Stone Group: Using PPC to save unwanted IT hardware from landfill and create a pipeline of stock for a refurbished technology brand

The Stone 360 App

Stone Group is a leading supplier of IT solutions to thousands of businesses, with a strong focus on the education and public sectors.

E-waste (or electronic waste) is one of the fastest-growing threats to the environment, with IT waste from UK businesses a massive contributor. Stone saw this as an opportunity to make safe, eco-friendly disposal of unwanted IT equipment faster and simpler for organisations. The Stone 360 app was created to facilitate this.

The Stone 360 app allows businesses and organisations to quickly and efficiently book and manage the collection and disposal of their broken, old or redundant IT hardware with a few taps. All hardware, including laptops, desktops, monitors, printers and servers is securely wiped of data and either recycled or refurbished.

These refurbished products are then used to provide stock for the Stone Refurb brand, for resale to both businesses and to consumers.

In early 2021, global events caused a shortage of microchips, leading to huge market demand in the tech community. Stone Group knew that they could turn this into an opportunity if they could generate more refurbished stock through the Stone 360 app.

Using PPC to drive app downloads

The Stone 360 app could only succeed with an active and motivated user base. Customer research showed that many businesses were socially conscious with a real desire to recycle their unwanted IT hardware, and easy-to-organise collection and financial incentives for future hardware purchases were identified as further drivers.

With this in mind we focused our PPC campaign on generating new app installs directly from ads. We focused messaging on the identified key motivators, alongside the clear environmental benefit and used a mixture of text ads, static display ads and video ads across Google search and YouTube.

This approach allowed us to reach a large, highly relevant audience very quickly. With ongoing optimisations and refinements around creative, audience profile and budgets we were able to generate high levels of extremely cost-effective downloads quickly.

The Results

450,000 items of redundant IT hardware

4,000 app installs

Less than £1.50 App installs

Feedback

"43 have been brilliant from day one. They worked hard to understand our business objectives and put the right strategy in place to achieve it. This has meant that since working with them we have seen huge growth for Stone Refurb."

Dionne Barlow - Director of Marketing, Ecommerce & Partner Management

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