Home and Garden: The Acquisition Marketing Ebook - The 2021 guide to acquisition marketing in the home and garden sector - Space 48
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Home and Garden:
The Acquisition Marketing
Ebook
The 2021 guide to acquisition
marketing in the home and
garden sector.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021
1
Table of Contents
Executive summary 3
The State of Play for Home and Garden by BigCommerce 4
Reap success from the content marketing tactics you sow 5-8
The value of content marketing
Your content strategy
Content planning
Content best practice in home and garden
Content amplification and content tools
SEO your free acquisition channel 9 - 14
The value of SEO in e-commerce
Keyword Research
Content optimisation checklist
Technical SEO checklist
Social Commerce 15 - 16
The new frontier of social advertising
Reaching your audiences
Paid Advertising 17 - 18
Refining your Google and Bing ads
Updating your audiences for smart shopping
Email Marketing by dotdigital 19-20
Customer acquisition with email
Sending your customers relevant content
Measuring your performance with GA4 21
Summary 22
How Space 48 can help
Authors
The Space 48 Team
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 2
Executive Summary:
Home and Garden
Acquisition Marketing
Guide
A detailed overview
From an expert overview of classic growth principles and foundations, we’ll take you on a deep dive into
all the essential modern acquisition techniques. Content marketing, SEO, paid social and advertising,
email and analytics that together combined create visible, credible and ultimately profitable multi-
touchpoint results.
Aimed specifically at helping home and garden retailers, we detail exactly why you should incorporate
each of these proven tactics into your acquisition strategy.
More importantly, this ebook explains how to deploy each to maximum effect.
With input from some of our marketing partners and experts in the home and garden sector, the ebook
includes practical checklists, tips, tricks and detailed explainers.
It even pulls together a number of real-world, best practice examples specifically from the home and
garden sector, in the form of micro case studies.
All the acquisition guidance and advice you need to grow your cross-channel business.
Accelerated opportunity
As undoubtedly challenging as the last year has been, it’s also offered accelerated opportunities.
Opportunity for growth and for learning.
The two big takeaways?
One: The absolute importance of integrating all your sales channels into a cohesive experience across
touchpoints.
Two: That now is the time to put that in place.
Home and Garden: The Acquisition Marketing Ebook has been written to help you achieve both.
We hope it serves you well.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 3
The State of Play:
Contributed by
BigCommerce
What a year for home and garden!
It’s been a BIG year for the home and garden ecommerce sector. The biggest. Something we’ve experienced up
close here at BigCommerce. While worldwide retail ecommerce sales grew by a healthy 27.6% in 2020, sales in
the home and garden market went through the roof.
120% growth
£150 or more
113%
of online sales
£148 million
year on year for the home and the average basket value rose to growth year on year in January average weekly sales in
garden sector in 2021 during January 2021 2021 December 2020
Source: IMRG Capgemini Online Retail Index, Product Category, Home and Garden, UK
Success offers its own challenges
But as we see the figures continue to grow with high double-digit month-on-month growth, so too does the
pressure on ecommerce professionals to make sure that they are winning a fair share of this new business and
across all channels.
As if that wasn’t pressure enough, as life begins to normalise throughout 2021 and consumers start to return to
a broader, more service-oriented range of spend, recovering brick and mortar sales will start to eat into
ecommerce numbers.
“COVID-19 has forced everyone to operate at a much higher level of digital maturity. To succeed
today, retailers need to put a stake in the ground and define a unified channel strategy from a
digital and physical perspective.”
- Sharon Gee, General Manager, Omnichannel at BigCommerce.
Redefining the future
While 2020 may have been a case of ‘all hands to the ecommerce pump’, what better moment than now for a
little reflection and preparation in advance of facing omnichannel challenges and to make acquisition
consistent and effective across all. For example - who wouldn’t want to integrate email’s potential 1:42 ROI into
their marketing?
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 4
Reap success from the
content marketing tactics
you sow
Why content marketing is so important?
