Despite uncertainty from the pandemic, consumers still bought jewelry online in 2020. Some sought jewelry as a means of self-care, and as gifts for loved ones to acknowledge the challenges of the time. For other consumers, funds that would have supported travel shifted to purchases like jewelry. As a result, opportunity remained for jewelers to advertise their wares successfully online. Findings from Sidecar’s 2021 Benchmarks Report shed light on the ads that worked for jewelry in 2020 during the pandemic, and have value moving forward. Let’s take a closer look at one of the top digital ad platforms for jewelry, Google.
Reduced Competition Sparked Higher Return
The pandemic led many jewelry retailers to pull back Google spend in 2020, especially in March and April. That reduction trimmed the average cost per click (CPC) of shopping ads by 33%, to $0.44. We saw an even more dramatic reduction in cost per acquisition on Google Shopping, at 43%.
But jewelers who stayed in the shopping game were able to experience a bump in return on ad spend (ROAS). On average, that bump grew by 42% year to year to 5.30.
Using All Channels at Your Disposal
Google paid search ads, by contrast, presented a slightly more competitive landscape in 2020. CPC averaged $0.89 for the jewelry segment. However, competing in this environment increasingly requires retailers to hone their segmentations and bids, and always have a test running to stay on top of what’s working.
“We’ve seen great success with our customers that really pushed the limits and used the surge as an opportunity to their advantage by trying new initiatives,” said Sandie Shin, Director of Customer Strategy for Strategic Accounts at Sidecar. She spoke candidly about pandemic and post-pandemic advertising on Sidecar’s podcast, Retail Uncharted.
“We’ve done a lot of initiatives like prospecting new audiences, and diversifying to other channels within Google, like YouTube and display,” she continued. “I think they’ve really paid off as we see those new customers really start to come back and return and become a loyal customer.”
More Insights on Ads That Work for Jewelry
This is just a summary of key insights we uncovered in our research. We published several other data sets for e-commerce jewelers in Sidecar’s 2021 Benchmarks Report. It covers results for 2019 and 2020, year-over-year growth in all the KPIs covered here, and comparisons to retail averages.
