How to enter a new market using PPC advertising | Case Study

How to enter a new market? This is the question lots of retailers who successfully promoted their products within certain regions frequently ask. Marketers tend to believe that display advertising is the easiest way to market a product when entering a new market. In this article, we share the case of an international player and prove that PPC is an effective tool that can increase transactions and maintain positive ROMI.

Client

Decathlon is a manufacturer and a large network of sporting goods stores worldwide. The brand comprises of 1,600 stores in more than 60 countries. 

Philosophy of the company: to make sports accessible to everyone.

Challenge

• to bring the brand to the Ukrainian market;
• ensure a constant increase in transactions on the website, maintaining positive ROMI.

These days western retailers are actively entering the Ukrainian market. Decathlon first announced the opening of their first stores in the spring of 2019. In Ukraine, they started to develop two business areas at once: 

• Retail: the brand is present online and has their offline stores open globally
• Production: The production of Soccer (Football) goalkeeper gloves, cross-country skis, hockey sticks and the upper part of hiking boots had been launched and continues to grow today. These items are supplied to Decathlon stores worldwide, including Decathlon Ukraine

Our team was responsible for the development and implementation of the PPC strategy of the Decathlon online store.

Getting started

We researched the market capacity and existing demand. Emerging markets like in Ukraine have greater long-term growth potential. Statista forecasts that the Ukrainian audience and consumers in the “Sport” category will grow by ~ 80%, from 2.8 million to 4.6 million people by 2024.

Solution

The Ukrainian audience were yet to become familiar with the Decathlon brand, while we faced the task of maximizing the brand’s presence in the SERP without losing profit. That’s why we decided to start working with the audience that has already formed a demand for certain categories of sporting goods.

We focused on introducing Decathlon to the consumers that were looking for sports goods without being tied to a specific brand. Search campaigns and Google Shopping campaigns were a perfect fit for this task. That’s why, we used them at the very beginning of the promotion, also dividing the work into three stages. New tools were gradually added.

The reach was not our goal at the start. We aimed at making sure the website was present to users who were ready to buy here and now.

First Stage: Getting acquainted with the market

Results of the first stage

Transactions +371,97%

Revenue +286,27%

Second Stage: Launching smart strategies

Results of the second stage

Transactions +89,08%

Revenue +54,00%

Third Stage: Maximum of presence in the SERP 

Along with that, during this period, the Decathlon website was moving to a new CMS platform, and feeds were updated. During this time, we had to reduce the activities aimed at promotion, but later we received a faster website and eliminated errors that accumulated during the first year of the Ukraine online store being active.

Results of the third stage

Transactions +60.36%

Revenue +92.91 %

Overall results of the three stages

What’s next

Our goal for the next period is to boost the revenue of the Decathlon online store. We plan to achieve the set KPIs by:

• Optimisation of the tools that are currently in use;
• New additions: Google (Local Campaigns, Discovery Ads, Shopping New Customer Acquisition), Facebook (Dynamic Prospecting);
• Expanding the semantics and adding new language versions of advertising campaigns.
• Testing smart strategies for the set goals (tCPA and tROAS strategies will be used);
• Online media support for major seasonal brand events.