Caraway Increased Revenue 196% Despite Low Product Inventory
Our SEM strategy grew Caraway Home's non-brand conversions 194% and revenue 196% year over year, capturing demand through the 2021 holiday season even as bakeware inventory ran short.
Caraway Results
Key Results
Services: eCommerce, SEM, Discovery, Paid Search, Shopping (PLA)
Non-Brand Conversions
194%
Increase year over year.
Revenue
196%
Increase year over year.
Impression Share
88%
Smart Shopping during Black Friday.
The Challenge
Caraway Home is a fast-growing cookware brand with a devoted following and a vibrant direct-to-consumer sales model. At the time of this campaign, Caraway Home had faced difficult economic conditions over the prior two years. Supply-chain issues stemming from the global pandemic had affected businesses around the world, and the squeeze appeared unlikely to subside in the near future. But Caraway was an ambitious and promising company, determined to launch new products and continue finding new customers.
After a successful run exclusively selling cookware, Caraway introduced its bakeware line ahead of the 2021 holiday season. Despite inventory shortages hampering new customer acquisition, the brand wanted to capture demand in its new market during the busiest sales weeks of the year.
Our Solution
We’re accustomed to assisting clients through inventory issues, new product launches, and holiday sales pushes. But addressing all three situations simultaneously while driving Caraway Home’s SEM campaigns toward its ambitious goals required the utmost diligence.
We recommend that businesses start preparing for the holiday sales push early. For Caraway, we:
- Structured, optimized, and launched all non-brand search, Smart Shopping, and Discovery campaigns in time for the online shopping surge around Thanksgiving weekend.
- Updated evergreen ad copy and implemented holiday messaging and sales pricing.
- Ensured accurate keyword-to-campaign mapping and restructured keywords by match type for efficiency.
- Created new Google Shopping campaigns for Caraway Home’s bakeware line so we could optimize it separately from the brand’s other product lines, then put extra spending emphasis on bakeware ahead of Thanksgiving weekend.
- Used Google’s campaign simulation tools to find the highest daily budget that maintained our performance goals before diminishing returns. As search demand grew, we incrementally increased spend so the campaigns were never budget-limited and Caraway Home’s bakeware received the highest possible visibility.
- Actively monitored each item’s availability and collaborated closely with Caraway Home when products were about to go out of stock. Navy-colored bakeware sold particularly fast, so we adjusted ad messaging on the fly.
- Updated ad copy to encourage pre-orders when items became unavailable, allowing the campaigns to continue delivering conversions and capturing impression share for bakeware-related keywords as inventory became scarce.
Client Overview
Caraway Home designs and manufactures ceramic-coated cookware and bakeware. The brand has built a reputation for appealing, practical designs and high-quality construction. It also received a boost from a popular cooking influencer who prominently used its products in her videos.
By the 2021 holiday campaign, we had worked with Caraway Home since June 2020. Our team managed its SEM services, including search and shopping campaigns in Google Ads and Microsoft Ads.
The Results
Even with intense holiday competition and inventory constraints, our approach to Caraway’s bakeware launch succeeded. Caraway’s non-brand bakeware Google Shopping campaigns captured 88% of impression share for their keywords over the holiday weekend.
The bakeware push helped cap a remarkable year for Caraway Home’s account, producing significant conversion gains without sacrificing efficiency. Year-over-year non-brand conversions increased 194% while revenue increased 196%, with a 2% increase in return on ad spend (ROAS). We exceeded our scaling and efficiency goals, showing that the right strategy can bolster customer acquisition even with low inventory.
“OuterBox has played a pivotal role in maximizing Caraway’s return on our digital media investments. The team at OuterBox is thoughtful, responsive, and experts in their craft.”
Jordan Nathan, CEO
Let’s Work Together
Get in touch with our team today to see how we can take your marketing to the next level.
"*" indicates required fields
"*" indicates required fields