Adapting An SEO Strategy For A Male Audience
Stitch Fix Case Study
By Christina Sri
Challenge
After it’s success with women, Stitch Fix diversified its product strategy by targeting men in the U.S. market. Because the men’s market is smaller, our marketing budget was a fraction of what we had for women’s.
The limited budget meant organic growth, and therefore SEO, was crucial to the success of our men’s line. But even though our SEO content strategy was similar, our audience wasn’t. Men think about shopping, style, and fashion differently than women. We needed content that would speak to them.
Solutions
The success of the SEO strategy for the women’s blog, we decided to apply many of the same tactics to our men’s version. However, this wasn’t a copy-and-paste job. Our audience research made it clear that we’d need to approach our content strategy differently.
A common misconception we uncovered was that men don’t like to shop. They just think about it differently. Men are less impulsive, more practical, and are likely to deliberate before they buy. They struggle with putting together outfits, matching colors, dressing for occasions, and they stress over breaking fashion “rules.”
Using what we learned, we developed a voice for the blog that was practical, informative, and logical, while also being entertaining. My keyword research focused on common fashion problems for men and informational searches that help men navigate their personal style.
I led the design and launch of the men’s blog. We devoted 75% of the monthly content calendar to articles inspired by keyword opportunities. Like the women’s blog, we also focused on the top 8 ranking factors that were working for us.
Results
By re-prioritizing the content calendar for SEO stories, the men’s blog grew organic traffic 10x faster than the women’s blog.
Traffic grew over 700% in 2016 and 450% in 2018.
