Conversions

B&Q hammers out a new strategy to drive sales

B&Q

Shopping ads deliver a 7x increase in return on ad spend (ROAS), helping to drive sales.

Hammering away at home improvement may not be your idea of fun, but for lots of people across the country, it’s nothing less than a perfect weekend. For anyone who gets a kick out of kitchen design or pepped up at the prospect of laying a patio, the iconic orange brand of B&Q means one thing: better homes and gardens.

Aiming to make a few home improvements of their own, B&Q decided to diversify the channels they were using for performance marketing. Their media agency, Merkle, were keen to drill down into shopping ads, a strategy they’d used on other platforms and were keen to test on Pinterest. Knowing that shopping ads produce 5.5x¹ more conversions when used in a campaign, Pinterest seemed like an ideal choice.

Ultimately, B&Q’s main goal was to drive sales and diversify their revenue streams. Helping to determine the effectiveness of their ads, return on ad spend (ROAS) was selected as the campaign’s key KPI.

Finding pockets of success
Kicking off the campaign, B&Q created product Pins before setting up product groups and promoting them as shopping ads to boost engagement with Pinners. Believing that a long-term approach was likely to be more effective, B&Q focused on finding pockets of success before optimising the campaign to capitalise on these opportunities.

B&Q chose not to implement a flighted marketing strategy. Instead, they crafted a “business as usual” approach to shopping ads, using both always-on and seasonal product categories to help drive sales throughout the year.

“

A great example of how the partnership between B&Q, Merkle and Pinterest has driven both amazing results and an improved customer experience. Pinterest Shopping has enabled us to provide consumers a seamless experience from inspiration to purchase.”

Edgar Mason,
Client Service Director, Merkle EMEA

A solid foundation for increased sales

Pinterest became an effective performance marketing channel for B&Q. By tweaking their shopping ads on an ongoing basis, their return on ad spend increased month on month, culminating in an overall increase of almost 700%.

Tips for your next campaign
Try these Pinterest best practices to get more out of your ads:

1.
Use lifestyle images in your product feed to improve the performance of your shopping ads.

2.
Optimise your campaigns twice a week, if not more frequently, to build on opportunities you identify along the way.

3.
Run prospecting and remarketing campaigns to reach Pinners at every stage of the sales funnel.

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