We’ve driven a YOY managed spend increase of 23%, as well as growing our team by 38%.
In addition to YOY growth, we also saw several client wins in January 2024, including Where Saints Go, Furniture.co.uk, Hair Gain Now, Steel Products Direct, Pineapple Island, CPD, and Personal Group.
We have ambitious growth plans for 2024, which includes expanding the agency and near doubling our client database. Having already increased the size of our team by 38% YOY, we’re looking to hire another 5 PPC experts this year to help facilitate our growing client roster.
Managing Director, Rick Tobin, said:
“It’s been an incredible start to the year, and we’re looking forward to working with even more exciting, determined clients, and expanding our team of experts. We love what we do, and love being both a great company to work with and work for, so we’re excited to be able to continue growing both of those areas within the agency.”
2023 Recap: 10 Highlights From The Past Year
Welcome to our 2023 recap! Over the past 12 months, we’ve continued to grow as an agency, celebrating more achievements, wins, success and fun than ever before!
However, there are a few highlights that shone for us – keep reading for 10 of our chosen moments that made our year, many of which we hope to continue (or get even better at) in 2024…
Our 2023 Recap
Despite the challenges that 2023 brought, we still saw the agency grow and flourish during the past year – including seeing our biggest month on record in November! Read on for some of our top highlights from 2023…
10 Agency Highlights
In no particular order, here are some of the moments we loved as an agency during 2023:
- Winning PPC Agency of the Year… twice!
We won ‘PPC Agency of Year’ not once, but twice, at both the UK Digital Excellence Awards and UK Digital Growth Awards… hat-trick in 2024?
- Growing the team
We welcomed four awesome new experts to the team this year: PPC Executives Luisa, Lauren and Mo, and PPC Reports Analyst Dev!
- Achieving our biggest Black Friday on record
This year’s Black Friday was bigger than ever before, and we saw a total revenue increase of 59% for clients over the Black Friday weekend! We only expect this to rise next year! For more Black Friday analysis, read our full report here.
- Working with amazing clients
Every year, one of the most amazing things to look back on is the incredible work we do with clients, and how awesome they are to work with. We’ve loved every minute working with our fantastic clients this year, and have welcomed some awesome new brands to our roster!
- Hosting our first ever panel event
Back in September, we opened up our doors as part of Leeds Digital Festival and invited our friends from Salesfire and Shoptimised to talk about all things CRO! Listen to the full recording of the event here.
- Toasting to our 14th birthday
It might be cliché, but every year we celebrate our birthday and look back at how we’ve grown as an agency and celebrate many more successful years to come!
- Introducing weekly team time
One of the best things about working in a team of experts is being able to knowledge-share and solve problems together. Earlier this year, we introduced weekly ‘team time’ on Thursday afternoons to discuss topics and share ideas that will help us deliver even better results for our clients.
- Exhibiting at events across the North
We joined the team at Marketing Showcase for their Sheffield, Leeds and Manchester events, as well as the Salesfire team at their first ever Salesfire Summit. Listen to our Commercial Director, Ahmed’s, talk at Marketing Showcase Leeds here.
- Maintaining our Google Premier Partner status (again!)
Since Google introduced its Premier Partner programme, we’ve proudly maintained Premier Partner status that allows us greater insight into products, betas, updates and more from Google.
- Organising awesome team events to celebrate
Our legendary summer and Christmas parties were back for 2023, where we celebrated our achievements as a team and enjoyed some time away from the office together. This year, we rented out a lodge in York for summer, and headed across the Pennines to Manchester for a festive night out.
And that’s all from our 2023 recap! Thank you to our clients, partners, and friends for the continuous support you provide to help us be the best we can be. But most importantly, a big thank you to our amazing team, who we know will go on to smash another year as we enter 2024!
PPC Predictions 2024
The ever-changing landscape of PPC means that as advertisers, we don’t only expect change, but have learnt to embrace it. This means that PPC trends are constantly changing, and our experts have their own thoughts on what 2024 might hold.
Throughout 2023, we saw planned changes and updates from ad platforms, including at Google’s annual Google Marketing Live event, which touched upon some of the newest updates and information from the platform that will certainly change the way advertisers work in the future.
So, there are already some anticipated and confirmed changes that we’re expecting in the near future. The Circus PPC experts have offered up their personal predictions of the PPC trends that we might see next year.
2024’s PPC Trends Predictions
From rising CPCs and platform updates, to a decline in available data and a continuing uplift in AI – the team have offered up their predictions for the year ahead:
“Following pressure from PPC managers and business owners to share more data, Google will do so through their own API (or with scripts), meaning that only a limited number of people will be able to see the data.”
Ahmed Chopdat, Commercial Director
“The decline of third-party cookies. Google announced that third-party cookies won’t be supported by Chrome by the end of 2024 (other browsers like Safari and Firefox are already blocking them) as they attempt to improve user privacy.”
