I-Run Sees Record Seasonal Returns by Leveraging Organic Search During Peak Periods

INDUSTRY

Sporting oods

CONTENTS

• CHALLENGE

• solutions

• results

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+75%

YoY SEO Impressions

+99%

of YoY organic clicks (brand and non-brand)

on the query “Black Friday Garmin” over the period

Founded in 2007, i-Run is a retailer specializing in running, fitness, trail, and hiking equipment, offering more than 75,000 products. With 170 employees, the brand has 15 stores in France and an international online presence, notably in Belgium, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands. In 2022, i-Run achieved a turnover of €104 million, with double-digit growth expected the following year: according to the 2023 Running Observatory study, 21% of runners bought their last pair of shoes at i-Run. For 17 years, e-commerce has been part of i-Run's DNA, with organic search at the heart of its strategy. In 2022, the brand saw a decrease in the share of organic traffic in its marketing mix due to the acceleration of paid channels. i-Run decided to refocus its efforts on organic to secure it as the main source of traffic and strengthen its impact on revenue.

Challenge

Between 2022 and 2023, i-Run’s acquisition strategy needed to make up lost ground on its organic channels. Organic search was prioritized with the goal of making it the number-one channel, driving 50% of traffic.

They had to rethink their organic strategy.

Facing strong competition online, i-Run decided to optimize for top-tail queries associated with different categories (such as running, trail, or hiking), rather than just product or brand names. To strengthen its leadership position in the “running” segment, the brand sought to boost its visibility during key revenue-generating periods, such as seasonal sales and Black Friday.

i-Run faced several obstacles in the way of reclaiming their momentum with organic search. To make it the number-one channel once again, the brand needed to:

Quickly detect and correct recurring SEO issues (404, 301, indexing, crawl, duplicate meta tags, etc.),
Identify pages crawled by Google and better allocate its crawl budget to strategic pages,
Support teams both technically and during peak periods to maximize the effectiveness of organic content.

Solution

To overcome these challenges and accelerate its organic search performance, i-Run chose the Botify solution.

With Botify Analytics, i-Run gained an in-depth understanding of the health of its site and product pages, as well as strategizing with Botify’s teams to prioritize projects and make optimizations with an immediate effect on organic search performance.

Next, they used automation to make their SEO team fast, independent, and efficient. PageWorkers, a product of Botify Activation, freed up IT bandwidth by automating optimizations and enhancing new content pages at scale. This saved significant time and efficiency on high-value projects.

Additionally, Botify’s solution improved the internal link structure for their top pages, accelerating organic search results during product launches and major sales periods.

Finally, by analyzing the results from Botify RealKeywords and Search Console in conjunction with other tracking tools, the i-Run SEO team demonstrated to internal stakeholders that the new content pages had a higher impact and conversion rate than some product pages. Using these proof points, they secured support for future organic search projects with the purchasing and marketing teams.

Results

Black Friday 2023 was a record day for i-Run. The choice to prioritize organic search paid off, with 55% of revenue generated thanks to organic traffic.

With the help of Botify, i-Run’s new strategy proved successful. i-Run managed to not only position itself alongside competitors on their branded queries, but sometimes even before. For example, i-Run reached the top position on the query "Black Friday Garmin," surpassing the French leader in electronic equipment and facilitating record sales.

The share of traffic from free channels increased by 70% compared to a reference period like summer sales. The increase in organic traffic allowed i-Run to rebalance its investments in the marketing mix and reduce dependence on paid channels.

The organic search gains for purchase-related queries solidified i-Run's position during national launches and increased its influence with brands. December 2023 in particular saw organic traffic for Garmin multiply by six, thanks to effective collaboration between the teams.

"After a year of collaboration with Botify, the SEO results have been remarkable! PageWorkers helped us quickly and independently improve the structure of our pages and strengthen each created page, allowing us to effectively position ourselves in search results." - Celya Marnay, Digital Marketing Director, i-Run

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