240% reduction in CPA

The Sleep Shop is a leading retailer of mattresses and beds from leading brands such as Silentnight and Rest Assured. Its website also lists brands including Sealy, Relyon, Dunlopillo and Sleepeezee, and sells beds, pillows, toppers and bedroom furniture. Its website gives the head office as FGS Furnishings Ltd in Sleaford, Lincolnshire, and says it has shops in Sleaford and Grantham.

A mattress is a considered purchase with plenty of competition online, so the cost of winning each sale decides whether paid search is worth running.

Shoppers rarely buy a bed on impulse. They compare brands, read about firmness and sizes, look at prices across several retailers and often want to see the product before they choose. A retailer with both shops and a website has a strength here, because the two can support each other, but online it still has to stand out against national names and specialist bed sellers that bid on the same searches.

That makes the economics of advertising unforgiving. A bed is a high-value item, so a click can be worth a lot to a retailer, but only if enough of the people clicking go on to buy. If each sale costs more to win than it brings in, the account loses money however many visitors it attracts. Ranking in organic search matters for the same reason, because it brings in shoppers who have not cost a click.

The mix of channels matters too. Shopping listings show the product and the price at the point of search, retargeting reminds people who looked and left, and organic search catches the many who begin by asking a question. A retailer that wants to grow needs each of these working, and needs them in an order that makes commercial sense.