A Best-Kept Secret

As a pioneer in natural aromatherapy body care, EO Products’ 20-year plus growth was driven by the unparalleled quality of its product, which resulted in devoted customers and strong word-of-mouth marketing.

However, as the demand for essential oils and natural body care has accelerated, both of EO’s two brands — EO Essential Oils and Everyone for Every Body — faced increasing competition from the likes of Unilever and S.C. Johnson, which launched new “natural” brands fueled by multi-million-dollar marketing budgets.

EO simply couldn’t compete with such corporations when it came to buying print, TV ads, or retail shelf space and displays. However, if done right, the digital space could help level the playing field as a way to increase EO’s brand awareness, customer base, and margins through its e-commerce platform.

Meet Customers Where They Are — In Their Moment of Need

To take advantage of a digital-first marketing strategy, we started by taking a deeper look at the EO customer journey from:

• First becoming interested in exploring natural body care
• To making the decision to buy healthier products and evaluating the options
• To purchasing and using the products in their daily lives
• And finally to committing to the brand

Based on our research findings, we developed a four-pronged strategy to help EO better meet its customers wherever they were on their natural personal care journey.

Establish Brand Authority on Google Search

For consumers beginning their journey, the majority turn to Google — whose algorithms favor websites that deliver the best results for Google’s customers, not the companies or brands with the largest marketing teams.

We set out to establish EO’s search authority in the category by working our way to “page one” for searches related to the early stages of learning about natural products to those ready to choose a brand and buy. To do so, we turned our focus to the customer: What were their top questions, concerns, and interests?

The natural body care industry is rife with unverified claims, unqualified influencers, and untrustworthy content. But as a certified B Corporation, EO had 20 years of expertise in ingredients, the transformative properties of essential oils, and ethical business practices. We set out to make EO and Everyone the brands you could trust in a confusing industry.

Build Credibility Through the EO Website

Once we knew how we were going to help customers, our next step was to create a website with the content and customer experience to deliver on that promise of trust.

Clarify Brand Confusion

When we started working with EO, they were midstream in building new websites for each of their brands: EO and Everyone. They found that customers were confused about the difference between the two brands, which have many similarities. EO thought that separating them might solve this challenge.

However, such a strategy missed the bigger opportunity to raise customer awareness about the breadth and depth of both product lines. So, we tested website prototypes that included both brands to more deeply explore what was causing customer confusion.

We learned that we not only needed to clearly communicate the ingredient differences between the products but also explain the use cases for each line. For example, EO products offered an elevated self-care experience, whereas Everyone products were great for the whole family.

The similarities between the two brands were also important: impeccable ingredients, pure essential oils, and a company grounded in ethical business practices.

The result: 40 percent of online customers purchased both brands for their household. (Website-exclusives were consistent top sellers.) We achieved what we set out to do: Provide more healthy options for customers.

A Search-First Design Approach

We rebuilt the website from the ground up with a search-first strategy that drove the information architecture, new content, responsive design, and modern and mobile-friendly platform.

Months after launching the new site, we had more and better-qualified customers coming to the site:

• EO ranked on “page one” for over 570 branded search queries, and showed up in the No. 1 position 60 percent of the time.
• New website visitor traffic increased by 80 percent, with search traffic accounting for 50 percent of the growth.
• New website visitors purchased at a 30-percent higher rate; search visitors had the highest overall conversion rate.
• Direct traffic to the site increased as repeat customers returned.

Built-In Customer Engagement

To create a personalized and more engaging website experience, we included a video panel at the top of the homepage that geo-located a visitor and provided a personalized message inspired by the time of day (morning, afternoon, and evening) in their time zone. A video set the mood, for example kids jumping on the bed in the morning or friends meeting at a cafe in the afternoon. The panel below it offered an exclusive, personalized product combo offer also tied to the time of day. By meeting customers quite literally where they were, we were able to personalize their experience physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Additionally, we encouraged customers to create with EO through a voting panel that allowed them to select one of two options — mint or citrus for example — and see the results change in real-time. This allowed us to have an ongoing dialogue with our customers. They enjoyed participating in the process and the data helped drive product development.

Address the Digital Ecosystem

Next, we tackled the other key parts of the company’s digital ecosystem by developing a social media content strategy and editorial calendar for each brand and platform. Our cross-platform storytelling went beyond product visuals to include the company’s history, its founders, its B-Corp status, interactive content and giveaways, and shoppable posts.

Along with social media, the website’s blog was an essential part of the digital ecosystem. The underlying customer-first content strategy required focusing on the questions and concerns of customers. (This also aligned with our overarching SEO strategy.) We invested in educational content demystifying healthy and unhealthy ingredients found in personal care products, the proven benefits of and false claims about essential oils, and environmental topics important to customers.

With more robust and focused digital content, we saw higher-quality engagement with our audiences:

• Social impressions increased 1,550 percent.
• Social profile views grew 170 percent.
• First-time customers who opted-in to receive emails grew 65 percent.

Know When to Invest in Digital Advertising

Once the low-cost search and content solutions had gained momentum, in year two we invested significantly in SEM, digital display, and social ads to fuel new customer acquisition by reaching audiences that were closer to the purchase decision. This strategic bet produced online sales growth, new site visitors, and higher purchase conversion rates.

Brand Authority → Devoted Customers → Online Sales Growth

Two years into implementing our long-term strategy the revenue outcomes were dramatic: Online sales grew 2.5 times year over year due to increased brand authority and web-exclusive products.

An e-commerce strategy done right won’t cannibalize in-store sales. In fact, it can fuel them: The store locator was one of the most visited pages on the website, and we saw a rise in mobile Google searches for our brands “in a store near me.”

Straight up, you can’t buy your customer’s trust, but you can earn it.