Using two deal events to buy a year of ranking for a cookware set

The brand ran deals because everyone runs deals. Each event produced a good week, a hangover of returns and a slide back to the same organic position — the spike never became a baseline. Advertising was cut the day the deal ended, which is exactly when the ranking gained during the event is most fragile, and inventory was planned for the event rather than for the month after it.

We planned each event backwards from the position we wanted to hold in week five.

• Deal depth set by rank target — discount chosen to reach a velocity threshold, not to hit a revenue number.
• Advertising raised after the event, not before — spend held high for four weeks post-deal to defend the rank the discount bought.
• Inventory covering the tail — stock planned for event plus six weeks, since a stockout in the defense window returns the ranking to where it started.
• Review capture during the spike — the event's volume routed into the review program, so the extra sales left a permanent asset.

The hero term moved from #19 to #3 and was still there at the end of the engagement, through and past the second event.

The post-event baseline is the point: monthly revenue settled at $164k rather than returning to $93k, because the ranking gained in the event was defended rather than surrendered. TACoS fell five points across the period even though event spend was higher — the organic position now carries sales that used to require a paid click.