The document summarizes L.L.Bean's transition of their paid search program in-house. Some key points:
- L.L.Bean is an outdoor/apparel brand founded in 1912 in Maine with $1.6 billion in annual sales. Paid search drives 20% of revenue.
- Transitioning in-house allowed for higher accountability, expertise development internally, and improved testing/alignment with organizational goals compared to an external agency.
- The transition involved auditing accounts, prioritizing work, and implementing foundational changes like simplifying text accounts and match type balances.
- Results included a 25% revenue increase, 17% lower ad spend, and 51% higher return
4. Raised in Freeport, Maine
15 Year Tenure at L.L.Bean
Two Kids, Two Dogs
Fly Fishing, Hiking / Camping, Live Music
About Me…
5. Global heritage outdoor / apparel brand headquartered in Freeport, Maine
Founded in 1912 by Leon Leonwood (L.L.) Bean
Manufactures world renowned products of the highest quality
$1.6 billion in annual net sales
About L.L.Bean
6. Drives 20% of top-line revenue
Focuses investment across 150+ product categories, ranging from women’s
knit tops to best in class fly rods
Investment weighted toward image ads and mobile
Supports go-to-market strategy across many seasonal themes
Paid Search Program
7. Too important to be wholly dependent on a 3rd party resource
Indirect relationship with bid platform
Slow reaction time
Competing goals
Why Transition In-House?
8. Higher accountability
Drive expertise internally
Turnaround of in-season strategic shifts
Access to internal data / reporting (24 / 7)
Alignment with rest of org.
Enhanced relationship with bid platform / engine partners
Improved testing strategy
Benefits
9. Transition timeline
Keeping pace with evolving industry trends
Lack of cross-client performance data
Team hierarchy / structure
Competing project work / meetings
Challenges
12. Prioritized the Work
High Impact
High Effort
Low Impact
Low Effort
Foundational
Hygiene
Bid
Management
Mobile
RLSAs
Gemini
International
Sitelinks
Ad Copy
Strategy
Retail
DTB
3rd Party
Research
Tier1Tier2
Geo Targeting
Day / Week Parting
International
21. Big Win #5
Bid Management
Established day to day relationship with bid platform / feed vendor
Moved away from spend capped model
Allowed seasonality to drive investment levels
Tested various bid strategies
Incorporated attribution insights
Leveraged business data
24. Ready to Run (or fly?)
Leverage modeling to enhance audience targeting
Offline sales data
API Connectivity
Bid to real-time margin data
Product discovery targets
Landing Page Testing
Voice Search – super long tails
I’m not going to tell you how I think a transition should be executed, but rather show you how we approached it at L.L.Bean. What worked for us and what didn’t. Every brand is different, every agency is different.
31 Stores, 9 Outlets
$1 billion Ecommerce Business
Mail over 150 million catalogs per year
Paid Search program since 2002, been with 5 agencies over 12 years
31 Stores, 9 Outlets
$1 billion Ecommerce Business
Mail over 150 million catalogs per year
Enhanced relationship with considerably more direct communications
I’m not going to tell you how I think a transition should be executed, but rather show you how we approached it at L.L.Bean. What worked for us and what didn’t. Every brand is different, every agency is different.
I’m not going to tell you how I think a transition should be executed, but rather show you how we approached it at L.L.Bean. What worked for us and what didn’t. Every brand is different, every agency is different.
Scorecard key findings:
Complexity and scale of program led to inconsistencies, waste, and improper setup
Ad copy and keyword combinations were imprecise, leading to suboptimal user experiences
Major issues needed to be fixed immediately after cutover:
Bidding on irrelevant keywords (e.g. “picnic tables”)
Landing Pages broken (error and 404 pages)
Empty Free Text landing pages (null results, not found by agency’s URL checker)
Paying too much for keywords that weren’t profitable
Restricting coverage on keywords with unreasonably low budget caps
Reduced from 18 to 8 Accounts
Old way: 1 change = 4 changes
Traffic splitting reduced keyword-level scale and quality score.
Audience targeting rolled into campaign level settings
Removed Repetitive Layers – Department layer sequenced twice
Brand and non-brand
3 phase restructure (Combine brand / non brand, phase out department layer, move to product hierarchy vs. site heirarchy)
Enabled product level bidding
Vendors in product campaigns
Local Inventory Ads (LIA)
- LIA now accounts for 30% of total PLA spend
I’m not going to tell you how I think a transition should be executed, but rather show you how we approached it at L.L.Bean. What worked for us and what didn’t. Every brand is different, every agency is different.
Mobile holdout test
LIA now accounts for 30% of total PLA spend
LIA now accounts for 30% of total PLA spend
I’m not going to tell you how I think a transition should be executed, but rather show you how we approached it at L.L.Bean. What worked for us and what didn’t. Every brand is different, every agency is different.