if the recipient is logged into the same account on both of these devices, will recognize him as the same person.

Differences in attribution models

Conversion may be preceded by a variety of user actions. This means that before he or she fulfills our goal, e.g. buys an item in an online store, he may deal with the website in various ways. Let’s see it with an example. The user sees an ad for shoes from your Facebook store. He clicks it, looks at the shoes, but decides not to shop. After a few days, he decides that he needs shoes and enters a query to the Google search engine, for which he will receive an advertisement in the search engine with a link to your website. He clicks on the link, looks at the same shoes again, but decides to ask his wife for opinion before buying. In the evening, he will enter the search query again, but will not click the sponsored link, but choose an organic result, and this time he will buy shoes.

So to which interaction with the website can this purchase be attributed? Did the first contact with the offer, i.e. Facebook advertising, decide that the user has performed the assumed conversion? Or maybe the user did not remember it anymore when he searched for shoes in the search engine? So then the sponsored link would make it hit your store and make a purchase there. But after all, he did not buy shoes by entering the site through an advertising link, but through an organic result, so maybe he should be “responsible” for the conversion? On the other hand, there is a chance that the user initially had no plans to buy shoes and it was only advertising on Facebook that awakened this need in him. In this situation, the first ad would do its part to persuade him to buy.

The questions are constantly multiplying and it is not easy to find an unambiguous answer to them. Therefore, individual analytical tools may adopt different methods of calculating ad effectiveness, i.e. they have different attribution models. We will now show you what it looks like in the case of the Facebook Ad Manager and Google Analytics.

Facebook Ads Manager – attribution model

If the user makes a conversion on the page within 7 days from clicking on the ad, Facebook Ads will assign it to his ad (of course, if we have a well-configured FB pixel). The same will happen if the recipient meets the target within one day of being shown the ad. It is true that the user could later have contact with ads in other channels, but Facebook will attribute this success to itself anyway. This is currently the default attribution model for this channel and may be objectionable but legitimate. Facebook is not a strictly sales channel, so the task of advertising on this platform is to arouse the user’s desire to buy. So even if an advertisement did not lead to a purchase, but sowed a seed in the user’s mind, which then germinated and gave fruit, it is also a merit of advertising on Facebook.

For example, the recipient might want to compare prices with competitors before buying, or look for opinions about the presented product in order to finally go directly to the company’s website. However, he found it through an ad on Facebook, so the system rightly recognizes its participation in such a conversion. In addition, the Facebook system is not able to control whether the user was later exposed to ads created by other systems, so the assumption that the Facebook Ads campaign influenced the recipient’s decision is the best way to count conversions.

However, is it reliable? Unfortunately not. For this system, clicking an ad is not synonymous with loading the landing page, as we have already written about above. It’s even more difficult when counting views. Facebook’s algorithms take into account whether the advertisement was displayed to the user, but they do not measure the time that the advertisement was visible on the user’s screen. So it may turn out that yes, it appeared on the page, but it was scrolled so quickly that the user did not have a chance to even notice it, let alone read its content. Nevertheless, if the user subsequently performs a conversion within a certain period of time, Facebook counts the conversion as obtained from its ad.

Google Analytics attribution models

By default, Google Analytics uses a different attribution model – the last indirect input is counted as the one that decided to convert. What is an indirect input? Simply put, it can be any way to enter a website, except for directly typing its address in the browser bar. So if, for example, a user clicks on a Google Ads ad, but does not buy anything, and then enters the page by typing its address into the browser and converts on the page, Google Ads will receive the credit for it. Comparing this counting system with the Facebook system, it is easy to notice that the results of Facebook Ads campaigns in Analytics may be weaker than in Facebook statistics.

