Modern marketers know that online has an impact on offline sales. But it’s vital to understand and quantify just how much so your brand can make important investment decisions. Discover how Harveys did just that.
With over 50 years’ of experience in home furnishing, Harveys is a retailer with over 150 stores offering an extensive range of sofas, cabinets, dining furniture, and accessories. Although the majority of sales take place within the brand’s stores, Harveys knew that many customers were looking online for inspiration before visiting. To make the most of their digital marketing investments, the Harveys team was in search of ways to quantify and optimise the impact of their digital activity on offline sales.
After activating Google Store Visits measurement, Harveys could clearly see the number of store visits driven by their Search and Shopping campaigns across all devices. The reports showed that mobile drove the highest proportion of store visits. To capitalise on this, the team adjusted their mobile investments based on users’ proximity to one of their stores.
While knowing that digital media was driving footfall obviously proved helpful, the team still wanted to establish an understanding of digital’s influence on store revenue. By activating Google Store Sales Direct, they gained the ability to quantify the in-store revenue generated from their Search and Shopping ads.
“The results revealed that attributed store revenue from our online campaigns was five times higher than our online revenue," explains Aadil Munshi, Digital Analyst at Harveys. “We also noticed how much more valuable our omnichannel customers were compared to an average customer walking into one of our stores."
The results
Further analysis demonstrated the importance of the Harveys website in customers’ journeys, regardless of how they were acquired. This led Harveys to prioritise web development efforts, especially on mobile, and devote resources to making their site faster and more convenient.
Alongside optimising their Search and Shopping campaigns to generate omnichannel sales, Harveys launched Local Inventory Ad campaigns. These added value by giving customers live inventory and product availability information, while driving traffic into stores.
We noticed how much more valuable our omnichannel customers were compared to an average customer walking into one of our stores.
With the aim of increasing offline revenue further, particularly on days when stores were running offers or events, the team then turned to Local campaigns, an automated approach that allowed them to maximise store visits at a given budget. To set this up, Harveys simply provided Google Ads with store locations, a budget and ad assets. During a trial period, the team observed that local campaigns drove 12,000 additional store visits at a quarter of the cost of their regular Search and Shopping campaigns, while a branded pin on Google Maps helped raise awareness of stores.
While Harveys continues to optimise their Search and Shopping campaigns to drive omnichannel sales, Local campaigns provide a further tactic to support their stores, demonstrating the impact digital marketing campaigns play in an omnichannel world.
Key takeaways for your business
