In the spotlight:
How Digitas transformed H&M’s business by placing search at the heart of the customer experience
2023 Silver Effie
Effie is about awarding ideas that work, educating about effective marketing and showcasing the best work to enhance learning in our industry.
CAMPAIGN NAME
Transforming H&M’s business by placing search at the heart of the customer experience
CATEGORIES
2023 Multimarket: Sustained Success
CLIENT
H&M
LEAD AGENCY
Digitas UK
CAMPAIGN DESCRIPTION
Digitas faced the monumental challenge of revolutionizing H&M's online presence, recognising its vulnerability in a surging e-commerce landscape. With a keen insight into the necessity for data-driven decision-making, Digitas embarked on a mission to overhaul H&M's digital strategy from the ground up. Digitas's visionary approach ensured that H&M not only survived but thrived in the digital marketplace, safeguarding its market share and future growth prospects.
THE CHALLENGE
In 2018, H&M, a global retail giant, faced the urgent need to adapt to the rapidly expanding online fashion market dominated by digital-native competitors like ASOS and Boohoo. Despite its historical success in high street retail, H&M's digital presence lagged, threatening its market share. With online sales burgeoning, H&M's reliance on traditional storefronts posed a significant risk. To thrive in this new landscape, H&M had to prioritize digital transformation, particularly in search engine optimization (SEO). However, entrenched legacy systems, siloed teams, and a lack of digital agility hindered progress. Digitas recognized the imperative for sweeping changes, driving a comprehensive overhaul of H&M's digital strategy, culture, and processes to secure its future in the digital marketplace.
THE STRATEGY
The strategy for transforming H&M's digital presence centered on harnessing SEO to meet the diverse needs of its broad audience across fashion, homewares, sportswear, and beauty products. Rather than traditional demographic targeting, the focus was on understanding and responding to specific search queries in real-time, delivering relevant products directly to consumers. Digitas delved deep into H&M's organizational structure and identified bottlenecks, streamlining processes and embedding SEO specialists across teams. This overhaul enabled the creation of thousands of new landing pages tailored to consumer searches, driving increased traffic and sales. Leveraging innovative data-to-text solutions, the strategy achieved both scale and quality in content creation. Throughout, the approach remained agile, pivoting rapidly to capture emerging trends, such as the shift to loungewear during the COVID-19 pandemic. Continuous optimisation ensured sustained performance in a dynamic digital landscape.
Generated £408M incremental SEO revenue
RESULTS
The result speak for themselves:
1. Exceeding Revenue Targets:
The initiative aimed to drive £204M incremental revenue from organic search over 4¼ years. Impressively, it surpassed expectations, generating £408M incremental SEO revenue, doubling the initial target.
2. Google Recognition and Increased Visibility:
Google acknowledged the efforts by elevating H&M to the first page for relevant customer searches, resulting in a staggering 1,232% increase in the number of target non-brand terms ranking on page 1 since 2019. H&M's visibility surged ahead of key competitors across various European markets.
3. Exceptional Business Returns:
The European segment of the global program achieved a remarkable 30:1 ROI, with the ROI for the European portion estimated to surpass this figure.
In summary, this initiative epitomises effectiveness in the modern age, delivering tangible results, and positioning H&M for continued success in the digital realm.
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