51%
of shoppers
64%
of consumers
45%
of consumers
57%
of shoppers
use Google to research a want brands to connect with will unfollow a brand on social will increase their spending if
purchase they plan to make them media if they're posting they feel connected to a brand
online irrelevant content
By helping your customers with valuable content, you’re building a consumer to brand relationship. If a
customer is looking for advice on which paint to use to decorate their interior, and you’ve got a useful guide on
your blog or a how-to video on the topic, they’re going to come across that in their search and have a positive
experience with your brand for helping them. If they find your content valuable, it’s likely they’ll spend more
time interacting with your brand and following you.
How content marketing builds relationships and trust to win new customers
Build credibility
Content marketing is a great way to establish brand credibility and build your brand’s reputation as a trusted
matter expert. As we know more consumers are searching for home and garden related terms online, by
creating content that answers their questions, providing them with tips and advice, and having a voice, your
brand is deemed as credible by the consumer.
Deepen customer relationships
With the rise in consumer demand for home and garden products, there has been an increase in home and
garden content consumption. According to Think With Google, there was an 80% increase in DIY searches in
2020 from 2019 and there has been a 200% increase in outdoor furniture sets in 2021 from 2020. With home and
garden related search queries growing it makes sense to align with your audience’s needs and incorporate
content marketing into your digital strategy if you are not already.
Drive action
By helping your audience solve problems, you’re also educating them on how your products or services are the
solutions while being a credible home and garden expert. By building this credibility and developing a
relationship, your consumers are more likely to take action and purchase your products.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 5
Make your
content strategy
flourish
Your content marketing strategy
In order to create authentic content that connects with your audience, you need a content strategy that
ladders up to your business goals and provides you with content pillars that answer your audience’s needs as
well as where your brand has the authority to publish. The biggest downfall of a brand’s content marketing is
when they’re creating content for content sake because of a lack of strategic vision. This is when content
usually falls flat and doesn’t deliver the success you were expecting. Put the effort in with your content strategy
and you’ll see your efforts start to flourish.
What are the elements of a successful content strategy?
Strategic Overview - what are your core objectives and mission statement?
Audience - Who are you trying to reach?
Pillars - Which areas do your audience engage with and where does your brand have the right to play?
Platforms - Where will your content live?
Amplification - How will you connect your content to your audience?
Measurement - What metrics will be used to measure your content's success?
Workflow - How will content be created and distributed?
Putting your strategy into action with a content marketing plan!
Once you've got a content strategy in place for your home and garden brand, it's time to create a plan that will
govern ongoing content creation ensuring your topics align with your content pillars. There are three key areas
to getting your strategy off the ground and having a stream of consistent content:
Content ideation Content Calendar Content Creation
Host a content ideation Organise your content ideas Now for the fun part - create
workshop and invite different in a calendar plan using content that aligns with your
teams across the business. Google Sheets or another tool. strategy.
This will provide you with a This will allow you to plan
bank of content ideas and ahead with content. Include This could be helpful DIY
allow you to leverage insights key dates, formats, content videos, home decor
from teams with a different creators & partners and inspiration articles or reactive
perspective. amplification. social media posts.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 6
Brands doing content
well
While you might be just starting off in the content game or need some inspiration, these brands have been
winning when it comes to their content marketing. Take a look and allow it to inspire you with ideas you can
borrow.
SEO articles - DIY.com
Long-form written content is crucial if you want Google
to give your site the authority to rank. What's more
crucial is ensuring your article titles are keyword
optimised. Many brands create beautiful looking
content and publish it with creative titles, but this won't
help Google rank your content. DIY.com is a good
example of a brand that utilises keywords in its content
strategy. As an example, B&Q's 'how to unblock a toilet'
article ranks at position 2 on Google.
User-generated content - Made.com
User-generated content is a killer asset in your content
strategy, especially in the home and garden sector. What
better way to inspire your audience with design
inspiration from your own customers? Made.com do a
fantastic job of this by pulling through their customer's
interior shots from Instagram on to their website's
homepage. This not only shows new customers how to
style their home and encourages them to purchase the
products, it also nurtures and engages existing customers
by featuring their content. Social proof is one of the best
forms of content!
