British fashion Superdry faced a challenge: proving the value of generic search ads. When looking at results in isolation – attributed online sales only – they often struggled to hit their primary KPI, which was historically driven by return on investment. Superdry recognised that generic search could play a pivotal role in offline KPIs like store visits and in-store sales, but had been lacking the ability to fully measure the incremental impact.
About Superdry
British fashion brand
Sold in more than 100 countries worldwide
Headquarters in Cheltenham, UK
Goals
Understand online and offline impact of generic search investment
Approach
Increased investment in search campaign
Conducted a geo test by running campaign only in select regions
Compared sales in regions where campaign ran against those where it did not run
Results
Investing in generic search ads doubled incremental return on ad spend that was originally estimated
The Superdry team set out to understand the effect of investing in generic search ads by factoring in both online and offline data. To do so, they seasonally aligned Superdry’s keyword set for the summer season to put the brand front of mind among consumers for any summer related terms. The team coupled this increase in spend with a geo test, turning on generic search in a limited set of regions and comparing online and store performance against a control group.
Superdry was able to demonstrate the true impact of generic search to their business in a way that previous attribution models hadn’t allowed.
“It’s fair to say that the results surpassed all expectations. What we saw was that investing in generic search ads had an incremental return on ad spend that was double the figure we had in mind at the start of the project. This goes to show the importance of holistic online and offline measurement.”
– Tom McEwan, Performance Marketing Manager, Superdry
The outcomes of the test have produced a fundamental shift in how Superdry allocates budgets to generic search ads. Historically, the brand used these campaigns sporadically throughout the year in line with wider business campaigns. Now, however, Superdry is planning on utilising generic search on a global scale and as an always-on strategy.
