TMI’s Fenty US Paid Search Restructure, Considered “Best in Class” by Google, Delivers on Returns in Highly Competitive Market
The Client
After years of experimenting with the best-of-the-best in the beauty industry, Rihanna realised there weren’t products that performed across all skin types and tones. This inspired her to create Fenty Beauty & Fenty Skin. Fenty Beauty’s mission statement is “so that women everywhere would be included,”. It focuses on creating products that cater for a wide range of hard-to-match skin tones, that work for all skin types, and are available in universal shades.
Final Results
- Average Cost Per Click (CPC) decreased from $1.05 to $0.76 (a reduction of 27%)
- Search Impression Share increased from 45.52% on average to 64.13%, an increase of 41% year-on-year (YoY)
- Increased return on advertising spend (ROAS) by +19% YoY from $3.71 to $4.42.
The Challenge
The goal of this project was to consolidate our account as much as possible to simplify day-to-day operations, maximise data inputs at the ad group and campaign level, and strengthen the one-to-one relationship between keyword inputs and text ad outputs to improve Quality Score and thus increase impression share and decrease average CPCs.
Strategically, this meant undergoing a detailed analysis of keyword-level performance to understand how our target audience was searching for the Fenty brand and its products. We needed to perform rigorous research to determine the highest converting search terms across channels (inclusive of search and shopping) to ensure we have full coverage of these keywords.
The Intervention
We considered the Fenty site structure and revenue contributions by product type when determining the campaign set up, splitting out ad groups and keywords by strategic product categories, such as foundations, cheek products, and cleansers. We then isolated top search volume and revenue drivers into their own campaigns to better control budget allocation.
Aligning with the Hagakure method (a concept that embraces automation to create more efficient results), we also opted to consolidate keyword match types that were previously split by campaign to reduce cross-campaign cannibalization and streamline data inputs for stronger algorithmic resonance.
As a result of the above initiatives, we reduced the number of USA campaigns from 45 to 24, and the number of ad groups from 1,234 to 361.
There was also a strong focus on improved copywriting and stronger Ad Relevance. Our team implemented this by tailoring individual Responsive Search Ads (RSAs) to their respective ad groups and by leveraging more automation such as Dynamic Keyword Insertion and Automatically Created Assets to align with Google’s best practices.
In addition to restructuring our campaigns, we also prioritised more strategic audiences by creating auto-imported CRM lists and Pixel-driven site visitors lists for each product category. We applied these new audiences in Observation mode to better inform the algorithm at the campaign-level.
The implementation of this strategy inevitably meant disruption for the entire Paid Search channel, which was the top revenue-generating channel for Fenty sitewide in Q1 2022. To alleviate as much of this disruption as possible, we developed a phased implementation plan inclusive of in-depth QA documentation, planned go-live dates per campaign, and detailed plans for bidding strategy optimization.
To minimise disruption and create a smooth transition for the Paid Search channel, we strategically overlapped old and new campaigns. We achieved this by introducing our new campaigns on an Enhanced CPC bidding strategy with low bids to start, gradually increasing these bids as the campaign ramped up. At the same time, we were ramping down the old campaigns (which were on a Target ROAS, or tROAS, strategy) but increasing the ROAS targets to reduce search volume gradually.
Once the new campaign reached a minimum threshold of conversions, we would upgrade to the next bidding strategy until it was also on tROAS. Once this new campaign reached a level of stability, its older counterpart was turned off.
The Results
As a result of this strategic, phased roll-out plan, Paid Search maintained its position as the sitewide top revenue-generator during Q2 2022 when the bulk of this implementation took place.
Here are our results YoY H2 (July – Dec 2022 versus July – Dec 2021):
- Average Cost Per Click decreased from $1.05 to $0.76 (a 27% reduction), achieving our goal of consistently driving CPCs under $1.
- Search Impression Share increased by 41% YoY, from 45.52% on average to 64.13%, achieving our goal of increased SERP authority.
- We saw significant increases in efficiency, increasing ROAS by +19% YoY from $3.71 to $4.42.
TMI “Best in Class” Paid Search Restructure Delivers for Fenty
The restructure of the Fenty paid search accounts was one of the largest projects we undertook in 2022, with several months of work going into ensuring the execution would help us achieve our goals and pave the way for the remaining Kendo brands to adopt a similar structure.
As a result of the success of this restructure in the USA, from March 2023, TMI has now expanded into five new countries on Paid Search for Fenty. These regions are the United Kingdom, Australia, France, Germany, and the Netherlands.
Additionally, we were informed by our agency Google Representative that the restructure processes we put in place were considered “Best in Class” internally and that the tools we developed have been shared with Google Search Specialists as a framework to aid in similar restructure projects.