SemiChem

Limited Budget, Unlimited Success

It’s 2010. Having been ‘burned’ by a past experience of SEO SemiChem, Scotland’s leading healthy and beauty discounting retailer, needed results and fast to convince the larger business (they are owned by ScotMid, one of Scotland’s largest retailers) that digital could provide the revenues expected of it.

Challenges

With a strong offline retail business (190 stores across Scotland) SemiChem was desperate to pull its digital store into the 21st century. The target was simple: Grow revenues by focusing on a three tier keyword strategy that promote the head term (aftershave) along side a number of brand level terms (such as DKNY Perfume) and then 3rd tier product specific keywords that we knew they converted well for.

As the point of taking the campaign on the site sat 27th for Aftershave and second or third page for the majority of its brand level terms. 7 months later we had obtained first place for their key terms and most high volume brand terms were placed in page one positions. Much of this was achieved thanks to quality content creation and marketing:

Since that time our focused has now switched to ‘perfume‘ and the site continues to enjoy rank improvements while we have also begun a piece of work around content outreach to help drive visitors and visibility from key health and beauty blogs and websites.

As a result the business has enjoyed 200% year-on-year growth from its ecommerce business and its web store is now the top performing retail outlet most months across the company’s 140 SemiChem stores. During 2011 ‘SE’ was also highlighted as its best performing marketing channel based on ROI.

“We have worked very closely with Zazzle Media over the past few months and their expertise has proved invaluable. We agreed campaign targets based on several metrics and I am happy to say they have exceeded each and every one. As a result SEO has returned the best ROI of any of our clients' marketing channels and we have some equally ambitious plans for 2012.”

Spencer Bell, eCommerce Consultant, Scotmid