Quick pivots in Paid Search help Clinique achieve Cyber 5 success
Challenge
Marketing preparation for Cyber 5, the highly promotional period encompassing Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday, begins months in advance. Clinique, a global skincare and cosmetics brand under Estée Lauder, knows these high-traffic sales events are crucial in the competitive beauty industry. However, for Clinique’s team managing Paid Search on Google and Microsoft, this meant preparing for a potentially high-stress scenario that required quick reactions to constantly shift budgets in order to maximize returns during the extended shopper frenzy.
Solution
Clinique relied on Skai’s Search Term Analysis to unleash efficiency and uncover wasted spend on low-performing keywords across its Google and Microsoft campaigns. Skai’s machine learning algorithm did the heavy lifting to scour the search term reports, analyzing topics to help the team spot and negate groups of keywords. The user-friendly dashboard provides a performance overview across cost, conversions, impressions, and clicks, equipping this team of one with the data and context needed to make informed decisions and optimize keywords in a matter of minutes.
With negative keywords implemented throughout the month helping to keep ad costs down, Clinique set out to redistribute the savings to hit spend goals. The flexible optimization of Budget Navigator helped control pacing and forecast campaign budget performance while making six budget adjustments over the three week holiday shopping peak period.
Result
The recalibrated approach to negating keywords saved more than $19,000 over the holiday period starting in November. Reinvesting the savings into more impactful campaigns and top-performing keywords drove a positive return on investment while scaling spend 144%.
With Cyber 5 in the rearview, Clinique continued to leverage Search Term Analysis and Budget Navigator beyond the holiday season. Measuring again in February 2024, across three investments and 13 total budget replans, the results showed continued efficiency and ability to improve ROI while scaling spend.
- Performance Max ROI- 43% increase
- Brand ROI- 29% increase
- Non-brand ROI- 65% increase
“Skai’s AI not only saved us thousands in wasted ad spend, but the optimization tools made it easy to quickly adapt budget strategy to reinvest into better performing keywords that led to improved ROAS”
Marissa Ciko
Manager, Paid Search
About Clinique
Clinique is a world-leading skincare and makeup brand under Estée Lauder, specializing in dermatologist-created beauty products to deliver serious results.
Solution Used