“I think we’ll see a big decline in available data from the Google Ads Platform due to the reception of GA4, which has already led to less visibility on the whole PPC journey as it is. This will drive customers to look for more third-party analytics systems generally.”
“Google will add more elements into Auto-apply Recommendations (AAR), and hide them in the system so it’s harder to opt out. However, this will present an easy win for advertisers when they onboard new accounts, as they will be able to get some quick wins from opting out of AAR that doesn’t benefit the client’s goals.”
Meg Wilson-Taylor, Operations Manager
“In a move towards ‘increased data flow, leading to improved performance’, I think Google will announce that the phasing out of Phrase Match keywords, and encourage advertisers to make use of Broad Match as part of their main search strategy. Long-term I see Exact changing as well, but would expect Phrase to go first.”
Anna Wood, Head of Client Services
“Bing recently introduced PMax, but considering the high level of automation, I doubt that many accounts will see positive performance. In the past, I’ve noticed that automation can perform weakly on Bing due to a smaller traffic and sales volume, which in turn, will elongate the time taken for the algorithm to learn.”
“Amazons ad revenue has grown 26% year on year and I expect this trend to continue into 2024 and beyond. They are going to develop more opportunities for advertisers, and will overtake Meta as the second largest ad platform in terms of ad revenue spend.”
“AI will continue to advance, and features such as auto-created assets will become more effortless, error-free and popular amongst advertisers.”
“Definitely an uptake in the use of AI. The potential it has to reduce the time and effort spent on mundane tasks is unmatched, and can free up time for more important activity.”
“CPCs are only going to continue to rise, which means that it’s more important than ever for advertisers and agencies to work closely with clients to best optimise their website to help improve conversion rates and drive growth.”
For more expert commentary, analysis and thoughts from our talented team of PPC professionals, check out our 2023 Black Friday Report – packed with insights around this year’s seasonal shopping event.
Circus PPC Celebrates Biggest Black Friday On Record
Circus PPC are celebrating Black Friday success with 2023 being the most triumphant on record.
The agency they grew overall client revenue by 29%, despite previous reports that consumer spending could take a hit due to the current state of the economy. In addition to this, they also saw an increase of 20% in revenue on Cyber Monday.
The agency also saw significant revenue increases across the following industries on Black Friday:
- Fashion (23%)
- Homeware (39%)
- Hobbies (68%)
- Gifting (94%)
Circus’s Commercial Director, Ahmed, said:
“Black Friday is our biggest day of the year – and has become a huge sales day for many of our clients too. This year we exceeded our revenue targets, despite reports that many consumers will be reducing spending as a result of the current state of the economy.
Despite generally seeing lower traffic than expected, we saw a total 29% increase in revenue across all of our client’s account, which drove a stronger ROI for the majority of these clients!
It’s great to see our hard work pay off and to see our client’s businesses growing amongst such an unstable market – it speaks wonders about our team’s talent and expertise. This Black Friday success is a testament to what we can do!”
Trade Furniture, a Circus client since July 2022, saw incredible YOY increases of 71% in Black Friday revenue, an incredible 301% in Cyber Monday revenue, and 171% in revenue over the whole weekend. Christina Whitworth, Operations Manager, said of the growth:
“We’ve had a great month this month, and I am feeling confident about next year with your team behind us – and in this climate that speaks volumes.”
How To Increase Conversion Rate: Panel Recap
Last week, Circus PPC Agency hosted a panel event as part of Leeds Digital Festival exploring CRO and its effectiveness from the standpoints of a product feed optimisation specialist, PPC agency, and on-site tech experts. Read on to find out more how to increase conversion rate.
Panel host, Donya Broadhead, began the discussion keen to delve into the cost-of-living crisis and the impact it has had across the different sectors of panel guests, reiterating how tricky the past couple of years have been, and how consumers are becoming more and more savvy when it comes to deciding how and where to spend their money.
Then, the panel discussed their experience of CRO within their own individual industry sectors, where they also answered audience questions and provided key insights into what can be done to better increase conversion rate.
Increase Conversion Rate With These Key Takeaways
Feed Optimisation
John Cave founded Shoptimised – the UK’s fastest growing feed optimisation platform, and shared some of the trends that he’s seen during the cost-of-living crisis.
“One of the big changes we’ve seen through search in an increase in people that are looking for cheap, discounted, promotional and we’re those search terms through a lot of reports. We’ve seen it on different spectrums and different sectors. So right across the board, you see that luxury doesn’t really seem to have slowed down at all due to the audience and because people have got lots of income. The people at the other end of the spectrum are having to be a bit more savvy about what they’re spending.”
