TV is a fantastic media for reaching new customers but it is also expensive if you are a growing company without endless marketing dollars. Search provides a window to reach more customers than most companies could ever imagine and on a pay-as-you-go basis. And for that reason, it presented a perfect opportunity for us to conduct a thorough analysis of the online jeans market. From household names to fledgling brands, we found winning strategies and areas of opportunity that we think are worth pointing out to our clients.

First and foremost, there are more than 500 advertisers targeting the keyword “jeans”. This is not surprising at all since the volume of searches clearly makes this a big opportunity for smart marketers. What is more surprising is the number of companies missing opportunities to capture market share by implementing well optimized marketing campaigns – clear call to action, offers, continuity between search ad and landing page, and a generally beneficial experience for people interested in jeans. With more than 500 advertisers competing for each person’s attention, there is little room for error and even less time to capture someone’s attention. With that in mind, here are some of our favorites.

Guess Jeans hits a home run

We love this campaign. The landing page is focused and drives action yet does not sell out the brand. Secondary navigation makes it easy for people to navigate around the site if they want to. And best of all, there are plenty of secondary, low-risk calls to action – email, social, etc. We estimate that this landing page is one of the top converters on the keyword “jeans” – which gives Guess an incredible competitive advantage in trying to capture the 20 Million people a month who search for jeans.
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Paris Blues is fun and engaging

This site appeals to a lot of different senses at once – sight, sound, emotion (we know that’s not one of the senses but pretty important nonetheless!). Check out the page here. It is a welcome departure from the endless store pages providing a clear, unique presentation of the brand while also having four clear paths to conversion. The one challenge, which is likely affecting conversion significantly, is that the Flash used to present the landing does not work well on all browsers (such as Chrome).
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Levi Jeans breaks the rules… in a good way

The Levi Jeans web page is on brand and provides nice options for primary and secondary engagement. They also do a great job of mixing up the location of conversion paths on the page so that visitors must visually explore the whole page while they are seeking the different offers. Usually a best practice would be to have a prominent call to action in a familiar location, but in this case Levi does a nice job of breaking the convention yet still setting their web page up to maximize conversion. This creates a unique experience that breaks through the clutter of the 500+ advertisers on Google.
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In conclusion, we hope you this helps you find your inspiration for tackling the big guys and capturing market share. The opportunity exists to go out and win the game. At stake, only 20,000,000+ potential customers!

Read more market analysis or case studies from Thrivepoint or contact us to discuss your business’ needs.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Halé Bob, a Los Angeles-based clothing company globally known for its unique style and celebrity clientele, employs its website as a key strategy in servicing its global client base, but the website itself was not producing the desired customer relationships or revenue impact. Some factors included: declining revenue during 2008-09 recession; most people leave the site without engaging; Poor performance from online marketing.

Thrivepoint Solution

Thrivepoint implemented Thrivepoint Engage™ – its proven marketing optimization solution – to:

• Completely map the conversion funnel and identify new engagement opportunities;
• Engineer design and message test to increase sales and signups while decreasing abandonment;
• Align online media, paid search and social media with the new strategy;
• Implement SEO on each page to increase organic traffic.

Implementation

Through the conversion funnel analysis, Thrivepoint established that repeat visitors were exponentially more likely to purchase and first-time purchases required a high frequency approach. Halé Bob’s current approach emphasized high reach and low frequency. Thrivepoint recommended implementing a conversion funnel that emphasized first time visitors signing up for remarketing programs that would provide them fashion exclusives and discounts on merchandise. Remarketing was defined as signing up for email, following Halé Bob’s Twitter profile or becoming a fan of Halé Bob on Facebook and the goal was to use these cost effective remarketing programs as the primary channel to introduce the higher frequency needed to turn one time visitors into repeat visitors and then customers.

With this strategy in place, Thrivepoint implemented website optimization consisting of offer, design, message and content testing on key website entry points — i.e., high traffic web pages — to maximize sales and signups to the remarketing programs. Through the course of website optimization, Thrivepoint also implemented search engine optimization by using proven messaging and content from the testing programs. Finally, the improved conversion flow and messaging were integrated with the paid advertising campaigns to ensure that ROI from paid media was maximized.

Campaign Results

The campaign has been a big success!  Declining revenue trends have been reversed and the channel is growing again.

Due to conversion optimization focused on the engagement model and conversion funnel, engagement rate from advertising increased 15x and overall site-wide engagement rate increased 851%.

Due to the improved conversion funnel and website usability, online advertising effectiveness increased allowing spend to grow by 3x which delivered an absolute increase in the size of the remarketing prospect database of 60% in just four months. Revved up remarketing efforts increased the quality and frequency of visitors to the site which contributed to higher visit to sales conversion rates and revenue. As a result, visit to sale conversion rate increased by 124% because visitors were introduced to remarketing programs and encouraged to come back to the site, which ensured that the quality of traffic to the site was continually increasing.

Thrivepoint continues to work with Halé Bob to optimize its marketing programs, website and search engine optimization.

Read more Case Studies from Thrivepoint or contact us to discuss your business’ needs.

© 2009. Thrivepoint LLC. All Rights Reserved.