Grind
Background
Grind, the beloved London café brand, was looking to sharpen its digital edge, particularly in Paid Search. As they focused intensely on New Customer growth, the efficiency of their Brand Search campaigns became a critical area of focus.
Challenge
Grind's Paid Search faced a hidden challenge: the conventional reliance on automated bidding strategies for Brand Search was quietly inflating costs. In Q4 2024, Grind's Brand Search costs soared to almost double compared to Q3, with CPCs spiking over +44% in that period, despite limited competition increase on Brand queries. Also, despite increased clicks, conversions stagnated. The 'smart' bidding, aimed at maximizing impression share, was actually pushing up costs dramatically in scenarios with little to no actual competition, limiting the true incremental growth tactics over on Non-Brand. We understood that blindly trusting algorithms on Brand Search meant paying a premium unnecessarily.
Active Period
What we did for them
At Highrise Marketing, we challenge conventional thinking. Through a rigorous analysis of Grind’s account, we uncovered a critical insight: many Brand ad groups had zero/low competition, yet automated bidding was still driving up CPCs.
Our hypothesis was simple and contrarian: why pay a premium when there's no competition?
We defied the automated bidding norm and implemented manual CPC bidding for low-competition brand terms, setting bids just above the auction floor. The goal? Acquire clicks for pennies while maintaining visibility and drastically cutting unnecessary spend. We proved that intelligent, tailored strategies beat blindly following automation every time. We also established monitoring alerts to track visibility metrics and ensure performance stayed on target.
Breakthrough
Our unconventional strategy delivered a monumental win for Grind:
- 84% Reduction in Brand Search Cost: We slashed monthly costs substantially, allowing us to re-invest into true Non-Brand prospecting activity.
- Massive CPC Improvement: Average CPCs also plummeted -84%.
- CPA Transformation: Cost Per Acquisition from these ad groups drastically reduced -83%.
- Maintained Visibility: Crucially, this was achieved while maintaining Impression Share across core ad groups. Conversions saw only a negligible -5% dip, massively outweighed by the cost savings and also logged as a natural fluctuation due to visibility figures not reducing.
The Highrise Difference: Beyond Platform Features.
This case study is a testament to Highrise Marketing's core philosophy: Don't only rely on platform features to solve marketing problems.
Whilst key features of automated bidding are extremely important, especially for Non-Brand & depending on Brand auction dynamics, we always focus on 3 core pillars:
- Measuring Incrementality & Causality: We look beyond surface-level metrics to understand true impact.
- Utilize Mature Testing Hypotheses: We challenge assumptions and build strategies based on actual auction dynamics.
- Defy Conventional Wisdom: We prove that true strategic decisions, often contrarian, unlock superior performance.
For Grind, we demonstrated that understanding the nuanced competitive landscape and daring to depart from 'best practice' can lead to unparalleled results, freeing up budget for crucial new customer growth.
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