Making Work Fun and Meaningful

To bring those customers who might be interested in Patagonia’s products to the site, the cataloger has invested heavily in both search and affiliate marketing. But there were lessons to learn along the way.

Early on, Patagonia purchased general outdoor-related search terms, such as “bicycling” and “climbing.” But return on high-cost, low-specificity terms like that didn’t provide a particularly high conversion. These days, the company buys more multiword search terms, such as “high-performance climbing apparel.” “We’re trying to refine over and over, and go after exact intent, rather than go after a shotgun blast,” Todd says.