Final Exam Results
Background
Founded in Sweden, IKEA designs and sells ready-to-assemble furniture, kitchen appliances and home accessories. It is also the world’s largest furniture retailer and has been for over ten years. IKEA leverages a dedicated social team within Group M’s Wavemaker for their Pinterest campaigns. Bound by their Purchase Journey obsession, Wavemaker helps clients, like IKEA, translate audience behaviors and insights into smart decisions.
Challenge & Opportunity
According to the National Retail Federation’s research, back-to-school shopping is the second biggest shopping season of the year, with $54.1 billion spent on college goods (including dorm room accessories). To capitalize on this trend, IKEA needed to be active on a platform college students use for back-to-school inspiration.
Pinterest reaches almost 50% of US college-aged consumers, according to ComScore, making it a great place to reach students heading off to school. But beyond the presence of college students on Pinterest, the intent was there, too. As 72% of Pinners leverage Pinterest for ideas and there were 75% more home decor searches made than the year prior.
In the competitive market of home furnishing, the challenge for IKEA was to capitalize on this demand by reaching the right people on the right platform with the right approach. With IKEA’s goal of driving traffic to their back-to-school catalog page, they combined the strategy and execution expertise of their media partner, Wavemaker, with the technology and scale of Skai.
Solution
With Pinterest being a visual search engine, the Wavemaker team knew they had to think (plan) and act (execute) like a search marketer. The Wavemaker team capitalized on an opportunity to do just that.
Wavemaker joined a Beta opportunity on Skai and became the first advertiser to promote a Pinterest Search campaign through the ad tech platform. This beta allowed Wavemaker to leverage Skai’s proprietary technology along with direct access to premier publisher solutions to take advantage of first-to-market solutions.
Of particular benefit to Wavemaker was the ability to see all Search data side-by-side in the Skai UI which allowed easy comparison of campaign performance at a Product and Keyword level. Access to this data empowered the Wavemaker team to better understand consumer search behaviors and conduct multiple test-and-learn experiments across product ranges in a nimble manner.
By partnering with Skai and taking advantage of a first-to-market beta, the Wavemaker IKEA team became a first mover in their category (no pun intended).
Results
Within just 3 months of activity, Wavemaker’s IKEA Paid Social Team saw their campaign CTR surpass its benchmark by 72%, along with a resulting 37% drop in CPC. Beyond driving strong performance, the team was able to help the IKEA client gain a better strategic understanding of consumer behavior on Pinterest, which allowed IKEA to lean into a more audience-first approach moving forward.
Conclusion
Robust test and learn methodologies are critical for continued success on social platforms like Pinterest. Shifting consumer behaviors and competitive pressures require a nimble approach that allowed for real-time optimizations. Skai’s advanced reporting and optimization tools allowed the Wavemaker’s IKEA Paid Social Team to lean into consumer behaviors immediately and easily to drive strong results for the brand.
Challenge
With a high demand of back-to-school shoppers, IKEA needed to reach college students on a platform they use for dorm room inspiration.
IKEA’s challenge was to capitalize on this demand by reaching the right people on the right platform with the right approach.
Solution
Wavemaker joined a Beta opportunity on Skai and became the first advertiser to promote a Pinterest Search campaign through the ad tech platform.
This opportunity allowed Wavemaker to leverage Skai’s unique suite of advertising solutions with Pinterest’s native search marketing capabilities. Access to Skai’s solutions empowered the Wavemaker team to better understand consumer search behaviors and conduct multiple test-and-learn experiments across product ranges in a nimble manner.
Results
Wavemaker’s IKEA Paid Social Team saw their campaign CTR surpass its benchmark by 72%, along with a resulting 37% drop in CPC. Beyond driving strong performance, the team was able to help the IKEA client gain a better strategic understanding of consumer behavior on Pinterest, which allowed IKEA to lean into a more audience-first approach moving forward.
“Beyond driving strong performance, the team was able to help the IKEA client gain a better strategic understanding of consumer behavior on Pinterest with Skai’s targeting and audience analysis capabilities.”
Kimberly Lum, Wavemaker – Group Director, Search & Social