It’s a ‘No Brainer!’ The Digital Marketing success of Cogs the Brain

Cogs the Brain is a smart, clever up and coming company selling unique toys and games designed to challenge the mind in a fun way. From desk toys to brain teasers and family night fun packs, they have something to keep children of all ages happy. Their strategy of stocking hard to find and rare items has seen their popularity as a ‘go-to ‘shop for gifts sky- rocket. (Their ingenious stomp rockets are coincidentally a top selling toy!) This enthusiastic store also supplies schools with word skill games, fast talking games and teaching equipment recommended for dyslexia and ADHD. With an exciting array of educational, Irish made products this is a company that oozes buoyancy, fun and success. A contributing factor in their success has been their centrally location in the very fancy Stephens Green Shopping Centre in Dublin.  However, this choice shop location lost its advantage when Covid-19 closed all stores a year ago. Cogs the Brain had to look to online sales.

“A tenfold growth in online sales during lockdown”

Like most retailers, when the pandemic closed Cogs the Brain, this family run business looked to the online business to keep heads above water. They had always been proactive with promotional work and took a diverse approach to marketing, cultivating a strong presence on social media through content and skilful marketing. They employed a marketing firm and invested in digital marketing with some initially mixed results. Although sales were not abysmal, their spend on promotion was out of kilter and they made the bold decision to change their marketing partners. The retailer attributes much of their success to moving their digital marketing to a trusted partnership with Dmac Media.

‘”We were having regular monthly meeting with our search engine advisors to assess our pay-per-click campaigns. However, their advice always seems to be to spend more money. It got to the point where the cost of the sale was negating the income. We met Dmac Media through the e-Commerce Association of Ireland. Dmac was able to educate us on how to optimise our online ads and get more bang for our buck. Together with Dmac we systematically went through our products online and made the PPC campaigns more efficient. With a traditional physical store, it’s important to get a good location with great footfall. Online you need a good quality traffic to your website to sell products. You can have a great looking website but if you do have to work hard to get it seen. That’s where Dmac come in.”

Dmac Strategy

Cogs the Brain already appreciated the value of a clever marketing strategy and so the digital marketing team at Dmac Media advised on a more strategic use of the data & tools available. For example, they found they were getting a lot of traffic to their ‘wooden maps of Ireland’ product page. When Dmac Media analysed this, they found that a much interest was coming from queries about county borders and the 5K radius restrictions rather than people actually looking for jigsaws. Dmac Media tightened their keyword targeting, and introduced an array of negative keywords and thus eliminating spend on irrelevant, high volume phrases to make sure those who were visiting the page were actually interested in buying their products.

“Once the ads were bringing qualified shoppers to our site when we increased our ad-spend we saw a massive increase in sales. We never had this level of personal service with our provider. We have great faith and trust in Dmac Media”.

Cogs the Brain’s wise investment gained them an additional 20,000 new customers along with the upsurge in online sales. They increased their sales tenfold, going from 10 online orders to over 150 online sales per day. Not all of this phenomenal success can be attributed to their advantageous SEO & Pay Per Click  practise, as there was an increased interest in educational toys and a growing sentiment to support local independent stores at that time. Buying online was the only option available to customers.  However, the targeted traffic to the website can be accredited to focussed digital marketing practises. The growth in quality and quantity traffic to the site was no child’s-play, and it takes ongoing tweaking, discussions and planning to keep the achievements going. Dmac Media and Cogs the Brain are in a continuous working relationship to ensure that the success story continues.

Dave McEvoy, Director of Dmac Media says “Irish eCommerce has experienced a massive surge in the last year, however it is still in its infancy and the opportunity for further growth is immense. Unfortunately overspending on Pay Per Click ads or more accurately overspending on the wrong key phrases is very common amongst new ecommerce entrants. We see this all the time with our customers. Many online store operators give up on Google Ads as being too costly however we would advise any online store owner to focus not only on single, once off sales but developing a strategy to create repeat selling opportunities. Getting the correct rate of return on ad spend is the real trick. At Dmac Media we are delighted with the success of our partnership with the team at Cogs the Brian Shop and excited to continue the growth trend.”

It’s a No Brainer

In all digital marketing, there has to be a tactical, profit driven approach.  While it might be satisfying on a personal level to get market saturation every time someone searches for your product, we must bear in mind that there is a financial cost in every moment of exposure. At Dmac Media we go for a much more practical approach and aim to up the follow through on each click and encouraging ‘in market’ traffic to the website. Our partnership approach to digital marketing assisted in Cogs the Brain reaping their just rewards over the past year (Their toys and games are awesome!). As with all of our digital marketing clients, there will be ongoing assessments, training in SEO & PPC Advertising, as well as lively discussions around upping the reach of email shots, increasing targeted exposure and of course, capitalising on the new and sustained move by consumers to online shopping. When the results are so obvious, for us and them, it’s just a complete a ‘no brainer.