National Tire Retailer Increases Store Visits and E-Commerce Sales with Simpli.fi's Programmatic Solutions

Advertiser Overview
•  National tire retailer with a large presence throughout the U.S.
•  Sought to improve their programmatic performance
•  Launched a large-scale holiday campaign to drive sales in Q4 2021Results
•  20,819 Total In-Person Visits
•  24,971 Online Sales

 

DIRECT PROGRAMMATIC STRATEGY

The market for replacement tires in the U.S. was estimated to be nearly $43 billion in 2019 (Statista). A national tire retailer wanted to grow their share of this massive market by increasing advertising efforts to drive store traffic and e-commerce sales. The brand decided to work directly with a programmatic partner for a complex Q4 2021 campaign, and they chose Simpli.fi based on previous success and the ability to deliver results at scale. Considering the high average cost of tires and the competitiveness of the industry, the advertiser hoped to deliver a high number of conversions at a low cost relative to the price of the tires. In short, ROI was the main focus.

For the Q4 2021 campaign, the brand took a two-pronged approach to maximize sales at the end of the year. Overall, the advertiser sought to:

1. drive in-person visits to more than 1,000 locations, and
2. increase e-commerce sales on their website.

Simpli.fi worked with the advertiser to develop a strategy that would accomplish the brand’s goals by precisely reaching a relevant audience and tracking conversions, with a mix of OTT/CTV and display ads. The team used addressable targeting and location-based advertising to drive in-store visits, and behavioral targeting tactics with Dynamic Creative to boost e-commerce sales. In addition to the three-month campaign, the advertiser wanted to ramp up their advertising for the Black Friday/Cyber Monday weekend and Christmas holiday season to drive activity during the busiest shopping periods of the year.

 

NATIONWIDE LOCATION-BASED TARGETING

First, the advertiser wanted to take advantage of Simpli.fi’s addressable programmatic solution to reach a relevant audience at the household-level. They used Simpli.fi’s Addressable Audience Curation tool to curate an audience in real-time based on location data and by choosing from more than 3,000 demographic variables. The audience totaled more than 6.38 million addresses across the U.S. who were known auto parts purchasers and were located in a variety of metros selected by the advertiser. Simpli.fi set-up the campaign to target regions based on store status, including stores with leading sales, new locations, and levels of competitiveness defined by the brand’s internal data.

After establishing the audience, Simpli.fi’s Addressable Geo-Fencing solution used GPS data paired with plat lines to match each address to the exact physical location, shape, and size of the property. The system then automatically built a target fence around each property to serve display and OTT/CTV ads.

In addition to addressable programmatic, the advertiser deployed Simpli.fi’s Geo-Fencing solution. This enabled them to conquest competitors by targeting users who recently visited other nearby businesses that sell tires, including large chains, local suppliers, and auto repair shops.

Simpli.fi recommended the Geo-Fence Finder tool to instantly identify ideal competitor locations to target such as Walmart Auto Care Centers, Midas, and smaller local automotive businesses. The tool identified and automatically built geo-fence target zones around approximately 18,000 locations within 5 miles of the advertiser’s retail stores. Simpli.fi then served OTT/CTV ads and display ads to smartphones, tablets, and desktops of users who visited these locations.

In order to attribute in-store conversions, the advertiser used Conversion Zones to track visits at the individual store-level. Simpli.fi drew Conversion Zones around more than 1,000 of the advertiser’s locations to measure the total store visits attributable to the campaign. Furthermore, Simpli.fi’s reporting showed many insightful trends, including which geo-fences and households drove traffic to each Conversion Zone at the Zip+4-level.

 

COMPREHENSIVE BEHAVIORAL TARGETING

For the e-commerce goal of the campaign, the advertiser used Simpli.fi’s robust behavioral targeting tactics to reach users based on their actions online. Keyword Search Retargeting and Keyword Contextual Targeting allowed the brand to reach users who were actively looking for and reading about content related to tires and automobiles. Simpli.fi implemented 1,195 keywords including various inquiries for tires, specific tire manufacturers, and car maintenance to serve display and OTT/CTV ads to users across their devices. Additionally, the brand leveraged Site Retargeting to remain in front of users who recently visited their website.

The advertiser also decided to use Simpli.fi’s Dynamic Creative solution to customize ad content based on the products that users viewed. Simpli.fi implemented custom product feeds and the advertiser used Simpli.fi’s Dynamic Creative templates so that users received display ads based on the brand of tire they looked at on the advertiser’s website. Finally, conversion pixels placed on the website measured online conversions and identified which tactics were most effective at driving e-commerce sales.

 

SEASONAL HOLIDAY CAMPAIGN MAXIMIZES CONVERSIONS

The advertiser was excited with the progress of the campaign throughout the fall. As a result, they allocated an incremental budget of $300k for seasonal holiday promotions. Simpli.fi set up dedicated tactics using the same proven strategy to deliver display ads with messaging specific to Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas.

During Black Friday and Cyber Monday, the campaign drove 806 online sales and 5,213 in-person visits in just seven days. Additionally, during eight days of spend around Christmas, Simpli.fi reported 653 online sales and 7,966 in-store visits. Both of these campaigns drove a large volume of sales and visits in a short amount of time.

 

LOW COST PER STORE VISIT AND ONLINE SALES

Overall, the brand was highly pleased with the results of the Q4 2021 campaign with Simpli.fi. They measured more than 20,819 in-person visits across all of their stores, and total online sales reached 24,971. Most notably, the OTT/CTV tactics achieved a Cost Per Online Sale of $139.61 and Cost Per In-Store Visit of $74.54. Additionally, the dynamic display tactics averaged to a Cost Per Online Sale of just $14.31.

Given the cost of four new tires, these figures were incredibly successful. At the end of the year, the advertiser informed Simpli.fi that November and December of 2021 were their best months ever in terms of sales and performance for their advertising campaigns.

Key Campaign Result Insights
•  Dynamic display ads averaged a $14.31 Cost Per Online Sale
•  Dynamic display ads reached a total of 7.1M unique users
•  OTT/CTV ads averaged a $139.61 Cost Per Online Sale, and improved significantly over the campaign flight, finishing at a $78.50 seven-day average driving significant ROI
•  OTT/CTV ads reached 1.3M unique users
•  Most online sales took place on Friday and Monday, while the weekends often resulted in fewer sales
•  Fridays were the top days for in-store visits
•  The week between Christmas and the New Year showed the largest increase in total conversions
•  The winter season had a great impact on sales, with “snow tires” and “winter tires” being among the highest performing keywords
•  The weekend of Black Friday performed the best overall

Interested in driving foot traffic to multiple locations and increasing e-commerce sales?
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