Client Case Study – Argos Business Solutions
Project Theme – Paid and Organic Search campaigns with Web analytics
Introduction
The Argos Retail Group is the general merchandise business of GUS
Plc, a retail and business services group. It was formed in 2000 to
build on the experience of GUS Plc in home shopping and on the strengths
of the Argos brand, which consumers associate with good value and convenience.
The result is a multi-channel business that maintains separate retail
brands with discrete propositions.
As a group member, Argos Business Solutions benefits from the scale
of its combined buying and merchandising strategy. The retail brands
provide the convenience of home shopping through different routes to
market and are focused on broadening customer choice through the development
of new products and services.
Argos Retail Group includes Argos Limited, Homebase and Argos Retail
Group Financial Services.
Argos Business Solutions specialises in reward and purchasing solutions
for customers across the entire business spectrum. It offers all aspects
of reward solutions and incentives – from traditional gift vouchers
through to national consumer loyalty programmes. It also provides a
range of products for businesses through its traditional catalogue service.
The business challenge
Argos Business Solutions needed a search marketing agency that understood
its traditional catalogue business as well as the complexities of its
business-to-business division.
Prior to appointing ivantage Limited, Argos had carried out some
search marketing activity in house. This was predominantly PfP (Pay
for Position — paid search on Google Adwords and Yahoo’s Overture).
Although it recognised the importance of organic search results, the
marketing department did not have the resources to implement it and
results for organic and PfP search were poor. Argos Business Solutions
also realised that the existing web site needed changes to its design
in order to work hand-in-hand with crawling search engines and improve
the success of the campaign.
Argos Business Solutions needed to attract quality visits using keywords
and phrases that accurately reflected its business. The structure of
its website was also a key concern and a limiting factor in the success
of the search marketing activity in the past.
The business objectives
Argos Business Solutions needed to improve conversion rates from
visits to leads, across its Rewards and Procurement businesses. It needed
to understand who was visiting the site, who was buying vouchers, who
was leaving without making a positive enquiry and how this could be
improved. It needed to track its campaigns more effectively.
Argos Business Solutions’ target market is a broad one. It defines
its market as “The entire business community, from SMEs to large public
sector organisations.” It needed to get to the decision makers, which
vary tremendously, from businesses running incentives and reward programmes
to those needing Argos products for their business.
Appointing a search marketing specialist
ivantage Limited had a very good understanding of the business and
during initial discussions, was able to demonstrate how search marketing
could be used to improve visits and ultimately new business leads and
how the PfP campaign could be optimised to obtain more value and more
highly qualified leads.
Planning the Campaigns and Agreeing the Solution
ivantage recommended implementing web analytics – in this case Urchin
from Google - across its site to improve information management. ivantage
then carried out a full site review, while measuring the effectiveness
of Argos Business Solutions’ existing PfP paid search campaign. The
results revealed conversion problems with PfP and a lack of traffic
from crawling search engines which enabled the team to set out clear
objectives, looking at what they needed to focus on in the short to
medium term.
ivantage recommended that Argos continue with a PfP campaign but
expertly optimised and managed while also setting about improving organic
search engine marketing.
“ivantage advised us throughout the whole process – in terms of best
names and search terms relevant to our business. We all reviewed these
to find the most relevant terms, phrases and pages for these to be linked
to”, said Steve Cooper, Marketing Manager of Argos Business Solutions.
He added, “One aspect of our business that differs from Argos Retail
is that we need an agency to work for us proactively. We do not have
the resources in-house to manage web and search marketing activity.”
The Results
The campaign was a success, achieving targets set by the project
manager. ivantage manages Urchin from Google Web Analytics for Argos
Business Solutions enabling all aspects of the organic and paid search
campaigns to be measured. Visits to the Argos Business Solutions Web
site increased from 3,500 per month to 5,000 per month through organic
and PfP search, a 43% increase in traffic to the site. Web site leads
have improved by 10%.
“ ivantage is a very professional company that understands search marketing
in-depth. The company has had to understand the intricacies of our business
and our constraints – but has worked with us to achieve great in-roads
into the performance of our website.”
Steve Cooper, Marketing Manager, Argos Business
Solutions
About ivantage Limited
ivantage is a leading Internet marketing agency specializing in Web
search marketing services for demanding clients. We focus on boosting
their web presence and building online business. We also work with digital
agencies, using our expertise to extend their services so as to achieve
the same for their clients.
We are masters of both Natural Search (SEO) and Paid Search (PPC).
We aim for high returns on investment (RoI) by applying Web analytics
and performing Web page optimization to ensure visitors become customers,
then keep coming back. ivantage is a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant
(GAAC).
Our proven, effective methods are grounded in the established disciplines
of strategy definition, site design and usability. We generate traffic
and convert it to transactions. We protect the expanded traffic to build
clients’ future web presence and online revenues.
Learn more about ivantage
Visit Argos Business Solutions' web
site
