The Client
Extraordinary brands and exceptional products are oil to the engine of online marketing: they motivate and inspire us; they magnify the impact of our every action; they make our job fun.
The Little Greene are just such a brand; their paints and wallpapers are just such a product. Acknowledged as the finest manufacturers of premium paints and wallpapers in the UK, The Little Greene emphasise quality over quantity. Their audience, likewise, is narrow and discerning. It is not always important to rank “number one on the Google” for a simplistic as the cost of achieving that does not justify the actual return on investment (ROI). It is far better to understand the terms that your specific audience uses and to rank well for them.
The Challenge
When PushON were approached to develop a search engine marketing strategy for The Little Greene, we knew immediately that our approach would need to embody the values of the brand and that the quality of our campaign would need to match the quality of the product. We knew that introducing the Little Greene brand to the right search audience would be a challenge and we embraced that challenge.
When we started work with The Little Greene, it was an established offline brand with a limited online presence. The obvious task would be to transform The Little Greene brand online – to ensure that the brand was as visible online as offline, that it was visible for a wide range of relevant terms in search engine results, and that it was visible for the right reasons.
The Strategy
Search does not begin with Google. By the time a searcher enters a brand or product query, they are (self-evidently) already aware of that brand or product; they may already have used that brand or product; they have participated in a conversation with friends, acquaintances or advertisers about that brand or that product.
When PushON began to explore The Little Greene brand online, we rapidly discovered that there was no better brand to talk about in the paint and wallpaper industry. We didn’t need need to force a discussion, but we did need to facilitate that discussion.
Relevance and conversion of interest into activity would play an important part in this campaign. We would need to understand the target audience in detail, not only in terms of what they want but also – crucially – what they search for. The audience for the Little Greene is discerning and prepared to purchase a premium product. The Little Greene does not compete with Crown or Dulux. Consequently, trying to achieve ranking for simplistic terms was not held to be appropriate. Many people looking for paint will simply not be looking for a product of this quality. The chosen strategy was to identify niche search terms for premium products with a high conversion potential – and to focus very strongly on achieving excellent visibility in search for those terms alongside in both organic and search results.
The Results
The campaign for the Little Greene was awarded the Big Chip Award for “Best Use of Search” by Manchester Digital in 2009.
As a result of PushON’s campaign, rankings have been obtained for terms that were not only desirable (from a branding point of view) but which offered significant potential to deliver traffic and drive sales. Key campaign achievements include the following:
- 76% increase in organic traffic
- 90% increase in conversion rate
- 625% increase in traffic for the search term “wallpaper”
- 45% increase in overall traffic