Social Media - Ikea
Ikea successfully utilises reactive content regularly,
such as their recent Bernie Sanders get the look
campaign. They cleverly tapped into a viral social
meme and related it back to its own brand with this
‘get the look’ meme. Ikea is no stranger to this tactic,
having previously created campaigns off the back of
Game of Thrones, the Balenciaga imitation bag
guide, and making light of the Leonardo Da Vinci
Salvator painting. Ikea knows its brand identity as
humorous and creates responsive marketing around
it and it pays off.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 7
Grow your content reach
through amplification
Repurpose your content for different channels
The secret to success in your content marketing strategy is taking one content piece and breaking it up
into different formats and lengths to utilise across various channels. This helps attract more audiences and
increases your brand exposure, while also having an aligned marketing strategy across all your channels.
For example, you're a DIY brand and you create a blog article on a guide to wallpapering your home. How
can you make the most of this content? You could create a video that shows the step by step process to
share on social (remember to create different formats to suit your chosen channels) along with the link to
your article. This tactic will engage your audience across social and in turn, drive traffic to your website.
Your amplification should be split across paid, owned and earned
Owned - your content hub on-site, organic social channels, e-newsletters, videos and podcast
Paid - Paid social advertising, PPC, native content, retargeting, and content partnerships
Earned - PR, organic search, Testimonials and user-generated content, social proof!
Content tools to help your content bloom
Social listening - is a great tool for reactive content. Tools such as Sysomos or Social Studio allow you to
identify key trends and provide valuable reactive content to your audience.
Keyword Research - Understanding the search terms people are searching for is a key tactic for creating
content not only that your audience wants but also helping your content to be found when it is optimised.
See page 9 for more on this.
Content Amplification - tools such as Hootsuite are useful for social scheduling and allow you to organise
your posts being published all in one place which can save your team valuable time. Utilise Facebook,
Twitter and LinkedIn ad platforms to amplify your content with a more targeted approach. Native content
amplification tool, Taboola is great for driving traffic to your site by publishing your content on third party
sites, this is at a cost as it is a form of content advertising. Check out page 18 to learn why tools like
DotDigital are great for targeting your audience through email.
Content Measurement - How can you know if your content marketing is laddering up to your overall
business strategy if you're not measuring it? Utilise your Google suite of tools such as GA4 and Google
Data Studio for creating real-time in-depth reports.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 8
SEO: Your free
acquisition channel
SEO in eCommerce
75% of users
33%
of traffic share
51%
of website traffic
40%
of revenue
do not go beyond the first goes to the number one comes from organic search is captured through organic
Google search results page. position on Google. results. search traffic.
SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is a collective set of data, signals, activities and technical elements that are
implemented following known best practices. Each element gives pages of a site the best possible chance to rank
for relevant search queries as high in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages) as possible.
Without being aware of the SEO implications of building an eCommerce presence, Home and Garden brands miss
out on valuable, profitable opportunities. Instead, they are having to pay for leads via other marketing channels to
hit in-market audiences they could’ve acquired for free on the organic SERP.
Knowing your eCommerce platform
As SEO strategy is a prolific acquisition channel, many of the market-leading eCommerce platforms have SEO
optimisations built into their systems. For example, BigCommerce has several SEO features right out of the box.
These include:
Optimised URLs — BigCommerce auto-populates SEO-friendly URLs for product, category, and other pages. It
also gives you the option to change your URL settings.
Unique URLs — It ensures that every unique page has only one URL, so you don't get punished for duplicate
content.
Microdata — BigCommerce builds microdata, or “rich snippets,” into your product pages to enhance your search
result listings with information like ratings, pricing, brand, and stock levels.
301 redirects and URL rewrites — If you rename a product, the auto-populated URL will adjust to reflect the name
change, and the old URL will be redirected to the new URL. Automatic redirects and rewrites help search engines
understand when you've made changes or moved pages on your site.
CDN — Although there are many things you can do to increase your site speed, BigCommerce's special content
delivery network is always working in the background to make sure your site loads quickly for both shoppers and
search engines (after all, site speed impacts search rankings).
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 9
Identifying your
keyword strategy
Why keyword research should be at the forefront of your SEO.
Keyword research is the process of finding the keywords for your business and understanding how you are
ranking or could rank for these keywords on Google.
Keyword research can tell you vital information, such as where you rank for keywords, which keywords are easy
to rank for and which keywords your competitors are ranking for.
Keyword research can tell you what people are searching for, rather than what you think they are searching for.
Search engines can only rank your website if they know what your business is through the content you have on
your website.