Account Optimisation
Inny Vaiciute, PPC Expert at Circus PPC Agency, has worked across a range of both eCommerce and lead generation clients, and shared the importance of targeting the right audience, and doing so effectively, in order to improve conversion rates.
“Really understand your audience. If you want to optimise for them to buy something from your website, then you have to understand how they think in order to persuade them with website content and highlight why they should buy from you. You should understand how your specific audience refer to your products – because you can say trainers, you can say sneakers and there are so many different synonyms for a single product and different types of people might use different words. So it’s really about understanding your audience, understanding how they communicate, how they think, and then using that information to persuade them to buy from your website.”
Website Optimisation
Tim Mawson, Head of Partnerships at Salesfire, shared his thoughts about the impact of third parties and how they can help to optimise your website to drive as many conversions as possible.
“The biggest thing for me in terms of success is to do with understanding what adding a third party to your website can do. The biggest thing we found is that if a person engages with your site search on the website, there are two and a half times more likely to convert. Then, by the time you factor in things where you can add in like voice and image search, which the younger generation are keen on brining to mobile use. It’s about catering again to that specific audience, market, and demographic and being able to understand what you can provide as tools on the site to make conversion flow a little bit better.”
What Else Can Be Done To Increase Conversion Rate?
The panel finished with their top takeaways from the discussion:
John: Nail Your Strategy
“Know what you’re working towards and make sure that everything lines up between what you’re doing with your feed, to what you’re doing with your marketing, and then what you’re doing on your website. If you understand what your strategy is and everyone – your partners, agencies, softwares – are aligned, then everyone can work in unison.”
Inny: Let The Results Guide Your Spend
“As PPC Experts, we can take you in the direction you want to go, but if you get there and don’t like the results, it’s time to find another direction. So, find out where your money is going and where it is you want it to go, but always be open to questioning your own judgement.”
Tim: Keep On Testing
“Test and actually evaluate what you’re doing and look at how people from different traffic sources react differently. If someone’s coming from TikTok, they need a completely different type of messaging to someone coming from Google Ads. Being able to understand that there is a time to appreciate the strategy you have but also a time to adapt, is key. Once you can differentiate between the two, you can go ahead and create a strategy.”
Now more than ever, effectively optimising conversion rates is becoming harder for businesses as they fight to remain ahead of competitors whilst consumers are more clued-up than ever when it comes to their purchasing habits. Listen to the whole panel discussion on our YouTube channel here.
Circus PPC Exhibit At Marketing Showcase Leeds
Circus PPC are excited to be exhibiting and speaking at this year’s Marketing Showcase Leeds, which will be held at the Royal Armouries.
Having previously attended the Marketing Showcase events in Manchester and Sheffield earlier in the year, Circus are finishing their 2023 event schedule in their home city, where Commercial Director Ahmed will also be delivering a talk titled ‘Re-launching a PPC strategy to tackle current challenges.’ The talk will take a look at how to manage a PPC strategy in the current climate, and how to make it work for you.
On the day, you’ll also be able to stop by our stand and speak to some of our talented and experienced PPC experts, who have managed accounts and delivered fantastic results for clients.
Register for your Marketing Showcase Leeds tickets here: https://mktgshowcase.co.uk/events/leeds/
Salesfire Summit Sponsored by Circus PPC
Circus PPC are sponsoring the first ever Salesfire Summit this year, alongside other industry experts to deliver insights, seminars and networking.
The event, which is taking place at The Belfry, is the first of its kind from Salesfire and will bring together some of the biggest names in the eCommerce industry for a full-day conference focused on trends, knowledge and networking. The Salesfire Summit will also be followed by the ever-popular Salesfire golf day.
Circus’ Commercial Director, Ahmed Chopdat, is one of the expert speakers on the line-up, and will be delivering a talk titled ‘How To Work Smarter With PPC In A Turbulent Landscape,’ which will touch upon how to save on wasted budgets and apply them in thriving areas within your account, whilst taking the current landscape into account and making sure that PPC as a revenue stream can remain profitable.
Location: The Belfry Hotel and Resort, Sutton Coldfield
Date: Tuesday 19th September
The event is free to attend, and you can register your interest here: https://www.salesfire.co.uk/salesfire-conference-2023
Circus PPC Hosts Event For Leeds Digital Festival
Circus PPC will be hosting their first ever panel event in partnership with Leeds Digital Festival this year. Read on for more about the event and how you can secure a place.
The current state of the economy and a dip in consumer spending means that many businesses are facing tougher times both online and offline, which, along with an increase in online competition over the past few years in particularly, advertisers are looking for more ways to maintain and improve CRO than ever before.
Join Circus PPC Agency at Leeds Digital Festival as they speak to their esteemed panel of industry experts, all experienced in various fields that are important to driving CRO, as they dive into how improving conversion rates can lead to significant improvements in revenue and ROI, ultimately making you and your client’s businesses more profitable.
