Ocean & Earth

The Client

Ocean & Earth was founded by Brian Cregan in 1978 on the South Coast of New South Wales Australia. O&E is one of, it not, the only remaining surf hardware product company that has been around for over 30 years and that remains proudly 100% Australian. 

Ocean & Earth grew by establishing a network of trusted and respected core product retailers throughout NSW and Southern QLD (Australia). Staff knowledge of surfing helped with product development but many other areas of business were developed via trial and error.

By 1985 the Ocean & Earth product range had grown significantly to encompass a broad range of surfing accessories, backpacks and a small range of clothing which still is the backbone of the company today. Ocean & Earth is one of the most well known core surfing accessory companies that still remains one of the last independent surf brands in the world that maintains its position on the global surf podium.

The Brief

Ocean & Earth approached COG Branding with a brief to replatform from BigCommerce to Shopify. With this as the primary Phase One project, follow up with an extensive SEO strategy as Phase Two, then complete the project with Phase Three by delivering a digital marketing strategy that includes both paid and owned media considerations. 

With COG Branding having a close connection to action sports and the surfing industry, our knowledge and experience was to be utilised across all projects, specifically the eCommerce trading and SEO initiatives. The focus here needs to ensure solutions would meet the targeted consumer community and online behaviours while ensuring brand equity and market position was supported.

Deliverables needed to include a comprehensive metric suite for data analytics, performance marketing metrics and industry standards, plus nurture existing Domain Authority (DA) during the platform migration. 

The Phase Three SEM (Search Engine Marketing) projects demanded the O&E maintains competitive marketshare, cut through to the core surf product target consumer. Surf products in the online eCommerce shopping category are very competitive so CPC (Cost Per Click), plus as O&E is a wholesaler the actual wholesale margin needs to be rationalised to understand what eCommerce trade opportunities should be pursued to maintain fair retail relationships and healthy profit margins.

The Solution

A phased BigCommerce departure and Shopify onboarding, that was integrated with tactical management of the information architecture, 301 redirects and Search Console indexing. Phase Three deployed a synergistic SEO SEM supported program to ensure the new platform was pushed into market accurately.

Knowing that a strong SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) program will support any SEM activity and programs, a key part of our brief was to inject some SEO into the Digital Strategy. By having full control and visibility on all digital touchpoints we were able to create a comprehensive approach to rolling out Google Ads and delivering SEO efforts as a cohesive suite of month on month activity, and also track and monitor sitemap indexing with data and traffic analytics.

Our focus ensured that Ocean & Earth is competing strongly in organic search, and providing every opportunity for SERP’s (Search Engine Ranking Position) to support subsequent paid eCommerce trading activity via Google Shopping Ads and Google Category Search Text Ads. With a product list in a state of flux, the Search Ad program would need to work in harmony with the SEO program being updated on a weekly basis. With a sophisticated dynamic retargeting strategy in place with a strong visual display asset base, the Ad Strategy and SEO Strategy is a comprehensive network of performance marketing for Ocean & Earth getting the most value out of each cost per click snd Google crawl.

The Results

Exceeding ROAS benchmarks for 6 consecutive months, plus maintaining 10:1 ROAS (considering TOFU, MOFU, BOFU placement) month on month of an entire year, the performance marketing for Ocean & Earth broke some records for COG Branding.

With an ever growing product offering and category performance growing with each expansion, the overall return on investment for SEO and PPC activity was a clear winner. While the Covid-19 pandemic shockwave rippled through online and offline retail, our SEO foundation works which followed web convention set up the eCommerce trade with a solid foundation to compete at an organic and paid level. This with a flexible strategy ensured Ocean & Earth could push and pull levers reactively to take advantage of opportunities and choose which performance battles to take on.

The results is strength and sustainability in the Ocean & Earth investment to their eCommerce, website, paid performance marketing and SEO strategy.