SportsShoes.com

Retail Sector

SportsShoes.com - Improve SEO revenue and reduce my paid search cost per acquisition

Setting the scene

SportsShoes.com is a leading online retailer of (yep, you guessed it!) discount sports shoes, sports clothing and sports equipment. When we started working with them, we just handled their natural search campaign. Impressed with our SEO efforts, SportsShoes.com shifted their whole online marketing strategy in April 2009 from their incumbent agency to our unique and award-winning integrated approach.

The brief, in brief

1.    Increase natural search visibility, traffic and revenue for target terms such as ‘running shoes’
2.    Protect paid search sales during the transition from the incumbent agency
3.    Increase paid search sales volume and reduce CPA to £7

What we did, in a tiny nutshell

With the help of our award-winning Revenue Potential Model (and some other clever tools), we established that the collection of ‘running shoes’-related terms represented the biggest revenue opportunity. Then, using a unique blend of SEO-PR, paid search marketing and on-page SEO; we went after them!

Top line result

Propellernet drove an ROI of 733% through paid search, reducing CPA to under £7. We also achieved a number 1 position in Google for ‘running shoes’ and many ‘running shoes’- related terms.

Which led Brett Bannister from SportsShoes.com to say the following…

“I gave Propellernet a specific brief and they delivered on all fronts. I’m extremely happy to have trusted them with my online marketing strategy and look forward to more of the good stuff being applied to my brand!” 

Want to know more? Read the full case study below …






How Propellernet achieved a number 1 position in Google for SportsShoes.com’s key term ‘running shoes’.

(And was nominated for an NMA award in the process.)

At the heart of our strategy for SportsShoes.com lies our unique and award-winning Revenue Potential Model (RPM). This helped us establish that the group of ‘running shoes’-related terms had the greatest revenue potential. These terms became our primary focus with the objective of getting top positions for all these terms.

With the help of Persona Insight Research, we broke down our primary target market of ‘runners’ into Entry Level (Beginners), Intermediate and Hardcore runners. By ‘getting into the minds’ of these personas, we were able to brainstorm relevant SEO-PR ideas and establish media targets.

Here’s how we did it

  • We created a killer PPC campaign by identifying keyword gaps and focusing on lucrative terms that would maintain a good ROI. We also reviewed and optimised the paid search creatives and landing pages to maximise conversion rates.
  • By conducting rigorous SEO audits, we provided SportsShoes.com with a comprehensive list of on-page SEO recommendations.
  • Through a variety of SEO-PR tactics, we secured online coverage on authoritative sites containing ‘running shoes’ and other ‘running’-related anchor text links back to relevant running pages on SportsShoes.com.  The power of these authoritative links drove significant search engine positional jumps.
  •  Product Placement: Using seasonality as the hook and SportsShoes.com’s products and expert knowledge as the content; we placed features such as ‘Best Kit for Winter’ on high authoritative sites such as Mirror.co.uk, MensHealth.co.uk and Handbag.com.
  • Features: Using our Persona Insight Research to determine topical content and create targeted media lists for our three runner personas; we placed features such as ‘Running in Winter’ on authoritative sites such as iVillage.co.uk and PPOnline.co.uk (Peak Performance).
  • Advocacy/Badge Scheme: We invited members of the UK’s top running clubs to become ‘Official SportsShoes.com Kit Reviewers’ and sent them free kit to review, in return for hosting a clickable badge on their site containing ‘running shoes’ ALT text. This resulted in regular and compelling content on SportsShoes.com through the kit reviews, plus three high-quality links per month and an army of targeted advocates. Three birds with one stone!

    Running Shoes & Clothing


And the results?

By now you already know we reached a number 1 Google position for the term ‘running shoes’. Here are some more great results, comparing 2009 to 2008:

  • Visits from ‘running shoes’ up 100%
  • Revenue up by 78%
  •  Transactions up by 73%
  • Top positions for several other ‘running shoes’-related key terms, such as mens running shoes and cheap running shoes
  • CPA well under £7 target
  • ... And an NMA ‘Best Use of Search’ award nomination, which we are still eligible to win.

Now that’s rocket science!