The Body Shop preps ‘audience centric’ search strategy to win new customers
The Body Shop is overhauling its search marketing to fuel smaller but more targeted campaigns that it believes will grow its customer base over the next five years.
The ethical beauty retailer has brought in search agency iCrossing to steer the plan, which will initially restructure its paid search before working out how to integrate its SEO work. Search is the backbone of all digital marketing but the explosion of mobile and social is forcing The Body Shop, along with many other brands, to adapt to the modern searcher.
The changes will sharpen what were broadly categorised search campaigns around the interests of prospective customers. To build an audience, advertisers need to reach people who have yet to encounter their brand and The Body Shop is focused on reaching those who aren’t searching for its brand.
Better targeting means more relevant content that the retailer expects in turn will elevate its Google quality score, reduce costs and lift return-on-investment. Consequently, the savings the improvements spark will go back into its search budget.
The Body Shop’s audience forms part of a wider attempt to better balance pay per click (PPC) advertising with its SEO. Where the retailer ranks well in natural search for specific search terms, it will dial down the PPC work and on the flip side dial up the PPC campaigns where natural search may be struggling. Previously, this collaboration was not happening and the business found PPC was hijacking traffic as it was unnecessarily competing with successful natural search results.