The Summary

As the pandemic forced the world to WFH in 2020, demand for consumer electronics exploded as chips shortages limited stock. For Crucial, this meant refocussing their strategy across their ecommerce ecosystems. Spark Foundry created a full-funnelled media plan to identify in-market audiences and target them with interest-based messaging before directing them to the most relevant tools and content. We outpaced the rest of the market as our streamlined investment strategy led to an increase in share of voice, site traffic and loyalty levels.

The Challenge

As the pandemic forced the world to WFH in 2020, many people quickly realised that their ‘home office’ tech wasn’t keeping up with their ‘new normal’.

Demand for consumer electronics that upgraded their home office exploded over night, whilst chips shortages limited stock and new waves of high street-dominant competition were turning to Digital to keep their share of market.

For Crucial, this meant refocussing their strategy across their ecommerce ecosystems; being laser focussed on the purpose and value exchange of each point of sale: Crucial.com, Amazon and their valued e-tail partners.

The Solution

Our primary research, conducted by Publicis, identified eight key personas, where those audiences consume media online and what motivates them to purchase. The eight audiences fall in to two main camps and the lockdown was increasingly polarising behaviours between these two groups of people:

1. Those that are tech savvy enough to know exactly what they need and where to find the best prices; and
2. Those that need a helping hand when trying to find the right product for them at the right price

This led us to revisit our value proposition across Crucial’s entire ecommerce ecosystem and in doing so, plan enhanced user journeys providing the most relevant and timely balance of media, platform, content, and digital experiences, whether you’re Tech Savvy or Tech illiterate.

Spark Foundry created a full-funnelled media plan that enabled us to identify in-market audiences and target them with messaging based on their interests before directing them to the most relevant tools and content to their individual need and research phase. For our Tech Illiterate audience, Crucial.com provided a suite of tools that aided their research and, once all our prospects have found the products they need, we retargeted them and direct them to purchase where they could find products in stock and the best possible deal.

Impact

• Our streamlined investment strategy led to an increase in Share of Voice and we outpaced the rest of the market by 2%, despite increased competition
• Our upper funnel activity drove a 10% increase in traffic to .com compared to pre-pandemic levels, while unique visitors increased by 33%
• In the Memory Category, during the key month of November ‘21, we achieved nearly 50% market share
• Sales: we improved conversion rate by up to 71% despite global chip shortages impacting stock levels
• Loyalty levels improved, with our biggest e-tail partner reporting 27.7% of customers had made a repeat purchase in the subcategory, compared to just 11.2% on similar brands