How Moosejaw Drives +110% More Black Friday Traffic With Paid Search

Key Takeaways

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Moosejaw, a Michigan-based outerwear retailer, heavily relies on paid search to drive traffic to its e-commerce website:

• Budget Allocation — Moosejaw Relies on Paid Search to Drive Traffic to its Website: Between January 2020 and August 2021, the brand spent $4M on paid search, while only $0.5M was invested into all other digital advertising channels combined. 
  

• Creatives — Double-Down on Product Search Ads During High-Sales Periods: Regularly, Moosejaw runs more text-based search ads than products ones. However, in November 2020, the brand double-downed on product ads, when 76% of all search ads were products ones and 26% text-based. 
  

• Messaging — Highly Specific Product Descriptions: Moosejaw doesn’t leverage Black Friday-specific keywords, like “Black Friday deals” or “Sale”, instead, it targets a variety of product descriptions and directs users directly to the product detail pages.  

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Moosejaw is a Michigan-based sportswear retailer carrying outdoor brands such as the North Face, Fjallarana, Prana, Arc’teryx and many others.

More than half of Moosejaw’s website traffic comes from searches, both organic and paid. The brand heavily invests in paid search to drive relevant traffic to its website. Moosejaw also relies on this channel during the high-sales-volume seasons, such as Black Friday and holiday shopping.

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Moosejaw, on average, sees 1.1M users visiting its website every month. The brand experiences significant traffic spikes during the holidays season when 64% more people visit its website.

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More than half (59%) of website visits come from search —  organic search drives 35%, and paid search is responsible for 24% of total traffic. Paid search is the largest source of paid traffic. 

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During the shopping season traffic spikes (~63%), all channels grow proportionally, where direct drives the most visits.

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Notably, paid search drives almost as much traffic as direct and organic search during peak holiday shopping seasons.

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Moosejaw invested +74% more advertising dollars in paid search in November 2020 compared to normal volumes (201K). 

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Since January 2020, Moosejaw invested $4M in paid search which drove 6.9M visits and only $0.5M in all other digital ads combined that all together brought 1.7M site visitors. 

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Moosejaw generally relies on text search ads. However, it ramped up the number of product search ads during the high-volume November shopping period. 

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Notably, the keywords that drive traffic during November and any other month are very much the same — a combination of branded keywords and names of the brands Moosejaw carries in their selection.  

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Moosejaw didn’t run any ads aiming to capture the traffic of consumers specifically looking for Black Friday deals or discounts. Instead, it ran a variety of ads targeting those looking for specific products and leading them to the product detail pages.

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The brand took the same approach with product ads, Moosejaw listed products with a wide range of keywords customers would use to search for a specific item.