Client News > Release

10-05-2010

Making the leap - The Buzz Hut moves online

May 10th 2010: Beating the recession by moving his business online has been a huge success for Thomas O’Leary, managing director of outdoor toy retailer, The Buzz Hut.

O’Leary who started his business as a wholesaler in 2003 recognised that a radical change in his business was required to survive the recession and that he had a massive earnings potential if he sold direct to consumers.   

"One of the main business issues was the lack of cash flow," said Thomas O’Leary.  "This is a problem for many wholesalers as there is a gap between delivery of goods and receiving payment coupled with high storage costs associated with the wholesale trade".

O’Leary, set up his company website to accept online payments in October 2009 and set up a Google Adwords account to bring traffic to his website www.buzzhut.co.uk.

Using Google Adwords, The Buzz Hut has increased its customer database, increased online sales, attracted new customers from European markets and moved from being a wholesale business to become a successful online retailer. O’Leary appointed online advertising agency onlineadvertising.ie to manage the Adwords campaign.  

"I realised that if I took my business direct to the customer I could double my profit margin.  In addition, if I sold my products through the Internet I wouldn’t have the same amount of infrastructural costs like insurance, rent, labour costs etc that are associated with setting up a high street shop," explains O’Leary. 

"I knew that Google Adwords was my main sales and advertising business tool and for this reason I needed a Google Adwords Professional to oversee the campaign over the busy Christmas period", added O’Leary.

The investment paid off, using Google Adwords, The Buzz Hut had a 204% return on investment for its advertising spend within six months.  It sold huge volumes of products, particularly pogo sticks, which had a 10% plus conversion rate and the site enjoyed an average conversion rate of 8.7% across all of its products.

One of the first changes introduced by onlineadvertising.ie to O’Leary’s online ad campaign was to add Google’s conversion optimizer tool.  This tool allows The Buzz Hut to set a target advertising cost to sell one unit of a product (cost per acquisition).  It then uses the data in the Adwords campaign to make sales at that price or less, giving the advertiser a high degree of control over costs and Return on Investment.

As Alan Coleman of onlineadvertising.ie explains, "Google’s conversion optimizer makes it possible for the advertiser to take a scientific approach to their advertising spend. The advertiser sets their target cost per acquisition and the system works to bring in sales at that price via their Google Adwords campaign".

"The conversion optimiser eliminates guess work and allows for profitable advertising campaigns.  Innovative features such as this aren’t available in traditional print or broadcast advertising, and it has irrevocably changed the online advertising landscape".

O’Leary says, "As a business owner, it can be hard to get your message across to people if they’re not thinking about your service or they don’t know it exists.  With Google, people are already searching for what you offer, for example, pogo sticks. They know they want to get one, they’ve heard about it, so there is more chance of gaining sales".

"Taking my business online was the best decision I made for the company," adds O’Leary. "With the Internet there are no borders the ability to drive and grow both domestically and internationally is key and we intend to capitalise upon this in the year ahead".

Ronan Harris, Director of Online Sales at Google commented, "Owing to the limited size of the Irish market, companies that want to scale up have no choice but to sell to a global market and the internet is being used by more and more companies to achieve an international presence.  The good news is that online advertising makes it easier and cheaper for Irish businesses to start selling their products into new markets than ever before".

With almost 90% of sales made coming from the UK, The Buzz Hut, with the assistance of onlineadvertising.ie, plans to expand its export business into other markets including, France, Belgium and Germany.