Reiss Brand Breakdown: Fashion Marketing

In this breakdown, we'll take a closer look at Reiss's search marketing strategy and make recommendations on how it can enhance its campaigns. I’ll cover important details from display and video ads to advertising research keywords. We'll explore what it’s doing right and what it's doing wrong as well as how its competitors are currently outperforming it.

Brand Breakdown Overview:

1. Strategy

2. Current display and video ads

3. Product listing ads (PLA)

4. Text

5. Competitors

6. Advertising research

7. Keywords, and

8. Recommendations on how to improve the store's campaigns overall.

For this strategy breakdown, I'll utilize tools such as SEMrush, as well as Google and Facebook's transparency tools, to analyze the paid search strategy of Reiss and its competitors. Using this information, I'll provide recommendations and insights to enhance the performance of Reiss's campaigns.

The women's market is seeing increased demand, as evident in the popularity of wool blend coats and dresses. Currently, product titles are structured around the brand, color, and product type. This strategy is effective because many consumers search for products by brand. Reiss is optimizing their product titles by targeting specific brand keywords, making this structure ideal for its products. However, depending on the product, the title structure can be adjusted. For example, the title could be revised based on the product type, model, or other factors while maintaining the overall brand and product type structure.

Reiss' product listing impressions (above) show a focus on promoting more shopping-branded types of spend. This is evident from the increase in keywords and search terms. And, there’s been a significant increase in ads over the past year, with keywords increasing by about 64 percent and ads by 55 percent compared to the previous year. "Reiss dresses" is the top branded search term, while "emerald green cocktail dress" is the number one non-brand search term.

To remain competitive and profitable, it’s important for the retailer to maintain both branded and non-branded positions in the search rankings.

Reiss is employing a variety of ad text customizers for the season, to make a strong push for the new promotions. The men's suits, which are a brand staple along with men's shirts, are featured in many of the ads. Some of the headlines may seem basic, but they are targeting a significant portion of branded messaging that people are already familiar with. As a result, it's directing traffic to the homepage with minimal copy and some text customizers. That seems to be working well. However, Reiss should test different messaging and headlines to further improve performance.

Reiss is also using dynamic search ads. These types of ads allow Google to crawl the website, acting like paid SEO while displaying the retailer's ads at the top of search results for remarketing. It can also help target a specific page or category the store wants people to visit, without having to dynamically update the headline. Plus, the ads can have different descriptions based on the landing page. In this case, it appears that it's using suits and jackets in the men's categories to aggressively push these ads.

In analyzing Otrium's search marketing strategy, it appears it’s prioritizing the protection of its brand. Otrium is allocating its $5,000 monthly budget to target branded terms with variations. However, it’s competing with – almost ‘cannibalizing’ - retailers it should be collaborating with, and uses different messaging. While it's promoting discounted prices, Otrium isn't necessarily emphasizing its brand. Interestingly, it has included Reiss prominently in its video messaging; it mentions Reiss as one of the brands it carries.

Despite being an established player with a large audience, Reiss's market mix of direct, organic, and paid traffic is not growing proportionately. Other established players in the market, such as Gap, Asos, and Myntra, are also in this space. Now’s the time for Reiss to take action to stay ahead of the competition. To avoid becoming a niche brand, Reiss should expand its branded traffic or increase its budget. One potential solution is to form strategic partnerships with retailers to reduce the cost of branded traffic. By collaborating with other established players in the market, Reiss can maintain its competitive edge and prevent further decline in its market share.

This is largely due to Reiss's poor SEO performance in keyword terms and its limited paid traffic efforts compared to other brands. The market is highly fragmented, which is why Reiss has struggled to make a real impact. Although Reiss has made some progress in increasing its market penetration compared to last year, it still pales in comparison to the overall market share. At this point, Reiss is barely holding its own against its competitors – it needs to step up its game if it wants to truly compete.

Recommendation Recap

There are a few changes Reiss can make to improve its position in the world of online retail search marketing.

Reiss needs to dig deeper into its wallet and expand beyond branded search to keep up with competitors like MyNtra, Asos, and Gap.
Collaborating with retail partners would be a smart move to keep branded cost-per-clicks down.
Making changes such as map pricing or creating a collaborative Google ads budget can also help.
Reiss could benefit from running more display and YouTube creatives for remarketing, similar to its competitors. By focusing on these strategies, Reiss can remain competitive without breaking the bank on non-brand search terms.
Plus, utilizing existing Facebook creative can help the brand scale and expand at an affordable rate.

Reiss Brand Breakdown: Fashion Marketing

Overview:

Display/Video

Reiss: Google Videos

Reiss: Facebook Videos

Reiss: Images

Product Listing Ads

PLA Positions

Reiss: Text

Competitors

Competitors: Otrium Video

Competitors: Otrium Image

Competitors: Otrium Text

Competitors: Autumn Cashmere Text

Competitors: PLA

Advertising research

Positions

Position Changes

Competitors

Pages

Keywords

Keyword Overlap

Market Explorer

Domain Vs Marketing Dynamics

Recommendation Recap

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