In this PMA-winning campaign, digital agency 8 Million Stories was able to boost organic search sessions for one of its clients through the use of bloggers.

Farfetch is a leading international retail website, stocking products from over 300 independent boutiques across the globe. Founded in 2008 with offices in London, New York, LA, São Paulo and Porto, Farfetch is a fast-growing brand with a reputation for a forward-thinking approach to digital marketing.

The challenge

In 2013, 8 Million Stories (8MS) began working with Farfetch on the creation of unique and interactive digital content assets that could be used for blogger outreach, thus creating SEO benefit.
 
Assets ranged from high-quality infographics to widgets that allow customers design their own personalised products. Each asset was developed with a media strategy that aimed to successfully promote the content and ensure Farfetch got the maximum reach and benefit from the investment.

For this particular project, the challenge was to create a widget that helped reflect the Farfetch company values of providing an inspirational shopping experience to fashion-forward consumers, allowing them to discover boutiques from around the world. 

In addition, the widget would be used to spearhead blogger outreach activity, which would lead to ethical links and social shares.

As with all digital marketing projects, the focus for the 8MS team was on content monetisation and ensuring the content could be measured against a clear set of objectives. These were:

  • Achieve a 15% response rate from bloggers that were contacted
  • Support the overall organic traffic target of increasing 22% year on year between September and October
  • Support the overall organic revenue target of growing 25% year on year over the same period

The solution

In order to create a widget that would meet the client’s objectives, the team at 8MS developed the concept of the “Boutique Finder”. The primary function for this widget was to help customers and fashion lovers discover Farfetch boutiques across the world by answering a series of questions related to their personal style. 

Questions ranged from the type of brands people liked to what sort of clothing they were interested in buying. After making all their choices, the widget would then recommend the boutiques that matched the types of clothes they liked.

The widget allowed users to “shop the collection” directly on Farfetch. This ensured the Boutique Finder asset had the potential to be a direct revenue driver in addition to its primary use for SEO.

The process

After the development of the widget, the challenge was to generate a buzz around the blogger community and get website owners to host the Boutique Finder on their domains. The 8MS team ensured that the widget was designed to be as blogger friendly as possible by allowing people to embed it on their own websites and share the widget with their readers.

Throughout 2014, a database of fashion bloggers was built up to contain over 3,000 contacts across the globe. Each blogger was tagged with specific information such as location, gender or the topics they focused on. From this database, 300 bloggers were selected as being the most relevant for outreach of the Boutique Finder widget.

While pick-up for all the SEO content projects had been strong to date, the pick-up for the Boutique Finder was particularly solid.

Results

The blogger outreach campaign was a massive success, with a 31% response rate from the 300 bloggers contacted. The feedback was overwhelmingly positive and over 40 bloggers chose to embed the widget within their blog – at no cost or incentive.

The combined social media reach of the blogs was over 30,000 people on Twitter alone, and the comments and interaction rates were high. Overall, the Boutique Finder was the most successful piece of SEO content that was developed in 2014 and led to a 30% increase in organic sessions year on year following its release. 

Gross transactional value for organic search increased by 48.25% year on year between September and October, and site conversion rate for organic traffic also increased by 12.3% for the same period. The Boutique Widget also spearheaded the increase in keyword listings with the following results:

  • The number of keywords in positions 1-3 increased by 27% from the beginning of September to the end of October
  • The number of keywords in positions 4-6 increased by 16% for the same period
  • An overall “SEO Visibility Score” from Sitemetrics increased 18% in the two months following the launch of the widget

Due to the positive feedback and performance, the widget was also launched in Portuguese and French in Q1 2015, as well being integrated directly onto the Farfetch website.

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