A digital campaign example of a startup fashion brand

Setting up the right process and tools to improve sales

Start up brand Tatu Couture design and manufacture luxury British lingerie which is sold through stockists in the UK, Paris and New York. Tatu Couture has a unique vision to push the boundaries of design and innovation with its trend setting luxury lingerie and designer body wear. All their goods are manufactured and hand finished in the UK.

Overview and Digital Strategy

Tonica supported Tatu Couture by creating a four stage strategy to increase digital presence. In addition to the stockist route, Tatu Couture were keen to increase their own direct sales, so we had two simple objectives for the work – to increase visits to tatucouture.com and increase sales from the site.

Social media campaign approach

• Step 1 – Take Control

Like many small to medium sized enterprises (SMEs), Tatu Couture had employed a Web Designer to create their site, but were unfamiliar with some of the standard tools that could help them track success. In this phase of work, we focussed on empowering Tatu Couture to take control so that they could cost-effectively develop their site without spending budget on external resource

We used the following tools:

• Suggesting Tatu Couture gain full account control of their Shopify website
• Assisting Tatu Couture in having Google Webmaster Tools access in order to access information about the health of their site
• Setting up Google Analytics in order to track website performance.

• Step 2 – Make the Most of your Contacts

In this phase, we were keen to ensure that Tatu Couture could conduct their own email campaigns using free provider, Mailchimp. During this process we also consolidated their contact data into a new Tatu Couture Mailchimp account, and set up a website ‘sign up’ so that new prospects could be captured.

• Step 3 – Promote (for free when possible!)

In addition to the email campaigns, we identified several low cost or no cost promotion options:

• Google Merchant (aka Google Shopping / Google Product Search). In order to increase online presence we were keen to feed Tatu Couture products into Google Shopping, particularly as this was still a free service in the UK (prior to March 2013). Luckily Shopify had a fairly easy integration option for this, so we were able to activate the integration and add a few settings (such as Shipping) for products to be regularly submitted.

• Google Places – a free local service which helps Tatu Couture stand out in the region.
• Google Adwords (Pay Per Click Advertising). Shopify offered a free voucher for a Google Adwords campaign and as a new account we were also eligible for another voucher so in total secured £94 of free Adwords for the first campaign.

Results of PPC?
This campaign resulted in 2579 impressions and 116 click throughs (4.5% click through rate) with an average position of 2.5. The initial click through rate was higher than the 2% ‘unofficial’ average.

Since the launch campaign, we have continued conducting low cost Google Adwords campaigns at key events in the calendar, continuing to lower the cost per click, increase click through rates and utilise the best performing key words.

We have also used micro-geographic targeting in Google Adword campaigns as a proxy for income – for example, targeting South Kensington and Chelsea postcodes.

• Facebook Advertising.  Shopify also offered a free voucher for a Facebook advertising campaign, and we supported Tatu Couture in using this investment to reach the most likely recipients to purchase.The challenge in promoting a luxury product online is reaching an audience likely to purchase and this is where the beauty of Facebook could help.

By targeting Facebook profiles who already liked other luxury or designer products, our Facebook campaign could reach a more tailored market than using Google alone. During the campaign we were able to double Facebook likes for Tatu Couture. In the last three months, Facebook has driven 16% of the traffic to the site.

• Step 4 – Search Engine Optimisation

As well as suggesting Search Engine Optimisation changes along the way, we suggested a more formal SEO review as Step 4. Tatu Couture have begun to implement these SEO changes in an effort to drive more organic traffic to the site.

The changes included using the Shopify SEO guide and incorporating more keywords into the product descriptions in addition to the unique Tatu Couture copy.

Success Indicators

We provided 7 days support over a period of 6 months.

As Google Analytics wasn’t in place at the beginning of the project, it is difficult to quantify success. It is also difficult to isolate the impact of our broad consultancy as Tatu Couture also gained stockists and press coverage during the project time, however, the trends so far are very positive:

Comparing the first month of consultancy with the last month (August 2012 compared with January 2013) we have seen the following positive trends:

• More than double the volume of web visits (increase of 138%)
• More pages per visit and more time on the site
• Doubling of organic search traffic (increase of 100%)
• 250% increase in web sale completions

Thanks to Mary Butlin for sharing her advice and opinions in this post. Mary is Managing Director of Tonica, a marketing consulting company specialising in CRM, market research, market planning and digital. You can follow her on Twitter or connect on LinkedIn.