It's important to Identify keywords you are ranking poorly for and optimising your content to rank higher for
these keywords. As well as finding content opportunities by finding keywords you aren't currently ranking for.
This should be a key component of your content marketing plan.
How to look for keywords?
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 10Your SEO content
optimisation checklist
Refer to the below checklist when creating pages and writing new content, to ensure that SEO best
practice is adhered to. The below items should be completed, where necessary, before a page is
published. This will give your content its best chance when it comes to ranking well in Google.
❑ Relevancy + Adequate length
Ensure the content is unique and relevant to the target audience
Aim to make each page at least 300 words in length, take the individual page into consideration as some
may require around 1500 in length. Ensure you are writing quality content to help rank.
❑ Page Title
Is the Title Tag between 40 – 60 characters including spaces? (max 571-pixel length)
Is the keyword included in the Title Tag, as close to the beginning as possible?
Is the Title Tag unique and accurately indicates the main topic of the page?
Is the brand included at the end of the title tag? e.g. "Home decor | Ikea"
Does the Title Tag adhere to sitewide structure?
❑ Meta Description
Max of 155 characters (including spaces)
Does the Meta Description include an accurate summary of the page contents?
Is there a clear Call To Action in the Meta Description to engage users?
Is the primary keyword used towards the beginning of the tag?
Is the Meta Description between 120 – 155 characters including spaces? (max 923-pixel length)
❑ Headings
Is there only one H1 tag on-page?
Is the primary Header Tag (H1) consistent with the Title Tag? (Including synonyms & keyword variations.)
Does the H1 tag include the primary target keyword for the content?
Is the Header Tag short and concise, while still clearly explaining what the page is about? e.g. Discover
the best interior design tips vs. Design tips
Are the header tags used in hierarchical order (H1, H2, H3, etc.)?
❑ Optimised body text
Is the content on the page useful for readers?
Are target keywords & semantically related terms included in the on-page content?
Aim to include the target keyword in the first 150 words of text, and once or twice thereafter
Blend the keyword in to ensure it sounds natural
Is the content similar in size to the top-ranking competitors, or is it long enough to answer the implied
question behind the search intent to satisfy the user?
Does it include relevant internal and external links to other pages with keyword-rich anchor text? (first
internal link should be within the first 100 words, and point to the most important page).
❑ Images
Do the Image File Names use descriptive language to provide additional information to both search
engines and humans? E.g.
Does the Image Alt Text accurately and succinctly describe what’s in the image? (Say what you see, and
use less than 100 characters where possible.)
Does the Image Alt Text included keep in mind this is also an accessibility feature for the visually
impaired?
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 11Technical SEO
explained
Make sense of your technical SEO
Technical SEO helps you to create solid foundations and ensure that your site can be crawled and indexed.
Here are a handful of best-practice areas that you need to pay attention to.
Trade internationally? Understand Href lang tags.
You need to understand href lang tags if you trade internationally, with multiple subdomains.
Href lang tags exist in the source code and tell Google which language and country the focus is for the page.
Put simply, you want all UK site pages to rank in google.co.uk and all French site pages to rank in google.fr.
Understanding your canonicals
Defined by Google as: “the URL of the page that Google thinks is most representative from a set of
duplicate pages on your site”, canonicals exist to give weight to specific URLs which should be indexed on the
Google SERP. This is important, as Google can view duplicate pages as a negative, and penalise your brand for
trying to cheat the system.
Within your HTML, the canonical URL can be recognised by the ‘rel=canonical’ attribute.
The advantage of setting up canonical URLs is that it sends signals to Google, indicating which page - out of a
set of duplicate pages - should rank within the google search engine. For example:
https://www.domain/keyword-rich-product & https://www.domain/category/keyword-rich-product are in
essence the same page. They exist as there are multiple ways to reach your product page, depending on the
journey your customer goes through within your site. By default, and in accordance with best practice, product
pages should always define its canonical URL as itself. E.g. = https://www.domain/keyword-rich-product
The alternative URL with the category URL structure should also canonicalise back to the product-only URL. As
you’d want the product-only URL to rank with the SERP.
