# Case Study: The Month a Quarter of the Traffic Disappeared and Enquiries Tripled | Crank Source: https://wearecrank.com/case-studies/commerce-software-integrated-campaign-2020 Brand advertising was quietly consuming a lead-generation budget at £1,058 per enquiry, and an integrated programme beat every advertising-only campaign run alongside it. --- Commerce Software — 2020 # The Month a Quarter of the Traffic Disappeared and Enquiries Tripled Brand advertising was quietly consuming a lead-generation budget at £1,058 per enquiry, and an integrated programme beat every advertising-only campaign run alongside it. Challenge A brand campaign was costing £1,058 per enquiry while a demand campaign in the same account produced them at £69 — fifteen times the cost, consuming budget at exactly the point enquiries were the stated priority — and 15 per cent of paid traffic was going to a partner site returning no conversion data at all. Approach Redirect spend from brand to demand generation, and separate paid from organic properly enough to see which channels were actually producing the enquiries rather than absorbing the credit for them. Outcome The following month, traffic fell 25 per cent and enquiries rose 218 per cent — a quarter of the traffic disappeared in the same month that produced the best enquiry volume on record, which reported on volume alone would have read as a failure. 01 ## Brand activity quietly consuming a lead-generation budget Running simultaneously: a brand text campaign produced one enquiry from £1,058 of spend. A brand display campaign produced four at £87 each. A demand-led campaign produced twenty-five at £69 each. Brand activity was consuming the budget at a point when enquiries were the stated priority — the kind of spend that looks defensible in isolation and indefensible next to the campaign sitting beside it. 02 ## A fifth of traffic going somewhere nobody could measure A joint campaign sent traffic to a partner's own website. It generated 107 enquiries there, but no conversion data came back, so cost per enquiry and campaign effectiveness could not be calculated. Fifteen per cent of paid traffic went to a destination with no visibility — otherwise the largest single source of enquiries in the month was also the only one nobody could evaluate. 03 ## Fewer visits, more than twice the enquiries Between two consecutive months, visits dropped from 7,161 to 5,389 while enquiries rose from 79 to 251 and conversion went from 1.59 to 3.86 per cent; cost per enquiry fell from £64 to £57\. The cause was stopping brand awareness activity and shifting entirely to demand generation. A quarter of the traffic disappeared and the month was the best on record — reported on volume alone, it would have read as a failure. Underneath it, social converted at 6.43 per cent and email at 4.50, against 0.80 for display and 0.26 for paid search; together social and email carried 4.1 per cent of visits and 20 per cent of enquiries, while display took 53 per cent of traffic to produce 37\. The following month, investment in one of the strong-converting channels took it from three enquiries to fifty-four. 04 ## The integrated campaign that beat the advertising-only ones A campaign run as an integrated programme — webinar, supporting content and email alongside the advertising — produced enquiries at £17 each over a short window. Comparable advertising-only campaigns in the same month produced them at £67, £76 and £85\. The offer and the follow-up did more for cost per enquiry than any change to targeting or bidding. Separately, of 251 enquiries in a month, 43 were from people never seen before and 208 were returning — and every single enquiry attributable to paid advertising came from a new person, with returning enquirers arriving through email, organic search and referral. Paid and organic weren't competing for the same people; they were reaching two different audiences entirely. ## What redirecting the budget, and reading the channels correctly, produced £1,058 vs £69 Cost per enquiry, brand text vs. demand campaign \-25% traffic / +218% enquiries Same month, after redirecting spend £17 vs £67-85 Cost per enquiry, integrated programme vs. advertising-only 0 of 107 Enquiries from a partner campaign with any conversion data returned Drawn from Crank's account work conducted in 2020 for this commerce software business. Client not named. ## Want to know what this looks like in your own account? These findings came from asking straightforward questions before any budget moved. We're happy to do the same for yours. [ Talk to Wearecrank](https://wa.me/447457416922?text=Help%20my%20business)[Get in touch](/contact) [← Back to all case studies](/case-studies)