Case Study | MatchCraft/Locaweb

Locaweb Search Campaign Results Soar With MatchCraft

The Brazilian digital marketing giant doubles CTRs and cuts costs per click in half using MatchCraft’s AdVantage platform

For Locaweb, Brazil’s largest provider of web hosting and digital marketing services, helping Brazilian small businesses incor-porate search advertising into their marketing plans has been a natural extension of the company’s other solutions.

Internet use is booming in Brazil: More than three-quarters of Brazilians own mobile phones, the country ranks 10th globally for retail ecommerce sales, and Brazil is among the top 5 internation-al users of all Google services, from search to maps to YouTube. However, “Brazil’s small businesses are a few years behind the U.S. when it comes to online marketing,” says Luiz Barboza, Busi-ness Development Director at MatchCraft. “Locaweb has done a wonderful job educating local business owners in Brazil about the potential of search advertising for finding new customers.”

Growing business, growing pains

Locaweb started managing search advertising campaigns for local Brazilian businesses in 2012. As Locaweb’s search market-ing client list grew, so did the resources required to fulfill those services. By August 2014, Locaweb had three campaign analysts on staff handling search campaigns for several hundred Brazilian merchants, with monthly budgets ranging from $150 to $3,000. Client industries included everything from agricultural equip-ment, car dealers and real estate agencies to Brazil’s iconic bikini and flip-flop shops.

Locaweb’s campaign managers created and optimized all mer-chant campaigns directly in the AdWords platform. They liked Ad-Words’ feature-rich options but struggled with making the team more efficient as the business expanded. “We knew we needed technology that would help our campaign managers handle more campaigns per person,” says Euvaldo Júnior, Ecommerce Manager at Locaweb. In addition to keeping overhead costs down, Júnior also suspected that a third-party search marketing platform could help improve merchants’ campaign results - and better results, he knew, would lead to bigger campaign budgets, lower customer turnover, and increased profits for Locaweb.

matchcraftABOUT MATCHCRAFT:• Founded in 1998, a pioneer in local search

marketing space• Focuses exclusively on delivering SEM

solutions to our reseller clients• Currently operating in 26 countries,

supporting 16 different languages• More than 300,000 campaigns serviced on

the AdVantage™ platform since 2009

ABOUT LOCAWEB:• Founded in 1998• Pioneer and leader in professional hosting

services in Brazil - See more at: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/locaweb#st-hash.lLjeUubL.dpuf

• Locaweb serves consumers to very large corporations

An immediate and dramatic improvement

In August 2014, Locaweb transferred 12 client campaigns to MatchCraft’s AdVantage platform for a three-month test. One concern: making sure MatchCraft’s bidding engine wouldn’t over-spend clients’ monthly budgets (it didn’t). But the primary reason for the test period was to confirm the anticipated efficiencies and make sure Locaweb’s campaign managers were comfortable with the platform. With a custom-built taxonomy mirroring the struc-ture of Brazil’s businesses and a fully translated interface, AdVan-tage provided a seamless transition for Locaweb’s team.

Locaweb quickly saw improvements in both the campaign man-agement’s day-to-day efficiency and in campaign results. Take campaign creation: The time required to set up a new campaign on AdVantage was half of what it was taking Locaweb’s team in AdWords.

And the Locaweb team noticed dramatic improvements in their merchants’ campaigns, too. One example: a motorcycle dealer in Sāo Paulo. In August 2014, before moving the campaign to Match-Craft, the motorcycle dealer spent $2,000 to get 6,000 clicks, with an average CPC of $0.45. Now, on MatchCraft’s AdVantage platform, they’re spending the same but getting 7,300 clicks per month at an average CPC of $0.20. The dealer’s click-through rate also jumped from 4.74 in August 2014 to 10.76 in January 2015. Locaweb reports that the client is so happy they’re considering increasing their monthly budget - a win for everyone.

By Thanksgiving 2014, Locaweb had migrated all its merchant search campaigns to AdVantage. “Once we saw how well AdVan-tage was working for us, we didn’t need to wait any longer,” says Júnior.

Training: The key to quick results

Locaweb has learned some important lessons in the months it’s been working with MatchCraft. First, the company has created a set schedule for optimizing campaigns: New campaigns get re-viewed in the first 30 days, existing campaigns quarterly.

And second, Locaweb understands that educating merchants about how search marketing works leads to better campaign results. “We get a lot of requests to pause campaigns over Christmas or for Carnival,” says Dias. But stopping and starting campaigns causes quality score issues and can have a marked negative impact on ROI. “Our merchants really appreciate it when we share our knowledge about digital marketing with them,” Dias says. “They know that our priority is getting them the best results for their advertising dollars.”

Sueli Dias Campaign Coordinator at Locaweb

“They know that our priority is getting them the best results for their advertising dollars.” - Sueli Dias