Site Speed
Slow sites make for poor user experience. SaaS-based eCommerce platforms such as BigCommerce are built
with site speed and site performance in mind. As Google begins to increase the significance of User Experience
(UX) on the search engine results, the more important these built-in features are for online brands.
You need to make sure your site loads quickly and understand customers continue to expect more. No one's
waiting around for a slow site.
Mobile-friendly site
Ensuring that your site is mobile-friendly is key not only because a high percentage of users prefer to browse on
mobile but if you are not serving a mobile-friendly experience, you will find that your organic visibility suffers.
You can test your site's mobile-friendliness with Google's mobile-friendly testing tool.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 12Technical SEO
explained
Robot Tags
Before Go-Live it is critical that you check the functionality of robots meta tags within website pages and how
these are controlled. An example would be the Index/Noindex Tags - these tell search engines whether the page
should be crawled or not. Every page is indexed by default.
You would typically use noindex on:
Secure areas such as Admin pages Search URLS Checkout/carts URLS
accounts
Schema Markup
Schema markup is code that you embed in your website to help search engines produce more informative
results within the SERP. They exist to describe the content of that page - whether it is a product, article, recipe or
other.
In eCommerce, refining the schema markup on a product page is valuable as it allows more eye-catching, rich
data to be presented on a SERP. Including important data about your product gives Google the information it
needs to inform your customer before they click on a click. This is known as Rich Snippets.
Typically, for products, you could define:
Product Price
Product Availability
Product Reviews
Product Value v Sale Value
Redirects
Redirects are a vital practice and must be implemented correctly. The main rule is to not create redirect chains.
A chain would be: old URL -> current URL -> new URL
INSTEAD, TRY:
Good: old URL -> new URL
Good: current URL -> new URL
Find and Fix Crawl Errors
You can quickly identify any crawl errors that exist through Google Search Console. Head to the coverage report,
and you will see both errors and excluded pages, as well as those with warnings and those which are valid. Take
the time to resolve any errors that you find, and explore the cause.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 13Your technical SEO
Migration checklist
Don't lose traffic and ensure your technical SEO is in order by referring to the below checklist.
❑ Href Lang
Each page should reference itself within a domain or subdirectory
Language section must use the ISO 639-1 code to identify the language
Country of focus must use the ISO 3166-1 code to identify the country
❑ Canonical URLs
Each page contains the correct canonical URL. recognised by the ‘rel=canonical’ attribute
Product pages are self canonicalised - meaning the rel=canonical URL references itself
Paginated pages either canonicalise to the page 1 OR contain a self-referencing canonical in
combination with the rel="next" / rel="prev" attributes.
❑ Site Speed
Optimise images using compression tools
Considered lazy loading?
Condensed code via minification and bundle files where possible
❑ Robots
Before Go-Live: Checked functionality of Robot Tags e.g. Index/Noindex Tags
❑ Sitemaps
Sitemap submitted to Google Search Console
If you own multiple domains, you'll need multiple Google Search Console properties
❑ Schema Markup
Have you defined rich snippets for the following:?
Product Price
Product Availability
Product Reviews
Product Value v Sale Value
❑ Redirects
301 Redirect File uploaded
404 Event Tracker installed
❑. Mobile Friendly
Test your site's mobile-friendliness with Google's mobile-friendly testing tool.
❑. Crawl your site
Identify any crawl errors that exist through Google Search Console and fix them.
In need of some help in ensuring your site is technical sound, relevant and being seen online? If you want
more guidance on any of the above, we can work with you to provide expert advice, guidance, and
recommendations to improve your organic visibility.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 14Understanding Social
Commerce
The new frontier of social advertising
The social advertising or paid social landscape is vast. Facebook alone boasts 2 billion monthly users. For
marketing and advertising teams, the sheer volume of social media adoption provides ample opportunity to
reach new customers, expand your influence, build a community, and generate sales.
That being said, the devil is in the detail. Wasting marketing budget on generic, blanket campaigns is not
going to drive the sales you have been promised. What’s more, as platforms such as Facebook look to push
their free social commerce tools - Product Tagging or Facebook Shops - brands need to look to strike a
balance between organic activity and more forthcoming paid social strategies.
Knowing the value of paid social
Attributing the value of Paid Social to your overall marketing strategy can be a difficult task. This is mainly due
to the attribution windows within Facebook, and the difference in data between Facebook and Google -
where Facebook sets the value it has on campaigns, Google is far stricter.
