As the head of marketing for See’s Candies, Kristi capitalized on SEM and SEO opportunities. She hired an SEO copywriter to optimize the product descriptions on the website, as well as the landing pages for various marketing campaigns. Kristi also hired two analysts to join the team, who managed both Yahoo! and Google PPC ad performance.
The CEO at the time did not believe in bidding on branded keywords, as he felt he was wasting money on something, when the user could just as easily click on our organic branded search result. While his desire to not pay for something that he felt could be free was understandable, Kristi raised the concern that See’s Candies branded keywords would be monopolized by the competition, and that competitors would harvest customers who were actually looking for See’s.
The team set up PPC tests with ad campaigns, turning the branded keywords on and off during specified times, and compared the results. The analytics from the tests showed that when the branded keywords were turned on, they received an increase in click-through traffic, as well as conversions. When they were turned off, there was a dip in both, and it was concluded that there were lost sales opportunities that may have gone to competitors bidding on See’s Candies branded keywords. Because of the key findings from this test, which convinced the CEO to spend the extra ad dollars on branded keywords, See’s Candies now always owns both the paid and organic search results for their brand. Overall, during Kristi’s tenure, she increased search rankings by 20%, PPC conversions by another 20%, and ad sales ROAS by over 245%.
