How Kiehl’s and Google measured the impact that digital media has on traffic and sales in physical stores

Date

11/2018

Client

Kiehl’s

Industry

CPG

The Company

Kiehl’s is a brand of the L’Oréal group with over 160 years of history, which specializes in products and treatments for facial skin, body and hair. The brand, which owns physical stores around the world, was looking to measure the ROI of digital campaigns in the offline world.

The Challenge

The pilot, which was launched together with Google in Spain, was intended to cover two main objectives for the brand.

The brand intended to measure the impact that Display GDN and SEARCH has on sales in physical stores, and therefore give complete value (on and off) to digital, which helps making better decisions when it comes to plan a mix of media.
Another objective was to digitalize the last stage of the funnel: the physical store, in which 90% of shopping actions still take place. Including this important offline step in the process could provide a unique opportunity to understand consumers better, and to attract or reengage them online throughout the funnel.

The Approach

In collaboration with Walmeric and Ddibi, a solution named ‘chypeo’ (based on NFC) was implemented in Kiehl’s Madrid stores. This wireless technology based on electromagnetic field induction is designed to exchange information between two devices, and is already used in travel passes, or even security systems in physical stores. This technology helped to obtain in-store interactions in three different phases: access control, ticketing and payment.

Together with the agency Making Science, they launched a mid funnel campaign in parallel that covered searches and contextual display, which led traffic to point of sale merchandising in the stores. This locator contained a tag that crossed with in-store interactions to confirm if the user had been physically in store, and to check whether he or she had made a purchase.

A digital strategy that increases offline profits from digital media efforts.
To implement a solution based on Near Field Communication (NFC) technology in the locators of the brand’s physical stores.
A parallel campaign of contextual Search and Display.

The Results

After measuring the campaign results, it was concluded that there were over 1,500 interactions associated to purchases in physical stores. Therefore, the Brand could reengage that audience at any other time or use to find other similar type of consumers.

Moreover, around 30% of sales directly influenced by digital campaigns were made in physical stores (sales that are usually not linked to digital efforts). Additionally, 13% of buyers in a physical location were impacted directly by a digital campaign, even when that SEM campaign was intended for online sales.

The results show that omnichannel consumers are measurable and can be measured, and that online campaigns have a clear impact on sales in physical stores. It is critical to adapt media and data strategy to this type of consumer in order to maximize ROI per hits, and not via media or distribution channels.

The store is a key and important touchpoint when it comes to extracting insights from the audience, and getting to better understand consumers and adapting strategies to increase their lifetime value.