A good place to start to bring these values closer is by reducing the attribution window within Facebook. An
ideal is a 7-day click, 1-day view window. Fortunately, as of 19th January 2021, this is now Facebook’s default
setting.
If you’re unsure how to split your ad spend by channel, consider using an attribution model. Typically, these
bespoke models fairly weigh the revenue attributed to specific channels, helping you understand the true
ROAS of your ad campaigns. Understand where best to allocate your marketing budget with smart attribution
modelling unique to you.
Social commerce in practice
As Facebook continues the development
of its social commerce tools, Facebook
Shops have become a must for brands.
Free of charge, and acting as a catalogue
within the brand’s Facebook Page, it is an
easy way for curious shoppers to discover
collections and products.
Within Instagram, brands can use the
same catalogue to tag products in their
organic posts to further drive customers
to their site - also known as Product
Tagging.
Land of Beds, Facebook Shopping example
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 15Social Commerce:
Reaching audiences
The basics of audiences
Saved Audiences: Define an audience based on criteria such as age, interests, geography and more. Using
saved audiences is an effective way to test buyer personas in awareness or conversion-based campaigns.
Custom Audiences: Get back in touch with people who have engaged with your business, online or off.
Dynamic Retargeting campaigns are a must with custom audiences. Leverage ‘Add to Basket’ & ‘View
Content’ events to push the exact product your customer was searching for into the Facebook feed.
Lookalike Audiences: Reach new people whose interests are similar to those of your best customers. Reach
new, high intent audiences who most closely represent your existing customers. As expected, these
audiences often fetch greater conversion values compared to cold, broader audiences.
The Facebook Pixel and Events
The Facebook Pixel and the associated ‘Events’ that are tracked within social campaigns can make or break
the success of paid activity on Facebook and Instagram. Without the correct implementation, Facebook is
unable to produce accurate reports and unable to push campaigns that require defined Events and unique ID
parameters to work properly.
The ‘Events Manager’ within Facebook Business Manager is the location where information regarding the
events being fired on Facebook exists. Reviewing the Events is necessary to confirm that events are working as
expected. Cover the necessary activities for e-commerce-based advertising: viewContent/ Add to Basket/
Initiate Checkout/ Purchase - as well as others to maximise the capability of your Facebook Ads.
Facebook Advertising: Retargeting
Retargeting campaigns within Facebook are an effective strategy to
reinspire high-intent audiences to consider - and more importantly,
purchase - your product.
Retargeting campaigns are one of many tools at your disposal on
Facebook and are part of a greater paid social strategy that works in
unison with other campaigns to generate sales. By default, as with all
Facebook ads, retargeting campaigns run across both Instagram and
Facebook.
Read our article to learn more about setting up retargeting
campaigns.
Land of Beds, Facebook Retargeting example
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 16Paid Advertising
Refine your Google and Bing accounts
Paid Advertising on Google and Bing can be overwhelming, time-consuming and highly expensive if you
don’t know what you’re doing. However, with the suite of advertising options available - PPC, Video, Display
and Shopping Ads - these channels are rich in potential.
Search campaigns: introduce DSAs
Dynamic Search Ads (DSAs) are one of the more recent campaign types provided by Google, introduced to
help expand the profile and exposure of brands through Google Ads. Ideal for advertisers with a well-
developed website or a large inventory, Dynamic Search Ads uses your website to target your ads and can
help fill in the gaps in your keywords-based campaigns. Without Dynamic Search Ads, even well-managed
Google Ads accounts can miss out on opportunities.
Search campaigns: Tidy up your ads
Ad copy is very important in your search activity strategy and should be tested regularly, with multiple ad
variants running to ensure you are always looking to achieve the best CTR possible.
Where static ads are used, Google themselves recommend at least 3 ads per ad group. This can be in the form
of either 2 expanded text ads per and one responsive ad, or 3 expanded text ads if you have no responsive ads
in play. Knowing this is a simple, and immediate way to optimise your Google Ads account.
Setting up an ad: Land of Beds example
Call extension - allows you to incorporate your
Headline - Clear copy that matches searcher's
phone number in your ad so users have
intent with an incentive to click e.g. 25% off
additional way to reach out to you.
