London-based Farfetch is a boutique online retailer for men’s and women’s fashion, featuring clothing from 300 independent boutiques around the world. The company already saw a 30–45% revenue increase using Google Shopping and Product Listing Ads (PLAs) in four countries. Seeking to increase its global market share, Farfetch implemented Shopping campaigns to better manage its bids and stay current on its top merchandise. As a result, it improved performance and ultimately kept its cost per acquisition (CPA) down by 20%.
Goals
Boost the company’s appeal in the retail space
Reach a larger number of fashion lovers worldwide
Approach
Upgraded its Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns to Shopping campaigns
Organized product groups by category and brand
Created a separate campaign for top-trending and best-selling products and set it to high campaign priority
Results
Increased conversion rate 13%
Increased CTR 3%
Decreased CPA 20%
Decreased CPC 6%
Reaching international shoppers An online retailer of men’s and women’s clothing from over 300 independent boutiques around the globe, Farfetch aims to change the way the world shops. The company launched new Google Shopping campaigns with Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to boost its appeal and sales to international fashion lovers.
PLAs in four countries With its growing number of boutique partners, Farfetch offers a rapidly expanding range of products. It constantly optimizes its PPC activity based on trends and new products. And it gets regular updates from the merchandising team on key items it needs to promote. But Farfetch had very little traffic from PLA campaigns, which it used to target only the United States.
The company optimized the product feed and launched new PLA campaigns in the U.S. in December 2012. “We immediately saw a dramatic increase in our revenues,” says Rich Brown, head of pay-per-click (PPC) activity. “Today, we run PLAs in four countries, with plans for a fifth—and in each market PLAs account for 30–45% of PPC revenue.”
Grow market share Still, despite this success, Farfetch saw room for improvement with PLAs. “We always felt it could be a stronger channel for us and that Shopping campaigns were a big opportunity,” Brown says. “When we heard that Shopping campaigns launched, we saw a chance to grow our market share.”
Shopping campaigns are an intuitive way to manage PLAs and sell your products on Google. You manage your campaign much the same way you would manage a store. You can browse your inventory and group which products you want to bid on, all in AdWords. And you have advanced reporting and optimization features to help measure the performance of your products and estimate your growth opportunity.
A seamless transition Farfetch’s transition from regular PLA campaigns to Shopping campaigns in October 2013 was easy. “We quickly created product groups for the top 25 brands, then subdivided all the product groups to gain as much learning as possible,” Brown explains. Soon after launch, Farfetch also created a high-priority “top sellers” Shopping campaign. “We could stay current with the top-selling brands, categories and products, and also focus on key collections that our merchandising team informed us about.”
Farfetch works closely with its developers to update the product feed. “We knew immediately that Shopping campaigns would reduce our lead times for optimization at the product and category levels,” Brown says. “We can react much more quickly now. Shopping campaigns have performed extremely well for us.”
We knew immediately that Shopping campaigns would reduce our lead times for optimization at the product and category levels.
Improved performance After Farfetch launched Shopping campaigns, cost-per-click (CPC) fell 6% while the conversion rate rose 13%, compared with regular PLA campaigns. These combined benefits brought the cost-per-acquisition (CPA) down by 20%. Farfetch also saw a 3% rise in click-through rate (CTR).
With Shopping campaigns, Farfetch can more easily identify and bid on its top products, leading to improved performance. “We believe that our ability to better understand performance and to adapt faster to competitive pressures and changes in our product portfolio have contributed significantly to reduced CPC, CPA and more,” Brown says.
More markets and investment “Shopping campaigns are now a major part of our digital activity,” Brown says. “We are working on launching more markets and will continue to invest in the existing markets to add incremental revenue.”
