Having traded since 2003, Aquacadabra is one of the original specialist online aquatic retailers. The brand stocks everything you need to successfully keep an aquarium, pond or reptile, from fish tanks to filtering systems and food. The business trades primarily online, but also operates a Kent-based showroom where customers can speak to staff for advice and product recommendations.
With competition increasing online, Aquacadabra were looking for new ways to improve their ecommerce business by increasing online sales and growing their customer base. With well-known pet supply corporations operating large physical stores, Aquacadabra has to work harder to drive online sales, as well as footfall to their showroom. But Aquacadabra’s USP is that they are specialists in fishkeeping, making them a one-stop-shop for avid hobbyists.
Our digital marketing consultants devised a strategy covering paid search, SEO, content and email marketing to drive sales and position Aquacadabra as an industry leader.
With limited budget and tight profit margins, we were tasked with creating and managing paid search campaigns which generate a minimum ROAS of 500% on a monthly basis, whilst also ensuring that a profit was made on each item sold.
We added custom labels to all of Aquacadabra’s products to categorise them by profit margin into three tiers: low, mid and high. This data was uploaded to the brand’s
Google Shopping account. We were then able to use this segmentation to monitor the cost per sale in each bracket, ensuring this remained under the relevant margin for each tier.
Using keyword analysis, we focused paid search campaigns solely on high volume, high intent keywords, which drive the greatest number of clicks and sales. These campaigns initially used Google’s Observation Audiences setting, which showed ads to a wider pool of users and allowed us to gather data on the audiences driving the greatest conversion rate, which we then targeted spend towards.
We monitored Aquacadabra campaigns at the product level, which allowed us to exclude poor performing products that were not delivering a return on ad spend. By taking this approach to using the budget effectively, the we’ve achieved a return on ad spend of 2,590%, more than five times higher than the target, while reducing its previous cost per sale.
Content calendars are created on a monthly basis for the Aquacadabra blog, with the main focus for blog content being customer care and thought leadership. In 2023, our SEO team embarked on a taxonomy project to improve crawlability and search rankings. We carried out a review of the menu structure and category performance, followed by keyword research to suggest appropriate optimisations and opportunities for new categories to capitalise on search volume. The new menu structure offers not only better organic visibility, but a better user experience as well, allowing potential customers to find the products they’re looking for in the fewest number of steps, especially if they are looking for particular brands.
Our SEO team also worked closely with our digital designer to redesign collection pages to better present the new copy and Aquacadabra’s products. Copy was added at both the top and the bottom of collection pages, allowing us to target a number of keywords without crowding the page with written content.
Our email marketing team began by creating an email marketing calendar to help plan regular, timely content and optimise sends based on the best days and times. We have also designed and set up a series of automations, including a three part welcome email series to encourage conversions among new customers. Other automations we’ve implemented include abandoned baskets and post purchase, which, when we first took over the account, were coming from multiple platforms and branding was therefore not consistent with other campaigns. We streamlined the automation process by moving everything over to MailChimp and redesigning templates to match other campaigns. We’ve boosted list growth through data-driven competitions and linking campaigns across social media channels.
*May 2023 vs May 2024