Ad description - Showcase your brand USPs such Site extensions - provides additional links to
as Free UK delivery to entice customer's to click. give customers more options to click to the
site.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 17Google Shopping ads
Shopping campaigns: Update your audiences for
smart shopping
While this wide selection of audiences can be useful in static search campaigns to identify audiences that are
receptive to your ads, they can be problematic for Smart Shopping. As Smart Shopping automatically selects
audiences, bids, and products to select based on customer insights, Smart Shopping can also select any
audience you have in your account - whether you like it or not. As such, it is wise to identify and remove
audiences you have not engaged with for a long time to help Google better understand which audiences
you’re looking to target.
Account-wide changes: Retargeting Lists for Search Ads (RLSAs)
Remarketing Lists for Search Ads is a solution Google offers to adjust the prominence of search ads for
audiences that have previously engaged with your brand. This is done by bid adjustments at an audience level.
With RLSAs, you can upload a list of your existing purchasers, to rank more favourably in the SERP if and when
they come back to purchase a new product from your business. This is different from Dynamic Retargeting
Ads, which follow you around the internet, regardless of your search intent.
You should also include the ‘non-purchasers’ - those customers who did not take the desired action on site.
The advantage of considering non-purchasers is that bid adjustments only apply if audience members within
this list are still searching and showing intent. Therefore, there is no risk of having these audiences included. If
a non-purchaser is no longer searching for your product, you will not have to pay a premium for their traffic.
Account-wide changes: Testing Display and Video Advertising
Display and video advertising, although distinctly
different, are an important advertising medium for
audiences further up the funnel. Particularly in the
home and garden industry, where there are multiple
touchpoints, these types of ads don’t typically result in
a last-click conversion.
Instead, these ad types are a meaningful, strategic
way to promote your business and keep top of mind
as your products get seen by a new wave of curious
shoppers on Google’s Display Network and the second
biggest search engine in the world - Youtube.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 18Email Marketing
Written by dotdigital
Customer acquisition with email
Customer acquisition is the goal of every marketing team. To continue to grow company revenues, home and
garden brands need to increase their customer database year-on-year. The most cost-efficient way of
achieving this is through email marketing. No other channel offers better ROI: £42 for every £1 spent.
Therefore, making newsletter subscription attractive for new customers is essential.
Here’s some criteria to think about:
1. Accessibility: the newsletter sign-up should be present and easy to find on the website.
2. Transparency: customers should be clearly informed about what they were signing up for.
3. Data collection: brands should use the point of acquisition to start building a profile of their customers.
Why compelling sign-up forms are a must
Some of the most compelling sign-up forms use incentive-driven
tactics, such as a discount or gift with a first-time purchase. As
modern-day shoppers increasingly put themselves first, they’re
more likely to hand over their personal data if they know they’ll
benefit immediately from the relationship.
With this in mind, it’s important for home and garden brands to
collect key customer data, such as date of birth and location, at the
earliest stage of acquisition. When you want people to do
something, you need to give them an incentive. And this is
especially true when it comes to collecting email addresses.
Visitors won’t part with their email address unless you give them a
good reason to do so. Offering discounts in exchange for an email
address is a highly effective incentive. The problem, though, is
oftentimes marketers will offer site-wide discounts to their entire
audience—without considering where visitors are in the buyer’s
journey. Sure, that might drum up more sales, but it can hurt your
bottom line in the long run.
The solution is to strike a balance between when and how often to
use them and which user segment to offer them to. If you offer
discounts on first-time purchases, exclude existing customers
from seeing this as they’ve already made their first purchase. And
make sure you’re asking for the right information upon sign-up.
Get the necessary information from subscribers first (like name
and email address), and then enrich their lead profile so you can
send them relevant and personal emails.
