“Every marketing activity needs to be measured for effectiveness. So far, only Facebook has helped us measure the impact of marketing with such a great degree of accuracy and ease. Store sales optimisation is a logical next step in the right direction, and is definitely something we expect to become a part of our campaign strategy.” – Bala Subramaniam, Head of Omni-Channel and Customer Experience, Max Fashion
Max Fashion, the Middle East’s leading fashion retailer and a powerful player online, endorsed Facebook’s store sales optimisation, a new tool that measures how online ads convert into offline sales. Max Fashion worked with ROI Hunter, a Facebook Marketing Partner to test this against their existing campaigns.
During their “End of Spring Sale” campaign, Max Fashion worked with Facebook’s measurement team to identify a method to test whether store sales optimisation could improve the impact of its existing campaigns.
How did they do that?
They ran two similar sets of video and photo ads, which were automatically placed on Facebook and Instagram. One ad set used the reach ad objective to maximize its potential audience and showed a mixture of video and photo ads. The second group of ads used similar photos and videos but used store sales optimization, which is geared to convert interest into sales.
The company said that “the tool was more effective than the retailer’s typical campaigns.”
We spoke to Bala Subramaniam, Head of Omni-Channel and Customer Experience for Max Fashion, to understand more about this campaign:
What was the main goal for the digital campaign that ran on Facebook platforms?
As an omnichannel business, using digital marketing to drive in-store sales is a key focus for us. This campaign was run to drive store footfall and sales during one of our key trading events Summer End of Season Sale. The campaign strategy was two-pronged: trial store sales optimization as a solution and compare it with reach and frequency campaign that was a go-to solution for an offline business.
What made you choose Facebook’s marketing solutions out of many alternatives?
With Shukran, we have the region’s largest and most efficient CRM database. Shukran data helps us understand customers in great depth. Facebook earlier had helped us leverage this data to start tracking offline conversions. The efficiency of what Facebook had delivered with offline integration was a key decision factor for choosing Facebook store sales optimization as a solution.
Which Facebook/Instagram solutions/products did you use for this campaign?
For this specific test, we used reach, frequency and store sales optimization. The objective was to establish the incremental impact of these products and understand which one works best for us.
Could you share the results of your campaign? Did you achieve your goals?
We saw an 8.3% lift in sales using store sales optimization in KSA (vs flat results using reach objective) and a 5.9% lift in sales in the UAE. Our objective was to establish which solution (reach, frequency or store sale optimization) would perform better for us and that’s what we were able to learn.
Which measurement methods did you use to gain new learnings? And how would you describe the value of measurement?
While return on ad spend was always an indicator of effectiveness, being able to establish incremental sales was critical. Lift studies have helped us clearly identify what works for us. The ease with which the Facebook measurement team sets uplift studies and the clear demonstration of results have added a lot of value to the decision process. Shukran data integration with Facebook has played a key role in helping us identify the right trends and making the relevant decisions.
What would you recommend to other advertisers who want to drive offline traffic?
We strongly feel that success in retail comes from the combination of product exposure, right segmentation of customers and effective communication channels. With all this in place, the focus should still be on the incremental effect of marketing and not rely only on return on ad spend. The other key element of success is to identify your most beneficial customer and see how you can create more lookalike audiences.
