Chico’s FAS Improves Search Revenue + Reduces CPCs with Google’s Performance Max

a Scientific Approach to Maximize Return on Ad Spend

01

Background

Chico’s FAS, a North American fashion retailer, comprises three unique brands: Chico’s, White House Black Market, and their intimate apparel boutique, Soma. Chico’s FAS came to Adlucent looking to reach new customers and grow sales, specifically for their Soma brand. After successfully running Google Smart Shopping campaigns on Soma, we advised testing Google’s new campaign technology, Performance Max, to improve their return on ad spend (ROAS).

02

The Challenge

Through the pandemic, the women’s fashion retailer saw incredible growth with their intimate apparel boutique, Soma, as consumers sought out products like wireless bras and all-day loungewear. While the intimates category is highly competitive, Chico’s FAS wanted to get the most out of their digital advertising investment while ensuring Soma’s continued growth.

03

How Adlucent Helped

We began working with the Soma brand by running successful Google Smart Shopping campaigns. While those campaigns showed excellent results, we didn’t want to stop there; we sought ways to improve the outcome to ensure Chico’s FAS’ success by constantly monitoring, adjusting, questioning, and testing new strategies to prove what works. We advised taking Soma’s Shopping campaigns one step further by utilizing Google’s Performance Max to test which strategy would show the most promising results.

Performance Max allowed Chico’s FAS to capture greater demand across new customers more efficiently by reaching lower-funnel strategies like Search and Shopping and upper-funnel formats like Display, Discovery, and YouTube. Employing Performance Max on Chico’s FAS’ Soma brand allowed their intimate collections to be visible to customers at all points in the consumer journey, not just at the bottom of the funnel.

04

The Result

In the first two weeks of testing Performance Max on Chico’s FAS’ Soma brand, we saw a 38% increase in revenue while cost per click (CPC) declined by 5%, resulting in an over 80% improvement in return on ad spend. 

Witnessing the success of Performance Max with Soma, we decided to test it on another one of the Chico’s FAS brands, White House Black Market. Over 30 days of testing with White House Black Market, Performance Max doubled conversion rates and delivered a 23% increase in ROAS for their denim category and a 31% increase in ROAS for tops.

Watch the video below to hear Kimberly Grabel, SVP of Marketing at Chico’s FAS, and Ashwani Dhar, CEO at Adlucent, talk more about how Adlucent improved Chico’s FAS search revenue and reduced CPCs with Google’s Performance Max.

Adlucent

Adlucent is the performance marketing agency that proves outperformance has no limit. Powered by our purpose-built platform, Deep Search™, Adlucent unifies the best of human and machine for a scientific approach to marketing. We work transparently in partnership with B2C and B2B retailers and brands to create custom, predictive programs that drive ever-better outcomes. Our services include paid search, shopping, social, Amazon, display media, video, performance creative, consulting, and measurement. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, Adlucent is part of Advantage Solutions and ranked one of the top marketing companies in the U.S. by AdAge.