The desire to find the perfect pair of sunglasses can strike anywhere: during a walk along the beach, while driving, or even just sitting outdoors with friends. This means that a luxury brand like SunglassHut not only needs to be able to sell products online but also help potential customers find the nearest store where they can make a purchase.
Local inventory ads (LIA) have become a critical element of its marketing strategy as a result.
With a retail success story spanning more than five decades, Sunglass Hut has grown remarkably from its humble beginnings as a small family business in Miami. Today, the company operates over 3,000 stores worldwide and has continued to thrive since joining EssilorLuxottica SA in 2000.
According to SunglassHut’s Performance Marketing Supervisor at Essilor Luxottica, some of the team’s top priorities include monitoring display campaigns, paid search, paid social, and online shopping. Like many retail companies focused on omnichannel marketing, the most important key performance indicator (KPI) is driving conversions that lead to increased revenue while ensuring the highest return on every marketing dollar spent.
Of course, online conversions can be difficult to achieve given the number of ads that a consumer might see when they begin searching for luxury eyewear on Google. LIAs offer retailers like Sunglass Hut the capability to not only promote its products but also indicate which products are available for pickup based on their proximity to a physical store.
“Our main goal was to connect the online and offline worlds,” says the Performance Marketing Supervisor. “LIAs are a way for us to showcase our omnichannel capabilities and stand out from other retailers.” However, setting up LIAs can be challenging, especially for marketing teams with limited internal resources to create and manage the product feeds they need.
“It’s a complex integration process to match online feeds with offline product availability,” explains the Performance Marketing Supervisor. “You often find yourself having to fix the feeds.”
SunglassHut turned to Highstreet.io for assistance in developing feeds and optimizing LIA campaigns. This included configuring product feeds to consolidate all necessary data in one place, as well as providing best practices for tagging location-specific keywords in product titles and descriptions to align with common search queries.
Highstreet.io’s proven track record in connecting LIAs with Google Shopping ads ensured that SunglassHut achieved the highest possible return on investment (ROI) for its campaigns and freed the team to focus on developing strategies to promote its stylish product portfolio within a targeted radius for each customer.
SunglassHut has been active with LIAs thanks to Highstreet.io’s help since 2021. Since then, it has continued to refine and improve its approach, for example by using “later pickup” labels on products currently unavailable in-store but available for pickup at a later date. This allows SunglassHut to cover its entire catalog as part of its marketing strategy.
In a year-over-year analysis of its marketing campaigns covering Q4 2023 in the United States, LIAs provided SunglassHut with greater visibility to its target audience and drove them to visit its website to explore the wide selection of designer frames from brands like Ray-Ban, Oakley, and more.
Some of the biggest benefits include:
Consumers have a strong “drive-to-store” incentive when they see LIAs indicating what they’ll find if they visit a SunglassHut store in person. The impact of LIAs was also felt outside the U.S., with a 7% CTR increase in Australia and 5% in Canada.
Though the teams work hard to employ several different tactics that achieve these sorts of results, he credited the work done with Highstreet.io as a big factor.
“We attribute much of the growth we’re seeing to local inventory ads,” he said, “because now we have much higher visibility for badges in our Google Shopping campaigns.”
No one lines waiting in long lineups, and Sunglass Hut customers can avoid them by taking advantage of the information conveyed through LIAs to have products waiting for them.
Customers never have to be disappointed when they click on an LIA and don’t immediately find the sunglasses they’re looking for. They can still place an order and have it delivered to the most convenient location, reinforcing the power of SunglassHut’s omnichannel approach.
The success achieved by SunglassHut has paved the way for other Essilor Luxottica brands to begin exploring LIA campaigns. Meanwhile, SunglassHut is now considering expanding its marketing through Google Shopping and testing LIAs on social commerce platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Working with a partner like Highstreet.io means moving forward with confidence, knowing they have access to deep industry expertise and a highly professional team.
“Highstreet.io has always been very helpful to us.”
“It’s a complex integration between online and offline data, and our experience has been excellent.”
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