Increase in conversions year-over-year (YoY).
Increase in website revenue YoY.
Increase in conversion rate YoY.
Explore the thoughtful digital marketing strategy responsible for Jelly Belly’s skyrocketing online sales.
With candy-making roots dating back to 1869 and over 125 years of growth and innovation, Jelly Belly Candy Company is one of the most recognizable and beloved brands on the market.
Today, Jelly Belly® products are sold all over the world and the company remains family-owned and operated by the fourth, fifth, and sixth generations of the candy-making family.
Food & Beverage
USA
Paid Search, Product Ads (Bing & Google), SEO, Paid Social (Meta)
Revamping Jelly Belly’s organic and paid search strategies and enhancing their efforts with targeted paid social ads transformed the storied candy maker into a truly ecommerce-capable brand.
In 2017, Jelly Belly, the company renowned for their jelly beans, was gearing up to dominate not just in-store sales, but also ecommerce. A vision to surpass the traditional boundaries of the business led them to partner with Agital, a digital growth expert. The goal was clear: to identify and seize significant digital growth opportunities while adhering to revenue, budget, and marketing efficiency goals.
The SEO strategy built by Agital centered around creating and retaining a market stronghold for Jelly Belly’s flagship products. Agital achieved this by first focusing on branded terms and producing SEO-optimized content for those keywords and topic clusters.
An integral part of the strategy was creating blog content for broader search terms—like ‘sugar-free jelly beans’ or ‘Easter basket candies’—that would pique the interest of new customers who may not be looking for Jelly Belly-specific products. The addition of FAQs secured the first position in search results for key search terms and reinforced Jelly Belly’s status as the market leader.
To broaden reach and capture more top-of-funnel consumers, Jelly Belly also began targeting nonbranded terms, including less specific candy keywords. These smart strategies led to a sweet YoY surge in organic performance. Organic traffic increased by 349%, organic search revenue skyrocketed by 694%, while conversions jumped by 671%.
“Implementing consistent strategies across social, paid search, and SEO was brilliant; it dramatically increased Jelly Belly’s reach into high-value audiences that were ready to convert. Agital executed like pros; they took the time to get to know us, our business, and our clients, to learn our holistic business goals, then delivered a strategy that achieved them.”
Digital Sales & Marketing Manager, Jelly Belly
When it came to paid search, Agital built upon Jelly Belly’s successful SEO strategy. To ensure paid search efforts were driving revenue and remained in line with the client’s budget, Agital began with an analysis of Jelly Belly’s online customers, identifying what search queries meant they were ready to buy.
These findings drove both web content optimizations (for SEO) and the focus on paid search terms that indicate purchase intent (jellybean color, bag size, flavor, and more!). This approach allowed for higher investment in paid search while retaining excellent marketing efficiency and generating consistent revenue.
Jelly Belly’s paid search strategy drove 286% more traffic, 574% more conversions and 747% more revenue with a 765% return on ad spend from the paid channel.
Agital took a very selective approach to Meta that focused on consumers who were ready to buy. To get it right, we conducted creative testing to understand what offers, imagery, and value propositions motivate Meta users to buy.
The results from the testing shaped Jelly Belly’s Meta strategy; the client uses historical data to determine which discount levels and product pairings are most likely to convert users into purchasers, and only those offers are advertised on Meta.
This data-backed approach to paid social has generated a 498% return on ad spend for Jelly Belly, ensuring the brand continues to hit their Meta efficiency goals.
The coordinated approach between paid search, SEO, and paid social yielded great results for Jelly Belly. Overall, it drove:
“When we first set out to build an entirely new revenue stream for Jelly Belly, we weren’t sure where to start. Agital helped us define our KPIs, craft strategies to sustainably get us to our goal, and deliver a huge cross-channel impact. We are able to always trust their expertise because our performance is their priority.”
Digital Sales & Marketing Manager, Jelly Belly
By focusing on complementary SEO, paid search and paid social strategies, Agital helped Jelly Belly reach ready-to-convert consumers across channels, drive massive online growth, and generate profitable ecommerce revenue for their historically brick-and-mortar-only brand.
Agital delivered on its promise of providing both holistic and channel-level strategies, informed by the client’s overarching business goals.
Whatever marketing challenges you’re facing, Agital makes a profound impact that reverberates across your business.
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