Insight
“Showrooming” is the practice of checking out a product in a store with helpful staff and excellent customer service - and then buying it cheaper online!
Babyshop, a leading baby retailer in Norway, has helpful staff and excellent customer service, so showrooming is a major problem.
Seven out of 10 people within Babyshop’s target audience reveal that they often visit physical stores to gather product information, and then search for retailers with better deals on their mobile device while in-store.
Babyshop is in reality driving sales for price-focused competitors through its high level of personal service. So how could Babyshop meet the rising challenge of showrooming?
Strategy
It was clear that Mediacom would never be able to stop showrooming performed by a devoted mother. The insight was that it could embrace the behaviour, and actually use showrooming to Babyshop’s advantage. Mediacom could – in martial arts terminology – use Babyshop’s enemies’ strength against them.
The medium for showrooming was Google, which has a strong geographical segmentation on mobile phones that allow the agency to exclusively target consumers in and around physical stores. This segmentation, along with keyword targeting in search, allows it to only target mothers searching for deals on Babyshop products, while being in store.
The targeting would allow Mediacom to create special communication to showroomers, since it only targeted consumers that showroomed. The agency decided to utilise the segmentation possibilities to reach showrooming consumers in Babyshop’s and competitors physical stores.
People who search for products sold by Babyshop would receive a special deal, which retained or acquired sales from consumers who were likely to buy elsewhere.
Insights showed that a discount of 20% would be the ideal offer to consider buying a product elsewhere, based on the price level of Babyshop’s product. It was important to include this offer in the communication, in order to be perceived as a potential retailer.
A limited-time offer is also an important part of the communication. The psychological aspect of a limited offer would increase the stress level and rush to purchase, as well as limit their time to do further showrooming activities. This strategy would reach the mothers in the ideal phase of the decision journey, and acquire and retain sales.
Execution
Babyshop created the first ever hyper-local strategy that embraces showrooming.
Mediacom used the geo-segmentation in Google and gave a special offer to mothers searching for products while being in Babyshop’s or competitors’ physical stores.
A special campaign in Google AdWords targeted Babyshop and its competitors’ physical stores using geo-location on addresses. This exclusively targeted consumers who visited the stores. It only targeted consumers searching for high value product categories and product names that Babyshop sold.
People who actively searched for these keywords while in stores or competitor’s stores got a special ad based on that specific product. The creative invited the consumer to click in order to get a 20% discount on the product.
The ad directed the showroomers to a page where they could order a coupon through SMS. This coupon gave the showroomer the chance of getting a 20% discount in Babyshop’s physical and online stores – but only if they bought it within 24 hours. This gave the showroomers a sensation of urgency and a motivation for a quick purchase.
Each individual coupon was designed to let the agency track the usage in online and offline stores. This allowed it to link each sale to the location where they ordered their coupon. The online store tracked the unique discount-code, and a hidden “confirm” button for employees was implemented to track offline purchase.
Results
This campaign retained and acquired additional sales for Babyshop.
The activity used only 0.5% of the total search budget, but produced in excess of 19% of the total revenue from paid search.
This resulted in an ROI of 59, which is almost 2500% higher than the average ROI of Babyshop’s normal search campaign of 2.3.
The coupon tracking-tool allowed the agency to evaluate where each ordered coupon and sale came from. The findings showed that over 40% of the show rooming sales came from competitors’ stores - acquired sales it wouldn’t normally be competing for. The remaining 60% is retained sales from Babyshop’s own locations.
Babyshop’s embrace of the engaged mother has proven that it’s possible to leverage a perceived challenge, and use it to theirs and the consumer’s advantage.
Check out the video case study here: https://vimeo.com/118465532.