South African based agency, HaveYouHeard, has broken its client's own records by achieving seven consecutive weeks of online sales growth.

HaveYouHeard won theTrotters business late in 2019 and opted to run the account out of its London office while the Johannesburg team was tasked with research, strategy and creative execution. Cape Town provided essential client service skills.

“We were thrilled to be awarded the Trotters account, one of the favourite brands among the London and international elite and a firm favourite of the British Royal Family,” said HaveYouHeard co-founder, Cape Town-based Jason Stewart.

“However, while it was in good shape, we quickly discovered we could fine-tune the existing processes with category-leading strategies that improve digital marketing performance. Very soon we began delivering outstanding value for the client.

“Thanks to digital technology, the world is a small place, and fresh thinking is what’s most-highly prized by clients. Our unique approach blends the latest influence and digital word-of-mouth thinking with best-in- class insight-driven and performance-based execution. Add an ambitious client into the mix, and results are practically guaranteed,” he said.

Since taking on the brand, HaveYouHeard’s far-flung team has created brand-specific content as well as run multiple ad campaigns for existing product groups, for example those called Dress Shop, Ice-Cream Edit and Spring Sale.

According to the UK office’s Simon Read, initial key objectives were to drive conversions, maintain the brand and improve return-on-spend. Each campaign had something unique to offer multiple audience groups in both the UK and the US, where Trotters is increasing its footprint.

He said a combination of tactical placements and smart copy helped increase conversions by 37%. During the same period, cost per conversion dropped 31%, meaning Trotters is spending less to attract more, and return-on-advertising spend is up 50% month-on-month in the UK.

“With multiple ads on multiple platforms in multiple geographies – we’ve now also begun to advertise in the Middle East – we’ve had to adjust our initial strategy from simply maintaining performance to one that strove for constant optimisation,” he said.

“What’s worked well for us has been the introduction of variations of display executions, including responsive ads, to improve the results from awareness to conversion, which proved an effective growth trigger for the brand. Then, tactical research ‘dives’ to understand audience habits and how they interact with ads have highlighted just how premium content drives conversion in US markets versus how unique placements for sales have impact in the UK.

“Other successes have come from trialing different types of ads against each other. Here, we ran product ads against lifestyle video ads, for example, to see which our audiences interacted with more regularly. This obviously informed our creative treatments as well as our placement strategies for consistent tweaking of the campaign. Each ad played a bespoke role to move customers through a journey into final conversion. It's about the story and how we eventually retain and build new loyal audiences.

“We’re incredibly pleased that many of our current awareness campaigns are prompting browsers to convert to shoppers at the top of the funnel,” he said.

“Trotters was attracted by HaveYouHeard’s hybrid model –a multi-disciplined, multi-talented virtual team that would allow us to flex skills and resource as required,” said Trotters’ Head of eCommerce and Marketing, Robert McGeachie.

“Modern communications are inefficient and fail to hit the target unless everything is working in harmony. With audience- and data-driven insights the true north of our digital programme, we are really seeing the results we hoped for when we engaged with HaveYouHeard.”

Future brand activity includes creating a conversion campaign on Pinterest using promoted pins, and the deployment of analytics to guide which creative should provide the focus and how unique audiences interact with it.