However, Google Analytics also offers other attribution models, and changing the default settings can significantly change the results presented by this tool. We can choose models such as:

– Last interaction – then the system assigns all credit for the conversion to the channel that the user used immediately before the conversion. This setting makes sense when your ad is targeting people who are determined to buy, not those at an earlier point in the funnel.
– Last Google Ads Click – All 100% “responsibility” for the conversion is attributed to the last ad displayed by the Google Ads system that the recipient clicked before converting. It is worth using this model only when you want to compare the effectiveness of Google Ads. Does not apply to statistics for Facebook ads.
– First Interaction – In this model, Analytics considers all credit for conversion to go to the channel where the user first encountered our site. It can be used in this case when we want to build brand awareness with advertising.
– Linear – considers 1 conversion = 100% and grants equal percentage of share to all channels through which the user came into contact with the page. So if he first saw an ad on Facebook, then clicked a sponsored Google Ads link and made a purchase, he will attribute 50% of the value of this conversion to Facebook Ads, and the other 50% to Google Ads. It is best to use this model when each user contact with the website is important to us.
– Timing – assigns different conversion shares to channels, depending on how many days before the conversion was done by the user. The closer the contact with a given channel is in time, the more important that channel is.
– Including items – this model also divides the share between channels that are on the purchasing path, but does not take time into account. Most often, in this model, 40% of the conversion value of the first interaction is assigned, 40% of the last interaction, and the remaining 20% ​​is divided equally among the other channels on the purchasing path.

Google Analytics or Facebook Ads – which statistics should be taken into account?

Advertisers often try to unify the results obtained from both tools as much as possible. You can, for example, change the attribution in Facebook Ads so that conversions are counted only within 1 day of clicking on the ad. However, before taking such steps, it is worth analyzing your business and industry or tracking the average length of your audience’s conversion path. Sometimes it’s not necessarily about fixing the discrepancy, but about accepting that both Google Analytics and Facebook are complementary tools that can be used in parallel to better understand your business with web analytics and make better marketing decisions.

SEO – the basis for advertising a furniture store

It is impossible to hide – nowadays, in many furniture stores you can find very similar or even the same goods at very similar prices. Even if you propose something unusual, it will be very difficult for you to break your offer among a huge number of products and sellers. How do customers find furniture stores? Often via Google. Sometimes they search on the basis of very general terms (eg “Los Angeles furniture store”), other times more precisely (eg “modern New York furniture”, “Boston-sized kitchen furniture” or even “eared armchair with a footrest”). Usually they click on the first few search results, rarely (only about 25% of the time) looking at their second page. Therefore, a high position in Google results is something every seller should strive for!

This is what website positioning is all about. It is a set of activities aimed at improving the visibility of the website on the Internet. Positioning is carried out on the basis of a well-defined list of keywords and a carefully developed strategy. These words should be skillfully placed in the content of the page, its meta tags and attributes. It is also worth making sure that links to it from other websites, preferably reputable and thematically related to it, are directed to it.

Keywords (phrases, queries) should be selected in a specific way. Although the company’s main goal may be to be in the first place in the search results for the phrase “New York furniture”, positioning your site only for this phrase will not bring you tangible results. Long tail keywords work much better, i.e. detailed, several-word queries similar to those mentioned above. They are much less searched, but at the same time much less competitive. This in turn means that it is easier to get to the top of the results. The positioning strategy for long tail phrases has one more benefit. They are entered in the search engine mainly by people determined to buy, including those looking for specific products. Therefore, if you can offer them a favorable offer, there is a high probability that they will take advantage of it.

It is best to hire specialists to conduct positioning. You can create a new position in the company or decide to work with an agency. It is worth remembering that the latter solution is usually much cheaper. However, it is important to carry out all activities systematically and thoughtfully – positioning is definitely not something that can be done “by the way”, especially in a serious company. How to make your website more visible? It is a combination of different types of activities. However, an important role here is played, among others, by content marketing, i.e. content marketing. The website of a furniture store is an ideal place to run a blog about interior design, trends, popular materials and their properties, arrangement styles and other related topics. It is quite easy to smuggle in many keywords in published articles, which affects the position of the page in the search results. One should only make sure that the website does not contain duplicate content, which will disqualify it in the race for good visibility on Google. In order for the advertising of a furniture store to be even more effective with this method, it is worth keeping your finger on the pulse when it comes to the latest trends and topics that interest customers. Thanks to a variety of online tools (including, for example, the free Google Trends service), you can check which topics and terms are most frequently searched for.

In addition, the very structure of the website is of great importance for positioning, so it should be constantly optimized, including in the field of code order, structure, appearance and content. You should also not forget about the exhaustive descriptions of categories and product descriptions in the online store (if any) and internal (between individual subpages of the website) and external linking.

