United Retail was in need of a digital strategy and was looking for an experienced e-commerce party to help them in this area – from a new digital advertising strategy to insights into how the current target audience orientates itself and how the online marketing channels could be utilised optimally. The objective was to create a synergy between online and offline (physical) stores, and thus achieve better operating results.
United Retail is a franchise organisation that provides services for over 320 affiliated specialised stores in the field of consumer electronics. They own the franchises Electro World and Witgoed Specialist. United Retail positions itself not as a budget option, but as a professional specialist with lots of personal attention for its customers.
United Retail deals with a very specific target audience, namely people aged 40 and up who orientate themselves locally and value service, custom advice and personal attention very highly. United Retail focuses not on the product, but on the solution. Over 320 local entrepreneurs in the organisation’s physical stores offer these unique selling points. Adwise developed a digital strategy for United Retail that focuses on local visibility throughout every phase of the customer journey. By continuously presenting customers with their local, recognisable retailer, instead of the formula as a whole: Euronics, Electro World or Witgoed Specialist), United Retail plays into the strengths of local entrepreneurs. The digital strategy is ultimately intended to stimulate the target audience to visit their local physical store.
Among other things, we set up a search campaign for each branch that is shown to potential customers within a 5 km radius of the relevant branch. The advertisements show the location extensions but also include the name of the local entrepreneur within the advertising copy, as well as emphasizing the feeling of closeness (such as by listing the maximum travel time to get there). Another thing these search campaigns handled cleverly was the number of bids in relation to the potential customer’s distance from the store. The closer to the store, the higher the number of bids. After all, the chances of people being familiar with the store increase as the distance to the store decreases. This results in higher chances of conversion.
Potential customers are routed via (among other things) SEA to the website of the relevant formula, which is set up for that potential customer’s closest local store. For example, the website header showcases said store, the opening hours of said store are listed on the homepage, and the contact details of the store are included in the footer. These details are also automatically included in any forms on the website and integrated into the ordering process.
The target audience that has already visited the website but needs one final push is then approached anew via a remarketing strategy, utilising dynamic remarketing/multi-advertising. For each product group in each formula, a dynamic banner was developed bearing the details of the closest store, depending on the consumer’s actual location.
To be able to adjust the online campaigns in line with not just the intended online turnover but also the contribution to the physical store turnover, we are obtaining ROPO insights via, among other things, Google Store Visits and follow-up on physical store transactions via email marketing to check whether the relevant customers also visited the website previously.
To showcase the fantastic service being supplied by local retailers on the website and in online campaigns, we collect reviews via email marketing for every purchase made in a physical store. The reviews pertaining to the local retailer closest to the potential customer will then be shown on the website and featured in the SEA campaigns.
The first campaigns we implemented with this new, local strategy have led to clearly improved results compared to previously. For example, the CTR was raised by 2 to 3 times, the bounce percentage went down between 10 and 20%, and session durations rose by up to 50%.
But more than anything, we achieved a great user experience at the local level. The local aspect of 320 affiliated entrepreneurs is featured in the following ways:
The many local entrepreneurs are very enthusiastic about this approach and agree that the campaigns are contributing to franchise formula’s ability to propagate its local strengths. This positive response from local entrepreneurs represents an important KPI for United Retail, because the opinion of franchisees about the franchise concept and the franchiser’s marketing approach is crucial.
Best Fullservice Digital Agency '24