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Whill White

Paid Search

How Using a Holistic Approach to Paid Ads Increased Awareness, Leads, and Conversions.

WHILL is a Japanese healthcare company, offering innovative and life-changing personal mobility solutions to those living with mobility limitations. Wolfgang partnered with WHILL to help them to raise brand awareness and to grow quality leads in Europe, overcoming challenges such as low brand recognition and significant advertising restrictions in the healthcare space.

WHILL Case Study Web Header

THE CHALLENGE

As a new player in Europe, WHILL lacked brand recognition and the main challenge to reach potential customers was exacerbated by two main factors; 

  • A long purchase journey from a user’s initial visit to the purchase.
  • Restrictions in the health industry limited the ability to prospect to their target audience (i.e. people with disabilities) and prevented remarketing to people who had visited the website. 

Consequently, the account was struggling to generate enough conversion volume to effectively run smart bidding campaigns on Google Ads while solely focusing on their primary KPI.

OUR STRATEGY

To overcome these challenges we took a three phased approach.

Phase 1 - Implementation of Bid-To-Value Strategy

  • We created soft goals to give Google’s algorithm more data points as well as assigning values to each conversion to bid on high value audiences through value-based bidding.
  • By applying different values across the conversions we helped guide Google’s smart bidding to prioritize the main KPI (Schedule a Test Drive).

Phase 2 - Brand Awareness Strategy

  • In order to avoid waiting for feedback from WHILL’s sales representatives, we needed to find a way to target the right audience despite the challenges.
  • We started testing various audiences to uncover new insights to improve the targeting. 

Phase 3 - The integrated Cycle

  • We integrated the audiences into our campaigns, continually uncovering insights about our audience. For example, we found the audience in-market for sedans in the insights tab, because users with wheelchairs often require larger vehicles for storage.
  • Our approach not only addressed individual challenges but interconnected them, providing a holistic solution.
WHILL Case Study Mobile Asset

INNOVATION USED

Our strategy needed to overcome the fact that we were not permitted to specifically target people with disabilities or remarket to previous website visitors (due to advertising regulations in the healthcare space). 

We experimented with targeting audiences based on other common characteristics among the typical WHILL customer. For example: 

  • Aging population: Retirement related audience
  • Family members buy wheelchairs for their relatives: Family focus audience
  • Higher Income: Homeowners audience
  • Customers have health problems: Health insurance audience
  • Looking for a transportation method: Vehicle & transportation audience

We integrated the audience's learnings into YouTube campaigns focused on views (CPV) to find interested users. After accumulating a decent audience size, we switched the focus to reach (CPM) in order to increase the audience size further.

We integrated the audiences into our campaigns, continually uncovering new insights.

BUSINESS GROWTH

In 2023 we generated +66% more leads YoY and +35% more than our targets for Germany and France in 2023. 

  • Quality of leads also increased - 84% of all leads were Marketing Qualified Leads and 45% of those ultimately purchased a WHILL chair.
  • Brand searches for WHILL in the last quarter of 2023 increased from 730 in 2022 to 1030 (+41% YoY).
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What our clients say

Don’t just take
our word for it

"We are truly impressed with Wolfgang Digital’s exceptional work. Their proactive suggestions rooted in a deep understanding of our business and paid marketing were instrumental in driving our success. Over the past years, their efforts in increasing awareness and generating qualified leads significantly contributed to our sales growth. We appreciate their dedication, and we eagerly anticipate further delivering fun and innovative mobility for all together with them.”
YB
Yuki Ban
VP of Strategy & Operations at WHILL Europe B.V
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