Build a Bear is a leading toy manufacturer and retailer specialising in teddy bears and other stuffed animals and characters.

They came to us for help with expanding their online sales in the South African market, and we were happy to oblige.

We had particular success in October 2020, with a few strategies we’ll outline below.

The KPI’s of what we were able to achieve are as follows:

7 x ROI on Facebook Ads (i.e. R 7 earned for every R 1 spent).

15 x ROI on Google Ads (i.e. R 15 earned for every R 1 spent).

An average Cost Per Conversion of R 46,15 to achieve an average sale value of around R 718 on Google Ads.

One of the main aspects we focused on with the Build a Bear campaign was utilising their strong existing brand equity.

As an international business with household name recognition, Build a Bear is a treasured and respected brand amongst many parents of young children.

Too often we see businesses invest heavily in branding and brand building, only for their competitors to swoop in at the last moment and harvest the value.

So, what we had to do was make sure we tap into that brand equity and make sure Build a Bear was reaping the rewards from it, instead of their competitors.

We ran two different Google Ads campaigns, mainly a shopping campaign and a branded search campaign, both with targeted offers.

The shopping campaign was drawn from all the products on the Build a Bear website and displayed in front of relevant keywords.

For our search campaign, we focused on branded keywords to make good use of Build a Bear’s existing brand equity and the equity of their related brands.

E.g. we targeted keywords like “Build a Bear” or “Star Wars plush”, focusing on high buying intent key phrases to maximise sales.

For our Facebook Ads campaign, we straight conversion campaign focused on showcasing their range over the platform and creating sales.

We again focused on utilising their strong brand name and brand recognition by targeting existing customers or people already familiar with the brand.

We primarily used remarketing audiences from the website and other platforms, and lookalikes of all our remarketing audiences to expand their scope.

Lastly, we had a cart abandonment strategy as part of the ads where customers who had abandoned a cart on the site would see targeted ads on Facebook reminding them to complete their transaction.

Our campaign for Build a Bear was relatively simple compared to many of the more complex problems we have to solve on a daily basis.

Still, we were able to add great value to their business by making sure they were capitalising on their brand equity, and optimising their ads to target the right people.