Winning Gold award in The Drum Awards for Media in the SEO and PPC Integrated category is Jellyfish for Swarovski. Here is the award-winning case study.
Search marketing today is complex. Soaring media costs, rapidly evolving consumer behavior and fragmented data mean that brands are continually looking for new ways to maximize their potential and stay ahead of the curve.
Pay-per-click (PPC) and search engine optimization (SEO) teams are typically divided, reporting to different departments with separate key performance indicators, targets, tactics and measurement tools – ultimately stifling any meaningful traction through the search marketing.
Impacted by economic uncertainty, low consumer confidence, poor spending ability and rising costs, leading jewelry and accessories brand Swarovski partnered with global digital marketing company Jellyfish to unleash the power of search. Together, they embarked on a journey with the shared vision that PPC and SEO are stronger together.
The partnership aimed at elevating the brand while also achieving a 5% year-over-year (YoY) increase in search revenue.
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The solution
Jellyfish and Swarovski aligned the brand’s search channels through an overarching One Search strategy, bringing together paid and organic search to improve performance. This approach enabled Swarovski to own more of the search experience and be more relevant across the journey.
They connected PPC and SEO in order to: answer more search queries, from awareness through to conversion; engage more users with result formats that best met their specific intent; and convert more users by driving them through to performance-geared landing environments.
The One Search strategy framework was built around a combination of three core pillars: technology; talent; and process. This enabled the teams to move away from siloed search delivery to a more connected and integrated One Search model.
On the technology side, Jellyfish’s proprietary J+Search tool extracted data from Google Search Ads, Analytics, Search Console and Google Trends, to inform and measure collective search activities, and counteract the loss of data visibility, consent and privacy restrictions.
J+Search enabled search data to be organized in two specific ways: coupling paid and organic information and reconciling search term data at a keyword, landing-page, campaign or category level – highlighting opportunities for incremental growth, efficiency or testing across search.
Monitoring, with greater granularity, the correlation between PPC and SEO, gave the team insight into real views of cause and consequence.
On the talent front, a combination of paid search specialists, SEO experts and data planners united disparate channels, tactics, technologies and datasets to form a unified roadmap. Domain experts from Jellyfish and Swarovski persevered in asking challenging questions and finding complex solutions.
In terms of process, Jellyfish and Swarovski redefined the delivery model to create an integrated ‘always on’ One Search model, unifying cross-functional talent and technology that enabled them to identify, prioritize and act upon opportunities and challenges.
Automated alerts were run daily to notify unified search teams of emerging opportunities or urgent performance threats, allowing for quick, responsive action.
Meanwhile, weekly cross-channel insights and keyword sharing sessions promoted unified thinking across search roadmaps, short-term planning, and weekly execution.
On a monthly basis, the team organized large datasets to identify high-priority actions, channeling them into mid- to long-term account optimizations.
Finally, the quarterly approach to One Search included a unified testing roadmap that helped monitor the incremental impact and contributions of various search types – brand, modified brand, non-brand – search formats, algorithmic updates and adoption of technology like Performance Max. Insights from these quarterly reviews drove significant updates to bidding strategies, budget allocations, search reporting and scenario forecasting across multiple timeframes.
Using this strategy, Jellyfish and Swarovski implemented the following key initiatives that propelled One Search performance:
1. Search incrementality experiments
Working closely with Swarovski’s performance marketing and data teams, Jellyfish conducted experiments to assess the value and optimal investment across search engine advertising (SEA), SEO, brand, non-brand, search technology and more.
The team used go-dark and A/B testing – in select regions, branded SEA was paused to measure its incremental impact.
Jellyfish also conducted tests during different peak times, providing insights into how the search engine results pages (SERP) – and the competitive landscape within them – shifted throughout the year. This helped the team fine-tune strategies for profitable, incremental growth in line with consumer and competitor dynamics.
During high-competition gifting periods, SEA investment in branded search terms drove nearly 10% more incremental transactions.
Outside of peak periods, SEO played a more prominent role, allowing SEA budget to shift towards prospecting efforts and bringing new customers into Swarovski’s digital experience.
These experiments helped Jellyfish and Swarovski optimize their approach to achieve profitable, incremental growth within a constantly evolving SERP and competitor landscape.
Leveraging Google’s Performance Max, along with optimized campaign structures and feed improvements, the team achieved a 50% revenue increase and a 26% improvement in return on ad spend, enabling further customer acquisition efforts.
2. Onsite content strategy optimization
Using insights from One Search performance, the teams enhanced Swarovski’s content strategy to drive stronger performance across the funnel.
By aggregating paid and organic performance data into a unified data lake and cross-referencing it with content audits of Swarovski’s website, Jellyfish identified previously untapped search opportunities.
By prioritizing and optimizing editorial and product category pages based on these insights, Swarovski scaled its non-brand search footprint significantly. This approach attracted new users at different stages of their purchase journey, whether for cost-effective retargeting or immediate conversion.
A structured 2023 editorial calendar supported these efforts, resulting in an 11% revenue increase, a 24% growth in clicks, a 37% lift in non-brand clicks and a 79% boost in impressions year-over-year.
3. Perfecting product launches and peak moments
Almost 60% of Swarovski’s annual .com revenue comes from peak gifting moments and product launches. The goal was to create a blueprint for maximizing search success during critical times of the year that can make or break the overall performance outlook for any given year.
Achieving this blueprint required the One Search team to establish collaborative planning workflows with wider omnichannel media teams within Swarovski and their agency network, to ensure search was optimally placed to absorb demand being generated by offline and online media activations.
The team also leveraged J+Search ‘pixel rank’ technology features to highlight which keywords, content formats and SERP features would generate the greatest brand visibility during peak activity bursts, plus which search channel – SEO, PPC or both together – would best address the available opportunity.
The team worked to compile detailed campaign analysis and learnings, and used them to further strengthen the One Search blueprint.
In Q4 2023 alone, this initiative supported the delivery of exponential growth – with Black Friday One Search revenue up by 30%, and winter sale revenues growing by almost 25% YoY.
4. Dynamic investment model
To accelerate new customer acquisition, the team adapted a dynamic spending model. This uncapped investment for PPC – providing return on ad spend was at or above target.
To ensure further incrementality, teams continually optimized SEO positioning and overall clickthrough rate to drive traffic to the site, adding negatives for searches where SEO dominated more of the SERP real estate.
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The results
Within 18 months, Jellyfish and Swarovski transformed the global search performance across 38 markets – driving significantly more revenue, with far less media investment, and achieving significantly greater search ROI.
This unified and integrated strategy was the best use of search within this highly competitive and complex search space, exceeding the target growth of 5% YoY.
Together, the partnership delivered a14% YoY reduction in paid search media investment, a 19% increase in incremental growth in One Search revenue and a16% YoY lift in website traffic.
Ready to get your work recognized on a global stage? Enter The Drum Awards today. Need more inspiration? Read our Award Winning Case Studies.
