How Talley & Twine used Google to be on top

Talley & Twine started when CEO and founder, Randy Williams’ love for watches evolved into a passion. He noticed the watch industry had a divide: unattainable luxury watches from legacy brands and knockoffs. When Randy couldn’t find what he liked, he set out to make and design his own.

His pursuit paid off. Talley & Twine is now a growing brand in the U.S. and abroad. To date, the brand has made $2 M in revenue.

The team chose Google Workspace (formerly Gsuite) seven years ago so they could create a branded email address. Randy explains, “I didn’t want to contact manufacturers from my personal email account. I wanted to be professional and I wanted them to take me seriously.”

The benefits of a company email address and the ease of use led them to explore other Workspace features. Soon, they started using Google Docs and Google Meet for internal workflow. As a global company, they value the usefulness of Google Meet for meetings and collaboration sessions.

Eric Heyward, COO, comments on collaborating in real time, from “simple things like both of us updating a Google doc at the same time” to “both of us looking at a storyboard at the same time and making comments live. Those things are hugely impactful for us internally and for our partners.”

Eric is also a fan of the single sign-on. “Operationally, we don’t have to manage everyone’s username and password, for this application, versus that application. You can use our domain email to log in to a whole host of other products,” he shares. He adds that Google Workspace tools are intuitive and don’t require a lot of training or onboarding.

Experimenting with other Google products has paid off for Talley & Twine, they say “it’s grown with us.” YouTube, YouTube Ads, Shopify integration, Shopping ads, Trends, and Search ads have been added to the team’s Google Workspace. Eric and Randy share some examples.

• Google Trends: Randy shares, “Google Trends has been really important for us, especially in the beginning of the company, as we were doing market research on both e-commerce and the watch industry.” The team was ahead of the curve with information about future customer searches and buying habits and took advantage of it.
  
  
• Google Shopping: Eric says, “We’ve used Google Shopping to drive customers to our Shopify-commerce site.”
  
  
• Google Analytics: Randy says, “we found out that almost half of our customers were women before we were even offering women’s watches. And that was only possible through looking at our Google Analytics. We were able to use that information to start offering women’s watches, which is our fastest growing segment.”
  
  
• Google Channel app on Shopify: Randy expands, “We used the Google Channel app on Shopify to get all of our SKUs listed so that when people search, they would see them as shopping ads. It’s a very cumbersome task to do manually. The app integrates and automates the process. If we make changes to our website, it’ll update that in Google and customers can actually find the products that they’re looking for.”

Randy says that as a business owner, “you really don’t know where to go to get information on how to grow your business. Google is really good about providing that information alongside the tools that can help you grow.”

Talley & Twine has received impressive ROI for the money they’ve invested into Google Ads over the years. They appreciate how well the ads reach their target audience. Eric goes on, “Google Ads allows us to hit our customers where they are. They don’t have to go to a different platform to engage with us. We can engage with them where they are.” The team knows Google is the first stop for their audience and finds it empowering to meet buyers during their search.

Their first Ads investment was $9,000 and they made $40,000 from it. The results convinced them to increase their spending and it continued to pay off. Talley & Twine made their first $1 M in 2021.

Recently, their $120,000 investment earned an astounding 300% ROI in Q1 2022 with $466,000 in revenue. Eric concludes,” Google Ads have a lot more reach than any social ads that we have. We get the most return on our investment from our Google Ads.”

Talley & Twine’s relationship with Google has grown stronger and more rewarding since signing up for a branded email address. Consumer insights, internal tools, and efficient ad placement will keep Talley & Twine on the path of success.

Eric summarizes the impact Google has had on the brand:

“Google is a force multiplier for us. It takes the effort that we have to expend in the top of the funnel for our marketing and our brand recognition, and really takes that out. It’s our sales force. It allows other people to find out who we are, all the benefits of our products, the background of our company and our differentiators between our competitors. It is on this one platform.”