Introduction

Hey guys,

Aharon here from Hype Digital. Today we’ll be discussing how you can combine your PPC and CRO efforts to get the best outcome for both.

People see these as completely separate parts of the business, but in truth, the more overlap there is, the better the results will be.

Weekly Insight

Picture the following scenario:

You’re scrolling through Instagram and see an ad for a really cool hoodie from a streetwear brand that you follow.

The ad screams ‘engage with me.’ It is interactive and speaks to the lifestyle and culture of the business. The videography is great and there’s a gleaming ‘Shop Now’ CTA button at the bottom.

You click the button to go check out the hoodie on the website, only to be redirected to a PDP (product display page) showing a gray, static, boring hoodie.

“But this wasn’t what the ad showed???”

Off you go, never to seen from again. The ad has been wasted and your trust in the brand has decreased. The ad and the product simply did not align.

—

This exact scenario actually happened.

We noticed that a client of ours was investing heavily in driving traffic to the site through highly-engaging Facebook/Instagram ads.

The campaigns were very successful and traffic increased like crazy, specifically to the PDP/Collections pages.

However, we noticed a disconnect when it came to CRO.

The CRO team, unaware of the PPC team’s efforts had been running tests across the home page, checkout page, add to cart page etc. and had not really been doing too much on the PDP - which is exactly where all the traffic was being sent.

The team further noticed that the PDP is where biggest drop-off was happening across user journey. Why was this happening?

The answer was simple - the Ads being shown and the Products being displayed were completely misaligned.

Ads → lifestyle, expert videography, strategic copy, emphasis on culture etc.

Website → Gray, static imagery

Example:

Once we understood what was happening, the CRO team began running tests on the PDP, aligning the tests with what the ads were depicting, and the results increased drastically.

Conclusion: It is extremely important to know your brand and align this with everything else you do. Now, the PPC and CRO teams are in daily communication to ensure there is complete alignment across the Ads and the Website content.

Test of the Week

Test: On all major collections pages, we added a countdown banner bar with a limited offering , alongside a CTA to redirect users to the ‘vault’ (aka the ‘promotions’ or ‘sales’ page).

Summary: The PPC team was promoting the vault heavily as no one knew what this was and was driving traffic to this page. The CRO team wanted to simultaneously run these countdown banners across all main pages to send additional traffic to the vault and complement the PPC campaigns.

At the same time, the client’s team implemented a special promotion on the vault page.

Result: The combination of the 3 forces working together (PPC, CRO & client’s promotion) increased Vault Add to Cart clicks by 27.54% and more than doubled the overall revenue.

Conclusion

In conclusion, aligning your PPC and CRO teams is crucial for driving consistent, high-quality results. As we saw in the PDP misalignment example, small disconnects between ads and website content can lead to lost opportunities. But when these teams work in sync, like with the Vault test, you can drive massive improvements in engagement and conversions. Remember, constant communication and alignment between your teams is key to making sure both efforts are supporting each other. Reach out if you want to learn more or discuss how to align your PPC and CRO strategies for maximum impact!