When Ebbets Field Flannels, a Seattle-based company that authentically reproduces vintage athletic garments, came to us for digital marketing support, we knew our team was ready to play a strong offensive game and increase their online sales.
At its onset, Ebbets Field Flannels relied on word-of-mouth marketing to attract customers. As the brand grew, so did its marketing efforts: pre-internet, it excelled at creating expertly curated catalogs that brought the stories of the company itself and the teams and players it represented into the public eye.
As time went on, the company began shifting its sales and marketing efforts online, building an e-commerce hub that relied more and more on SEO, social media, and digital ads.
While it was the way to go, an increasingly complicated e-commerce system threw curve balls that were difficult to swing at alone.
Ebbets’ greatest challenge was one we see most of our e-commerce clients struggle with—unclear and confusing reporting. Since different online mediums, including e-commerce and social media platforms, search engines, and web analytics, all report data differently, Ebbets found discrepancies when trying to identify accurate ROI related to ad spend, sales from specific channels, or follow the customer journey.
The offensive strategy: Belief’s Director of Distribution Dave Powell started to untangle the web of data by doing a full digital audit of Ebbets’ digital platforms and channels, as well as SEO rankings, metadata, year-over-year sales, and competitor analysis. He then set up a customized dashboard that told the whole story.
Implementing effective digital ad campaigns is part science, part art, and when the data is unclear, the ROI is unclear. The custom analytics dashboard revealed what was working…and what wasn’t.
The offensive strategy: Belief took over Ebbets’ ad buying and placements, optimizing how money was spent on Facebook and Google and creating a series of ad campaigns focused on brand protection, growth, and individual products. By having an accurate dashboard of all activity, Dave and his team were able to better analyze the company’s target buyers, identify where they were coming from, and how far they made it through the sales funnel before falling off so he could effectively retarget custom audiences through carefully placed ads.
With Dave at bat, Ebbets’ saw double-digit sales growth from digital ad placements. Even better? He did it all while decreasing ad spend.
The great opportunity in optimizing websites is that there’s always something new to update or test out. It’s also an ongoing process. Naturally, Ebbets wanted their online storefront to work as well as possible for their current and prospective customers. Looking through a digital lens, Belief evaluated the customer journey to uncover actionable insights.
The offensive strategy: Through the digital audit and onsite A/B testing, Belief’s digital team identified small tweaks that made big differences for visitor acquisition and sales. For example, he noticed that visitors who used the site’s search bar function resulted in 30-40% higher sales, so tested moving the search bar around on both desktop and mobile to see which placement drew in the most users. Other changes, like optimizing image and title tags, help support a larger ecosystem of SEO efforts, ultimately resulting in increased #1 page rankings.
All in all, we’d say Dave and the team hit it out of the park.
True stories (and a dedicated digital team) work. Let's work together: hello@beliefagency.com
