Maria Belkovets, a specialist at the Digital People Group DPL, shares the results of promoting the products of "Molodyi Udarnik" and discusses which advertising formats perform best in campaigns for such niche markets.
“Molodyi Udarnik” is a St. Petersburg-based factory that produces concrete, mortar, sand, cement, and crushed stone. In August 2023, the company contacted our agency for the setup and management of contextual advertising.
The goal of the campaign was to increase the number of target inquiries and sales. The client highlighted one product as a priority for promotion — reinforced concrete rings, as they were keen on clearing out stock from the warehouse.
For targeting, we chose only St. Petersburg as the region. The client has a competitive product price, but expensive delivery costs for long distances, so we decided not to include the Leningrad region in the geo-targeting.
Stage 1
Choosing Advertising Formats and Tools
The client came to us with already launched campaigns, but after analyzing them, we decided to restart the promotion for several reasons:
- The previous contractors did not use feeds — they needed to be created, and campaigns had to be launched for them.
- Search advertising is a meticulous process: products on Yandex can be searched in a variety of ways, so it was more reliable to rebuild the semantics ourselves to ensure nothing was missed.
At the start, we identified the key advertising formats in Yandex.Direct:
- Dynamic campaigns
- Search advertising
- Retargeting
We also suggested that the client test two eLama tools:
- UTM Tag Generator: It tracks which campaigns, ad groups, and ads visitors come from to the website, helping to evaluate the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. In our case, the generator helped us understand which ads and creatives were bringing the most conversions.
- Statistics (a special BI feature in the eLama AdTech platform) allows viewing campaign data and working with it inside graphs and tables.
Stage 2
Working with Semantics
During the process of gathering search campaigns, we faced the main challenge of this niche: the factory’s products have complex technical specifications, and to achieve a quality result in semantic development, it was crucial not to miss anything.
It looked something like this: the agency specialist tried to understand the purpose of a specific concrete slab and anticipate the types of queries a potential buyer might use. The client, in turn, provided feedback on our suggestions and clarified which non-obvious queries might be the most relevant. For example, “ЖБИ rings KС,” “ЖБИ rings KС 10 10,” “concrete ring DK 10.9,” “through-ring KС 10 9.”
The main focus in the campaigns was placed on the B2B segment, where the client typically sees a higher return on investment in marketing.
Stage 3
Campaign Launch
Following the recommendation of our specialists, the client quickly implemented call tracking, so by the time the campaigns launched, we had complete data on inquiries from phone calls. This allowed us to promptly and effectively optimize the campaigns.
In the first month, we launched:
– One search campaign for “ЖБИ rings” based on the client’s priority product.
– Retargeting.
– A product campaign.
– A product gallery.
– Dynamic ads.
– Smart banners.
Initially, we planned to start with feed-based campaigns, but Yandex.Direct detected many errors in the feed. As a result, we first launched the Search campaign for ЖБИ rings.
Ad displays were set strictly for the time frame between 9:00 AM and 5:00 PM on weekdays: the client wanted to be available and quickly respond to inquiries from account managers. The budget for the campaigns was distributed based on their effectiveness: the product campaign and the search advertising performed the best, so the majority of the budget was allocated to these.
During the campaign, it became clear that all campaigns were performing well except for the smart banners: leads from them were costing 3–3.5 times more. With such a significant difference in conversion costs, there was a risk that smart banners would consume too much of the budget. Additionally, we assumed that in this niche, visual ads simply don’t perform well. Therefore, after a month of running, we disabled the smart banners in September. The other campaigns continued through the end of the period.
Promotion Results
53 leads
2200 ₽ — the average cost per lead.
As of September 2023, all campaigns, except for the smart banners, brought us an average of 53 inquiries at an average cost of 2200 rubles. Among them, 22 inquiries came from product campaigns and 19 from search campaigns. The average cost per inquiry for the entire period was 2459 rubles.
In October, we received 61 inquiries, with more than 70% of them coming from the product campaign.
At the same time, the cost per inquiry decreased by 6%, and we are steadily working toward further reducing the cost per lead.
The client was satisfied with the results, so in October we launched additional campaigns for other products: road slabs, ЖБИ slabs, fences, and staircases. We also calculated the budget for launching campaigns to sell concrete, but this direction has not been implemented yet.
Contextual Advertising for a Concrete Factory: How to Promote in a Complex B2B Niche – Case Study