Rebel wanted to understand the effectiveness of its digital efforts in driving in-store foot traffic. Connecting the dots between search ad clicks and in-store sales helped the brand optimise its digital campaigns, boosting profits and increasing share in key sports categories.
Goals
Understand digital marketing’s influence on in-store sales
Drive high-value shoppers to Rebel stores
Better integrate on- and offline teams
Approach
Focused organisation on a single KPI goal
Used store visit conversions tool to measure in-store sales driven by online search ads
Optimised digital campaigns based on omni-channel measurement data
Expanded search coverage to product categories driving more customers to stores
Results
Increased store visit rate from digital efforts by 44% in three months
Increased category share on key sports categories by 15%
Boosted YoY profits by 15%
When footballers head to the store to pick up some new boots, chances are they've used the web to research the purchase long before making it to checkout. Whether shoppers are comparing brands or searching for availability in nearby stores, the influence of digital on retail sales is skyrocketing. Consider this: Studies predicted that nearly 70% of store sales in 2016 would be influenced by digital, up from less than 5% in 2010.1
Rebel, Australia's largest sports apparel and equipment retailer, keeps up with this growing trend by being present online with search ads and location extensions. While it wanted to better understand the impact of online efforts on offline sales, measuring its efforts was a challenge due to siloed e-commerce and marketing teams competing for resources.
Rebel needed all its teams to be on the same page. Aligning on store visit conversions enabled the brand to focus on a single KPI in a convenient, common dashboard, bringing together each department’s influence and role in the purchase funnel.
Measuring online efforts' impact on offline sales with store visit conversions
Before aligning on store visits, Rebel's internal teams each focused on different stages in the customer journey, from online awareness to the final in-store purchase. The brand used store visit conversions to measure the aggregated statistics of Google users who clicked on one of its search ads and then visited a Rebel store. To chalk up a store visit, the tool matched users' anonymised location histories to the locations of Rebel's 94 stores across Australia. Google also surveyed users for an added layer of accuracy, confirming that they actually visited a store's location.
"Measuring store visit conversions has changed the way we look at our digital ad campaigns."
Measuring store visit conversions was a combined on- and offline approach to driving overall sales that gave Rebel a clearer view of customers' full path to purchase. With a single view of the customer journey, the brand could see the role digital played in driving customers to its stores.
In the first three months after Rebel adopted store visit conversions in March 2016, its store visit rate increased from 3.8% to 6.9%.
Total Store Visit Conversions per Month
Seeing the offline impact of digital gave Rebel what it needed to optimise and improve its campaigns and organisational structure as a whole.
Optimising campaigns for omni-channel shoppers boosts Rebel's profits
The store visit data helped Rebel see which product categories drove the most shoppers to its stores. This encouraged the brand to bid more aggressively for search terms within those categories and in turn focus on its high-value customers—the ones shopping in those categories and making cross-category purchases.
The organisation's omni-channel focus proved to be the right play. After improving its measurement technology and optimising its keyword bidding, Rebel saw a 15% YoY increase in profits along with a 15% increase in category share on key sports categories.
"The way consumers are purchasing has dramatically changed in the past 12 months," said Wayne Tozer, Rebel's executive general manager of retail. "As we continue to drive a digital-first strategy for Rebel, we're seeing substantial sales growth on- and offline. Measuring store visit conversions has changed the way we look at our digital ad campaigns."
