Adreno Ocean Outfitters Marketing Case Study
280% increase in company equity value
Tim and Kahlee, founders of Adreno, built an Australian powerhouse in underwater sporting equipment. Adreno operated as an umbrella with separate dedicated digital storefronts. Including, Spearfishing.com.au, Scubadiving.com.au, and Wetsuitwarehouse.com.au. Adreno staff were running multi-level megastores modeled after Cabela's destination-retail experience - complete with millions in inventory. They engaged us in June 2016. Online sales were up almost 20% year-over-year, but they felt that their digital marketing architecture had hit a ceiling.
Even with the existing infrastructure, the spearfishing brand promoted spearfishing. The wetsuit brand promoted wetsuits. Their social media promoted individual brands without sending customers back to Adreno.com.au, the mothership. They were on the same team, but wearing different jerseys.
On top of that, Google banned their speargun ads under weapon policies, and they hadn’t touched their core SEO in years out of fear of legacy penalties from the speargun ban on Google.
They had a talented in-house marketing and IT team, but lacked enterprise tracking, cross-brand alignment, and modern technical local SEO.
Dominating Australia: Doubling National Equipment Market Share
Goals
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Capture 20% Australian Equipment Market Share
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Overcome Paid Search Bans
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Get the brands promoting each other
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Build a central hub for expansion
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Connect marketing channels with website data
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Improve accessibility for screen reader users
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Dominate local seo and maps
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Train the existing marketing team
Strategy
Begin with SWOT analysis audit on the brand presence online. Next, we changed their approach, so the brands started promoting each other and directing customers back to Adreno. Instead of isolated social feeds, the spearfishing channel began spotlighting gear from Wetsuit Warehouse. Same day, scuba gear cross-promoted spearfishing trips. All brands drove direct authority and awareness back to Adreno.com.au.
Next, we created a mothership site for Adreno brands. It used links and structured data to help search engines understand that the businesses are connected. Future brands will have a home under the same umbrella.
We set up advanced data collection across Google, Bing, Pinterest, Facebook, and other channels. We linked Google Analytics with Google Webmaster Tools, now Search Console. Since their culture is more intertwined with Facebook than the North American culture. We got them heavily involved with Facebook Analytics. They had an online store, but they weren’t using Tag Manager to help track what customers were doing. We helped connect it all.
We also made the website easier for people using screen readers. Customers should be able to shop regardless of how they read the website. It had an immediate impact.
We built organic channels to begin rebuilding our reputation on Google from restrictions on spearguns.
Their stores had another opportunity hiding in plain sight. Different brands occupied different levels of the building. We recommend separate map listings for the distinct retail brands, using their actual floor and suite information. This provided them a real reason to have 4 different map listings at each location. The lift to local search was immense. It helped dominate scuba equipment search and close the gap on competitors across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, and Perth.
While we worked on the setup, I trained their marketing team. We started with four, 2-hour sessions. Additional training took place in person with the ownership group. We wanted the people doing the work every day to understand what the data was telling them.
Build a central hub for expansion on Adreno.com.au to use as the digital mothership. We cross-linked each brand using structured schema markup, showing search engines the parent-subsidiary relationship.
Obstacles
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Time Difference of 8-9 hours
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90% Virtual Operations
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Managing USD and AUD payment conversions
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AdWords weapons ban was overcome by structured data and local map dominance
Results
Adreno solidified its title as the undisputed "Cabela’s of Australia" in water sports, transitioning from fragmented web stores into a nationally recognized retail giant. They were positioned for rapid multi-state expansion.
Tim sold Adreno for an estimated A$5.7 million - roughly a 280% increase over the A$1.5 million estimated value of the 2016 version of the business. These assumptions are based on notes during my meetings with Tim. There are no public figures for the sale of this business.
The equipment marketshare they requested was 20%. High-margin wetsuit sales surged with the launch of Wetsuitwarehouse.com.au. With all of the momentum generated online, Scuba equipment sales expanded into Sydney and Melbourne. This expansion captured the targeted 20% national market share in less than 18-months.
During our consultations the equipment marketshare in Wetsuits, Spearfishing, and Scuba gear nearly doubled in 2-years. Over the next 2-years their equipment marketshare was fairly steady between 36 – 39%, peaking at 46%, crushing the goal by over 100%.
Website traffic increased 12% within weeks after the screen reader improvements. Much better user experience than the previous site.
Post construction mothership user experience.
The json markups were added last. After all other technical SEO had been completed, we added hundreds of pages of json codes. This affected the website in ways we were not prepared for. Within weeks Adreno.com.au got multiple pages on the front page of Google at the same time.
Local SEO was dominant after the 300% increase in Map Density at each location. It was comical the amount of calls they were getting from people looking for directions. They took it with a smile and to potentially help a new customer.
The brands started promoting each other which lead to significant gains in social media presence. The separate listings increased their local search presence inadvertently. Someone looking for spearfishing equipment could find Spearfishing.com.au. Related searches had more opportunities to lead customers to an Adreno business than just Adreno.com.au.
With all of this additional organic exposure and traffic, Google gave www.spearfishing.com.au a better rating. By February 2017 we were starting to get speargun pages ranked on Google orgnic search engine results pages.
We connected their marketing channels with website data and trained the team to use it. Linking analytics helped resolve blind spots.
Different jerseys. One winning Team.