Our speakers for the event are:
Donya Broadhead, Circus PPC Agency
Our panel host and PPC expert who works across a range of retail and ecommerce accounts, and has recently helped drive budget efficiency for a number of clients.
Ausrine Vaiciute, PPC Analyst, Circus PPC Agency
Ausrine (Inny) is a PPC Analyst at Circus PPC Agency, working with ambitious brands to help them to drive growth through PPC.
Tim Mawson, Head of Partnerships, Salesfire
Tim is the Head of Partnerships at Salesfire, and currently hosts the Salesfire Catch Up and Salesfire Trends podcasts, speaking to industry professionals and sharing valuable insights in the world of ecommerce.
John Cave, Co-Founder and Director, Shoptimised
John co-founded Shoptimised, the UK’s fastest growing and most powerful Product Feed Optimisation platform, in 2018, and now works with advertisers and brands to optimise their product feeds and drive CRO.
Register for free on Eventbrite here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/in-conversation-with-driving-cro-through-a-consumer-crisis-tickets-686480992127
The PPC Experts Black Friday Checklist
It’s nearly that time again, and as we get closer and closer to the biggest shopping event of the year, we’re sharing The PPC Experts Black Friday Checklist.
Get your copy of the full checklist here, or have a look at a few of our top selected tips below before downloading!
The ONLY Black Friday Checklist You’ll Ever Need
Our PPC Expert approved checklist is exactly what you need to ensure that you’re on top of this year’s Black Friday ads, and we’re giving you a glimpse of some of the top tips that we’ve shared in our checklist.
1. Conversion Tracking
Ensuring the conversions you expect and want to be live are working prior to Black Friday is a biggie. Ask yourself – is tracking up-to-date e.g. not using old analytics code? Are conversion actions using the right attribution model?
Fact: 75% of our PPC experts cited tracking as the PPC issue they’d most like to solve!
2. Ad Copy
Play it safe and get your ads uploaded in plenty of time so they can be reviewed, remembering to upload in a paused state and set rules for them to go live when required. This works the other way too – ensure that rules are set for ads to be switched off once the promotional period is over, and for your normal ads to be re-enabled.
For more, check out our PPC guide to ad copy here.
3. Theming
Big events such as Black Friday, Christmas, or Summer, are often associated with promotions by consumers, so theming your ads to suit these events could ensure that you’re reaching the most relevant and vast audience for your products.
Headlines and descriptions can be made more specific to the event in question – but be sure to note down what they were previously, so that they can be changed back following the event.
4. Budget
If you’re expecting a surge in sales during the Black Friday period, make sure that your budgets are set and in place. Closely monitor these budgets during the day in case they need to be increased further, or capped to ensure that you remain in budget.
5. Data
Top Tip: Use historical data to influence how you build campaigns and where to put budget to set your account up for success.
We all know historical data is an essential part of understanding what does and doesn’t work within an account, and it’s just as beneficial to look back on when it comes to seasonality and events. Ask yourself what has previously worked well, what were people researching, and what the data tells you about dips during the event e.g. between Black Friday and Saturday?
Click here for your own copy of The PPC Experts Black Friday Checklist!
In order to best set yourself and your accounts up for a successful seasonal period, now is the time to prepare, plan, and start putting the work in as early as possible. Our PPC Expert approved checklist is a great starting point, and provides all of the information you need to get going on your Black Friday planning!
Circus PPC Named 2023’s PPC Agency Of The Year
Circus PPC is celebrating a second ‘PPC Agency of the Year’ win this year.
Back in January, Circus won the coveted title for the first time at the UK Digital Excellence Awards, and last week celebrated as they were awarded the title for the second time at the UK Digital Growth Awards.
Following the awards ceremony, judges said of the win:
“We were truly impressed by this agency’s exceptional performance. The excellent growth experienced by both the agency and their clients is a testament to their hard work, dedication, and strategic expertise. Their achievements are truly commendable, and we look forward to witnessing their continued success in the future.”
The judges also commented on the agency’s ‘great performance,’ ‘successful business results,’ and ‘impressive YOY ROI.’
Circus’s Managing Director, Rick Tobin, said:
“It’s great to have a second ‘PPC Agency of the Year’ win, and it really goes to show how impressive the work is that our team are doing. We already knew that we were offering the best PPC management for clients, but it’s awesome to be recognised by other experts in the industry, and share that recognition and excitement with the team.”
This year, Circus aren’t just celebrating their recognition as an agency, but also for individual campaign work. Their work with longstanding client, Miele, has been shortlisted for a number of prestigious awards including The Drum Awards for Marketing EMEA and the Performance Marketing Awards. See the work that was shortlisted here.