Made.com sign up form example
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 19Email Marketing
Written by DotDigital
Send your customers relevant content
Once your customers have signed up, you can send them super-valuable content at various stages of the
lifecycle. And it doesn’t have to just be a discount. Welcome new subscribers with your USPs, bestsellers, and
customer reviews. Post-conversion, email is a great way to nurture customers further and build loyalty. You
can create replenishment programs for specific products, content-driven campaigns based on home
inspiration or garden tips, plus send relevant product recommendations too.
dotdigital engagement cloud
dotdigital’s all-in-one email marketing tool empowers marketers to create branded, eye-catching popovers to
drive customer acquisition at scale. With an ever-increasing list of engaged subscribers, you can then create
beautiful data-driven emails to target them with – simply drag and drop your blocks into place using our
email tool. Include dynamic content to make your messages hyper-relevant to your audience. Plus, once you
create your template or campaign, you can use it again and again.
Email automation flow example within DotDigital
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 20Measuring your
performance with
Google Analytics 4
Why measure your marketing activity?
Measuring your marketing activity is key to understanding how your efforts are performing with your
business objectives. It's important to consider the key metrics and data you need that will help demonstrate
the commercial impact and business value being driven over time.
Improve your marketing decisions with Google Analytics 4 (GA4)
Google Analytics 4, in a nutshell, is here to provide smarter insights to improve your marketing decisions and
get better ROI. With major shifts in consumer behaviour and privacy-driven changes such as GDPR and
cookie settings, the current Google Analytics isn’t keeping pace. GA4 has been developed to track cross
channel and device and build upon the foundation of Google’s App & Web property to provide marketers with
a more detailed understanding of their data.
GA4 key features and benefits
GA4 is designed to deliver integrated insights across both web and mobile apps to enable you
the view the customer journey across devices
Access to machine learning and algorithms – provides a deeper understanding of how
customers interact with organisations and identifies key segments who are more likely to
convert
Privacy – works with or without cookies
Analysis Hub and BigQuery integration: this was previously only available to Analytics 360 users
Propensity and churn audiences: predictive modelling is used to determine which users will
purchase or churn within seven days, utilising first-party Analytics data
Enhanced measurement: engagements which were once difficult to track (scroll tracking, video
plays and exit link clicks for example) are now built into the platform
Transitioning to GA4
GA4 is the future of Google Analytics, eventually, UA will become obsolete as the new upgrade becomes the
focus of Google’s future investment in Analytics. We can already see that GA4 is the default when it comes to
setting up a new property on the platform. So, you need a plan to transition to the new update at some point,
we’d recommend sooner rather than later, as data in GA4 only becomes available from day 1 of installation.
Migration to GA4 will become increasingly essential. However, that doesn’t mean you need to panic and
migrate now without understanding how to use GA4 and losing your momentum with your current version of
Google Analytics. Begin the process by setting up GA4 properties in parallel with existing UA and/or Firebase
properties. This will give you access to the latest reports and features from GA4 and allow you to get to grips
with it while retaining your existing setup. Visit our guide to understand how to set up GA4.
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 21Your home and garden
acquisition summary
How Space 48 can help!
We hope you found this 2021 guide to acquisition marketing in the home and garden sector useful. The
purpose of the guide is to provide brand managers in the home and garden industry aware of the vast range
of acquisition marketing strategies across the main channels.
This extensive guide is your go-to resource for educating you on the various tactics you can implement in your
marketing strategy. We’ve armed you with the insights and recommendations, now it’s time for you to apply
everything to your own business and your project.
You can find many more useful guides and resources via our Space 48 journal.
Want to get in touch with us? Contact us here and one of our e-commerce experts will be in touch to discuss
your project further.
Authors
The state of play of home and garden - BigCommerce, Nanci Mirza, Senior Partner Marketing Manager
Content Marketing - Molly Smith, Content Marketing Manager at Space 48
SEO - Lee Smorthit, Acquisition Strategist at Space 48
Paid Social - Lee Smorthit, Acquisition Strategist at Space 48
Paid Advertising - Oliver Lees, Head of Insight at Space 48
Email Marketing - Chris Cano, Content Lead at dotdigital
Google Analytics 4 - Oliver Lees, Head of Insight at Space 48
The Space 48 Team
Interested in chatting to us about your acquisition strategy? Chat to one of our acquisition experts below.
Lee Smorthit Oliver Lees Molly Smith
Acquisition Strategist Head of Data & Insight Content Marketing Manager
Email: lee.smorthit@space48.com Email: ollie@space48.com Email: molly@space48.com
Acquisition Marketing for home and garden, Space 48, 2021 22www.space48.com 23
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