PPC for retail - the Summit difference

As the UK’s only retail-focused digital marketing and ecommerce specialists, we understand why you’re constantly scrutinising your paid search campaigns. But how can you improve? Can you quantify and justify the performance of PPC within the multi-channel customer journey? Do you have the knowledge to anticipate changes within search, or the ability to react effectively?

Summit can help you figure out the status of your PPC activities and decide what to do next. Using a combination of in-house expertise, sector knowledge, proprietary technology (Stingray) and statistical analysis, we can make your PPC budgets go further.

Summit transformed our entire approach to PPC  

— NEIL COLLINS, Online
    Marketing Manager at Comet

PPC for retail – Summit expertise

PPC for retail – Summit expertise Stingray gives you a single, real-time interface to manage and optimise your core direct response channels

To ensure you gain greater returns, our 30 paid search specialists apply a variety of proven methods to your campaigns. These include retail-specific optimisation techniques, creative treatments and tactics tailored to mobile, and competitor monitoring across a matrix of activities, pricing and propositions. In addition, our account management structures reflect your internal business and category teams to ensure we maintain clear lines of reporting and responsibility.

This accumulated knowledge and tailored approach mean that we can devise and deliver cost-efficient campaigns that:

  • Understand your customers
    We assess the decision-making process of your customers and use the learning to influence the content, placement and frequency of your ads
  • Handle large volumes of your keywords
    With your product portfolio in perpetual motion, keyword allocation must keep pace so we automate the process using inputs from your own onsite search and sources such as Hitwise
  • Manage and respond to your promotions
    We endorse the following campaign management processes and response mechanisms:
    • using your product feed data to automate campaign creation
      dynamically inserting price, category and range messaging
    • reallocating your budget against forecast returns
    • analysing campaigns using your bespoke version of our attribution model
  • Engage your trading teams
  • Support your local and multi-channel marketing activities
  • Attract supplier funding 
  • Help your commercial decision-making
We provide real-time insights and weekly reports that you can use to modify your activities, plus training courses on search techniques and developments that improve competitivenes.

PPC for retail – Summit technologies

Our close working relationship with the major search engines, including Google, means that we are often involved in the beta testing of new products and technologies. Where appropriate, we can use our learning to facilitate first-move advantage on your behalf – either through improvements to your own site's search facilities or by updating our proprietary Stingray technology.

Comprising a suite of tracking, reporting and marketing tools, Stingray gives you a single view of all your online activities. In terms of paid search capabilities, Stingray features a number of components capable of transforming your campaigns:

PPC for retail – Summit technologies Portfolio Manager keeps your campaigns completely up to date
  • Portfolio Manager: Uses a product feed and Google API to automatically refresh your entire PPC campaign (including creative messaging and keywords) each day against stock, price and margin
  • URL checker: Based on live campaigns and real-time product information, this tool reports on the availability of your PPC landing pages and allows you to eradicate '404' errors and stop wasting money on promoting non-existent stock
  • Account auditor: Using over 60 best practice guidelines to assess the hygiene and effectiveness of your PPC accounts, this auditing tool automatically reviews each one and updates you on its status
  • Keyword generator: Uses its powerful synonym engine to analyse current campaigns, identify gaps and propose additional keyword opportunities

PPC for retail – Summit insight

PPC for retail – Summit insight Summit insight helps you find the right balance

Our statistical insight team supports your PPC decision-making by offering:

  • Forecasting and modelling: Our budgeting and forecasting models take into account retail-specific factors such as seasonality and become more accurate over time as we add historical data
  • Customer behaviour analysis: Our forensic insights regarding time to purchase, browsing versus shopping, category behaviour, and click journeys explain how your customers behave and why they purchase
  • Attribution: To create your bespoke attribution model, we analyse the position and role of PPC within each channel's customer journey and then attribute spend across all of the channels
  • Creative testing models: We run multivariate testing of PPC creative treatments, measuring the click-through and conversion rates to maximise your return on ad spend

PPC in practice - Comet

PPC Challenge

Their challenge

How to promote Comet’s ever-changing portfolio of products and prices through PPC campaigns to drive the most-effective coverage and best conversion.

Our solution

To use a direct product feed from Comet to generate up to the minute PPC adverts based on stock, price, availability, margin and customer reviews.

The results

Summit's innovative solution generated a massive increase in weekly sales for Comet through improved PPC coverage and relevancy, increased click through rate and a reduction in budget wastage.

Further reading:

If you are interested in working
with us, call Andy Brown

on 01430 876 876 x401

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