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Google Adwords - Case Studies 1
According to research findings, two organizations that handle their digital marketing strategy in-house i.e. within their organization are Amazon and Best Buy. Even though information on how the companies use the Google Adwords strategy was unavailable in the public domain, research uncovered a significant amount of information on the in-house creative agencies and best practices in handling digital marketing strategy in-house. For instance, Amazon's in-house creative agency was established to ensure the company is focused on delivering relevant digital content to its customers. A detailed overview of these two organizations and how they handle their digital marketing strategies in-house follows below.
CASE STUDY #1: AMAZON
- Amazon's digital marketing strategy is handled by its in-house creative agency, D1.
- In 2018, D1 conducted its first digital marketing campaign for Amazon, where the agency handled everything from the scripts through to the creative direction of the campaign.
- Amazon opted for an in-house creative agency because the organization believes "there are key benefits to having an in-house creative agency, with the team able to fully understand the brand and its customers."
- In an effort to determine whether Amazon uses Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords), an analysis of Amazon's web technology stack was done on Crunchbase.
- However, even though Amazon uses Google Analytics and Google Adsense, evidence that pointed to the use of Google Ads was not available.
Best Practices in Handling Digital Marketing Strategy In-house
- Hiring experts — after establishing its in-house creative agency, Amazon took time to hire people that have expertise in fields that are relevant to digital marketing such as video creation as the organization was looking to expand beyond online work and banner ads.
- Creation of geographical teams — Amazon's in-house creative agency consists of teams spread out in various countries like the United Kingdom, the United States, Japan, India, and China. These teams enable Amazon to easily create digital marketing campaigns in various countries using the invaluable local experience of its teams.
- Putting customers first — Amazon's decision to establish an in-house creative agency was driven by the company's focus on customers. By creating creative and marketing teams that know the brand, Amazon is able to stay focused on delivering relevant content to its customers.
CASE STUDY #2: BEST BUY
- In 2017, Best Buy consolidated its marketing functions and a year after this consolidation, the company decided to increase the size of its in-house creative team.
- In an effort to boost its in-house creative team, Best Buy added a number of marketing experts into its creative team. A key figure in this addition was Bruce Bildsten, a marketing expert that has a long history working with marketing agencies that include Brew and Fallon.
- Best Buy was still in the process of adding more members to its creative team in May 2018.
- Despite operating in the same market as Amazon, Best Buy continues to hold its market share because of its customer-experience-focused strategy.
- Through this strategy, the company positions physical stores as showrooms, an undertaking that gives it a competitive advantage over Amazon.
- To determine whether Best Buy uses Google Ads, an analysis of the company's web technology stack was done on Crunchbase.
- However, even though Best Buy uses Google products for analytics, evidence that pointed to the use of Google Ads was not available.
Best Practices in Handling Digital Marketing Strategy In-house
- Creation of an extensive internal creative team — this practice is very important because it facilitates capacity building within the organization resulting in a team that can conceive, develop, and produce effective digital marketing campaigns.
- Diversification in digital marketing strategies — Best Buy has a diversified in-house creative team that is capable of creating marketing campaigns for a variety of channels that include social media, TV, and in-store.
- Seasonal marketing campaigns — the company creates special campaigns that target special groups during recurring seasons like the holiday season and back-to-school shopping seasons.
- Personalized customer experience — Best Buy also focuses on delivering digital marketing campaigns that offer a personalized and memorable experience to customers and potential customers.
RESEARCH STRATEGY:
We started research by looking for case studies and best practices of e-commerce and retail companies that handle their digital marketing strategy in-house. Even though outright case studies and best practices that met the research criteria were unavailable in the public domain, we were able to identify a significant amount of relevant information that we used to create insightful case studies. However, after doing a comprehensive search for relevant information using a number of unique research strategies, we were unable to provide information on the use of Google Ads (formerly Google Adwords) within the in-house digital marketing strategies of the identified organizations. A look at these research strategies follows below.
In our first strategy, we targeted our search for relevant information on the use of Google Ads in in-house digital marketing strategies for Amazon and Best Buy to advertising resources like AdAge and AdWeek. Our aim in using this strategy was to identify any information on the use of Google Ads in these resources because they usually contain insightful information on a number of marketing and advertising concepts. With this strategy, we were unable to find any usable information, but we did find general information on the marketing campaigns of both Amazon and Best Buy.
In our second strategy, we targeted our search for relevant information to business and news resources like Chron, Forbes, CNN, and Reuters. Our aim here was to identify any news articles that contained usable information because these sources are usually rich in business information on concepts like marketing and advertising. Using this strategy, we were unable to find any usable information, however, we did find general marketing information in regard to both Amazon and Best Buy that we were unable to integrate into the research findings.
In our final strategy, we targeted our search for relevant information to business intelligence resources like Crunchbase, Bloomberg, Owler, among others. Our aim in choosing this approach was to look for any available information on whether Amazon and Best Buy use Google Ads in their in-house digital marketing strategies. However, after doing an exhaustive search for relevant information, we were only able to identify general information such as the web technologies used by both Amazon and Best Buy with specific information on Google Ads remaining unavailable. We attributed the lack of publicly available information on the use of Google Ads in the digital marketing strategies of Amazon and Best Buy to the fact that these organizations have not reported such information in the public domain.