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Google AdWords: a retail case study on geo-targeted PPC

By Andrew Redfern @ 20th March 2008 10:47 am

Figleaves.com is the biggest online retailer of intimate apparel in the world. The company sells lingerie, swimwear and hosiery for men and women, with designer labels and famous brands such as Malizia by La Perla, Wonderbra, Wacoal and Gossard.

Although it faces little direct competition in Europe, Figleaves is in a competitive marketplace elsewhere around the world, and for this reason has developed three key differentiators.

The company offers more than 140 brands; it is the key lingerie store for retailing giant Amazon.com (which promises to boost U.S. visibility and sales); and it offers fast and free shipping worldwide.

To keep up with demand, Figleaves has recently opened a second warehouse in the UK, as well as a New York office.

Its approach to PPC
For the last 18 months, Figleaves has used keyword advertising, including Google AdWords, to expand business. Two of the 15-person sales team are wholly dedicated to managing these pay-per-click accounts, including marketing executive Richard Brooks. He says the challenge from the start was to gain qualified traffic, and to convert visitors to sales.

“In the lingerie business, you run the risk of lots of browsing traffic but few buyers,” says Brooks. “So we set up thousands of very specific keywords, expand the list constantly, and use Google’s keyword matching options to closely target the most likely purchasers.”

Pay Per click results
Using AdWords tracking and reporting tools, Brooks can review ad performance by individual keyword, and check patterns daily.

“Based on a wide variety of generic and brand-based Google ad keywords, we consistently achieve clickthrough rates between one and 25 percent. In every case, these are dramatically above the norm,” he says.

Even better, Brooks reports that sales conversion through Google is trending upward. “Based on the level of traffic and conversion rates we are now seeing, we have had an eightfold increase in order values over the past year – and 80 percent of these are new customers. This performance has led Google to become one of Figleaves’ largest external sales drivers,” he says, “and it is a major reason we’ve trebled our Google ad spend,”

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