SEO for a furniture store – why is it worth it?

Taking care of SEO should be a priority for every store and company that cares about a good image and attracting new customers. Positioning also plays an important role in advertising a furniture store. It is worth taking care of seriously mainly due to:
– the ability to reach customers looking for specific information and products,
– increasing brand recognition and prestige, which can be extremely important in the marketing of a furniture store,
– long-term effects – a well-positioned website helps to constantly acquire new customers,
– side effects in the form of a well-structured, optimized and user-friendly website and valuable content on the website and company blog.

Thanks to positioning, you will build a strong brand and reach your potential customers. It is now a primary marketing tool and a foundation for other activities that we will discuss below.

Google Ads – effective advertising of a furniture store on the Internet

Google Ads is another good solution for advertising a furniture store. The platform offers a number of paid promotion opportunities that are useful for both stationary and online activities. What tools can be used?

Google text ad (sponsored links)
Ads that appear just above or in between and look very similar to organic search results are sponsored links. Placing such a link in the search engine costs nothing in itself. However, you will pay for each redirection to the store’s website – i.e. for clicking the link. This is called Pay Per Click (PPC) settlement. The price of a single click varies greatly – it depends on the competitiveness of the keyword, i.e. how many people want to advertise within a given query, but also on e.g. your ad quality score. The advantage of a text ad is the possibility of obtaining immediate results comparable to those provided by careful positioning.

Product Listing Ads
Sometimes, ads for specific products along with a photo, name and price also appear in the search results. This is called Product Listing Ads (PLA). It is worth using them to promote specific goods from the offer. In this case, you also pay in the PPC settlement, and the customer redirected to the store often makes a purchase, which is why PLA campaigns can be very beneficial. In fact, it is currently the fastest growing advertising channel for online stores.

Graphic ad (display, banner)
When browsing various websites and websites, you often come across graphic ads, often related to your interests or previous Google queries? This is the banner campaign. Advertising of a furniture store conducted in this way may prove useful in the context of building brand recognition. Campaign settings allow you to refine the target audience of your content, which increases its effectiveness.

Remarketing
Remarketing is similar banners targeted at those who have already visited the store. Depending on the selected settings, they can show up to former customers or only to those who have not made a purchase. If you run an online store, you can use dynamic banners. Then, the recipients of the advertisements will be shown previously viewed products or other similar products (e.g. from the same category).

Google Ads in advertising for a furniture store – why is it worth it?

Google Ads is used by both novices and the greatest representatives of the industry – including those who managed to achieve the highest positions in search results. Why? Because it just pays off. In addition, advertising for a furniture store with Google is:
– several types of campaigns,
– immediate results,
– the ability to reach a well-defined target group and customers looking for specific products,
– favorable settlement model – Pay Per Click,
– the ability to analyze the effectiveness of the campaign thanks to statistics and conversion path tracking.

These types of campaigns can produce really good results. Condition? Consistent and skillful actions. Therefore, advertising for a furniture store via Google should be supervised by professionals.

Advertising of a furniture store via Facebook Ads

Facebook is a very important medium, but still remains underestimated by some companies. Your competition is definitely there, so it is definitely worth joining. Importantly, users often look there for information that is relevant to them. The company profile on the platform is a tool for communicating with customers and a determinant of its authenticity, so it is certainly not worth giving up.

Your own Facebook page can be used to publish news, present specific products and collect opinions or suggestions directly from customers. In addition, it enables paid advertising of a furniture store. You can use it to direct users directly to the store or to your fanpage, as well as gain new “fans”. There are many possibilities, also in terms of targeting. Thanks to this, promotional content can go exactly where you want.

Facebook Ads for a furniture store – why is it worth it?

Facebook Ads allows you to reach millions of potential customers. It is perfect for advertising a furniture store, as well as many other types of business, mainly due to:
– several campaign formats,
– affordable prices and no minimum budget for advertisers,
– the possibility of precise targeting, i.e. reaching a specific target group,
– various billing methods – e.g. for clicks or impressions,
– the possibility of creating the company’s image.

Facebook ads can be very effective, especially when done wisely. In addition, being on the platform will be useful for establishing and maintaining relationships with customers and increasing brand awareness.