OVERVIEW

Specsavers Optical Group is a multinational optical retail chain, with the largest market share of optometrists in the UK.  As a fairly new entrant into the Spanish market, there was a need to establish themselves with the unfamiliar market, as well as capitalise on the large ex-pat audience base around their store locations. As Specsavers Opticas do not have an eCommerce arm, they needed a  bespoke digital strategy to drive customers into their stores.

SPEAKING TO OUR AUDIENCES

It was essential for Specsavers to create content that spoke directly to each of their two audiences — without alienating the other. To do so, we undertook two gap analysis projects, one in English and the other in Spanish, to understand the main questions and concerns each audience was asking.

For English Expat audiences, we identified concerns around the process of moving from a UK NHS eyecare system to the Spanish healthcare model, as well as queries on keeping eyes healthy in a new, sunnier climate. As such, we created an Expat Eye Care hub with practical content to ease this transition to Spain, and retain UK customers in the process through the trusted Specsavers name.

Alongside this, we needed a strategy to build brand authority and launch Specsavers into the market for native Spanish consumers. Through our content and SEO audit, we recognised that the site ranked for near-to-no ‘gafas de sol” (sunglasses) terms. To remedy this, Curated developed a “Gafas de Sol” content hub designed to increase rankings for both transactional and informational keywords, and boost brand visibility.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

Using our customer insights we developed a split approach to channel marketing, meaning we directed different content to English ex-pats and native Spanish audiences.

Our approach to channel focused on paid search and paid social, where customers behave very differently. One core similarity in approach, however, was the decision to target on a location basis. Due to the way in which the website operates, it was vital that the customers we reached were able and likely to visit their nearest store.

On social, we targeted customers within reach of a store with content educating them on why eye tests were important, and how Specsavers differs from the competition. This was followed up with remarketing ads pushing products and ads encouraging an appointment booking. Our Spanish audience required much more education before converting, and our split approach allowed us to focus our messaging, making it audience-specific and serving customer-centric content.

IMPLEMENTING CROSS-CHANNEL

On search, we also focused on localised campaigns. Customers searching within a location, or who included the location in their search query, would be served ads with clear calls to action matching their search location. This massively helped conversion rate, as we were not competing with competitors who sold glasses online and were able to drive customers to local stores. 

Our niche location targeting allowed us to be more bespoke with the content we served, and focus on the store locations which were of the highest priority. This also enabled us to reinforce localised offline campaigns via digital means and support product launches on a store by store basis. Our processes allowed us to move away from over-focusing on rankings and search volumes, and focus on the key themes which were driving revenue — where we doubled down creating content for both paid and organic listings on search engine results pages.

ENGAGING WITH EXISTING CUSTOMERS

From an organic social perspective, we were tasked with boosting engagement, not only with the local Spanish-speaking audience, but also with the English-speaking expat audience. We prioritised the social platforms that were driving the highest engagement and concentrated on serving both audiences on these channels. 

We shifted focus from purely vanity metrics, such as comments and likes, to business-driving goals, such as getting more people onsite and booking in-store appointments. In doing this, we increased organic traffic to the site from Facebook by more than 100%, and the social content we provided resulted in customers engaging better onsite too.

RESULTS

Overall, our work with Specsavers Opticas has led to vast year on year improvements in the volume of appointment requests and phone calls. Our work through gap analysis to provide valuable content to customers and highly location-targeted campaigns led to a huge conversion rate improvement. This work also coincided with Specsavers Opticas stores driving record-breaking revenue in early 2020 helping to prove the ROI of leads being driven.