A key trend in 2022 is more businesses moving their Paid marketing budget into long-term growth though investing more in SEO. Here at equimedia, our SEO practice has doubled its consulting turnover during the year.
The sad tale of MADE.COM
In the news this week was the sorry demise of MADE.COM. A hero of lockdown as people stuck inside went online to purchase attractive furniture for their homes and home offices.
On its stock market floatation in June 2021, it launched with a market capitalisation of £775M and seemed a sure bet to become a British “unicorn”. Alas, it was not to be and Next purchased its website and brand from administrators this week for a mere £3.4M.
The hidden value for Next?
What hasn’t been explained in the financial press is that a key value for Next is the Organic traffic of MADE.COM.
According to the online marketing data company Ahrefs, the estimated value of the Organic traffic generated by MADE.COM in the past 12 months is an impressive £11.5M. Most of this traffic came from the big markets of UK, France and Germany.
As the green line on this chart shows, once the Paid traffic purchased by MADE.COM during the Covid period was spent, it ceased to hold a value.
In contrast, the brown line shows its investment in Organic growth – usually referred to as SEO – whilst slower to grow, maintains it value into the future.
Bargain for Next
The reasons for MADE.COM's demise seem to involve supply chain disruptions and it holding too much stock causing it to run out of cash. This, however, should not detract from the marketing success story of how a British ecommerce firm chose Organic growth as the engine of it meteoric expansion over more than a decade.
If Next can hold on to and nurture this Organic traffic from shoppers interested in home furnishings, then it would seem that it has a bagged a bargain.
Are you ready to invest in search engine marketing?
equimedia helps businesses to optimise their search engine marketing. Search engine marketing is the symbiotic use of both SEO and Paid marketing channels to maximise ROI. The key to this is equimedia’s strong foundation in data attribution to guide marketing decision making.
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| Author | James Gardner |
| Channel | SEM |