The Challenge
To globally launch MomoTop – a new mobile top up brand – via paid search channels (Google, Yahoo, Bing), targeting expats living in other countries who want to send mobile top ups to their friends and family back home. We would primarily target senders, but would also need to have an influence over receivers.
The key goal was to boost sales of the mobile top up products, as well as creating new account set ups. Success would be measured by an increase in sales and new account creations, but we were also looking for an increase in conversion rates and decrease in cost-per-conversion as awareness of the MomoTop brand was raised.
The Strategy
First we took a long, hard look at the competitors in the space, and determined what it was they were doing to draw in senders and receivers. We found that none of them were particularly adventurous in terms of their ad copy and keywords, often not focusing on the personal value that contacting home could bring to the audience. Copy was mechanical, unemotional, and too concerned with sales.
We also saw that keyword sets weren’t expansive or geared to the long tail. We thought about how we could build out extensive keyword sets covering ‘send to’ and ‘send from’ countries, the various mobile phone networks, and different nuances of terms – ie ‘mobile phone’ versus ‘mobile’, ‘phone’ or ‘cell’, and ‘top up’ versus ‘recharge’ or ‘charge’.
When we came to write our ad copy, we wanted to push acquisition with a softer sales message. We chose to go down the emotional route, as well as highlighting Momo’s USPs. This would tangibly tap into the needs of our audience, and offer them a solution to make it easier being away from family and friends.
We began by researching the space to understand which search terms were popular, and which were triggering ads for competitors. We analysed language used in ad copy, and used these insights to inform our approach when writing our own.
We built out multiple campaigns for many permutations of searches which could be adapted quickly as and when they launched in specific countries, or when new mobile networks were launched in those countries.
To do this, we broke out keyword sets into high volume generic terms (such as ‘mobile phone top up), longer tail variations of those generics (ie ‘top up mobile phones abroad), and variations of ‘top up’ (ie ‘recharge’) and ‘mobile phones’ (ie ‘cell phones’). The aim of this was to get an understanding by territory of what the most common phrases being searched for were, and which would be the most likely to lead to sales.
We also built out extensive campaigns focused around locations and mobile phone networks, as well as campaigns that combined the two. We set up campaigns with keyword phrases that contained the specific ‘sent from’ and ‘send to’ country (ie ‘send top up from UK to India’), as well as setting up a brand campaign which had zero search volume as the brand had not been established.
We also performed lots of ad copy tests, using variations of ‘top up’ and ‘recharge’ in the ad copy, emotional phrases such as ‘send to loved ones’ or ‘send top up to family and friends’, as well as summarising key USPs such as ‘quick, 100% secure’, and also showcasing the extensive range of networks supported (‘300+ networks across 100 countries’).
The Results
The results were excellent in terms of both driving brand visits and brand sales. On average, brand sales increased by 44 per cent month on month over a period of eight months. Brand awareness was quickly demonstrated too; people saw our ads, clicked, then returned on a branded click (paid, organic, and direct) to buy. We could see via Google Analytics assisted conversions that people were clicking on ads triggered by non-branded searches, then actually converting on a brand click. Over 23 per cent of all sales came from an unbranded PPC click that influenced a branded sale. Similarly, 24 per cent of all account creations started out as an unbranded PPC click.