Marketing An Adult Store – Key Steps To Achieve Success

About Fortuna

The adult store Fortuna was the first of its kind to open in the city of Osijek, Croatia. In addition, they were among the first in their industry to have an online website in the country. Therefore, the business was excellent in the beginning.

However, their competition was increasing steadily, and new stores meant modern websites and marketing strategies that easily attracted customers. Fortuna slowly started losing customers and soon enough – they were barely making any sales online.

They did not know the cause of that, so our detective team was called in to investigate.

Challenges

Low online visibility

We discovered various SEO problems. Firstly, their website wasn’t showing up in Google searches.

If we searched for “sex shop Osijek”, we would find Fortuna deep down on the third page.

If we searched for “sex shop”, Fortuna would be buried even further down.

Considering only 7% of all people browse past the first results page, such an outcome was truly worrisome. Not to mention that meta descriptions and titles for SERP haven’t been written at all.

Unresponsive and old-fashioned website

Next, we went to Fortuna’s website.

First, we noticed it looked old-fashioned and unresponsive. It hadn’t been updated since its creation 10 years ago and featured many irrelevant page elements. Most notably, on the homepage, there was a picture of a woman in a sexy outfit, with no indication of the store or the products it offered. A potential customer would have probably been confused after clicking on the website.

Bad product names and descriptions

Further inspection revealed that the product names were badly formulated.

Fortuna had been using just a generic product-defining name (e.g. thong) in combination with the brand in question to name their products. So for example, we found a “Thong G-String”, which would probably never appear at the top of search results.

Google’s instructions when naming your products are clear – give as much information as possible in the name, so people searching for products are more likely to find your store. 

No marketing strategy (Facebook and PPC)

We also checked the store’s Facebook page.

They had around 1000 likes, which is excellent considering the nature of the products they sell, but it hadn’t been updated in over a year and the response time was not the best.

Lastly, the owners had not used Google Ads in over a year.

Need for change

Therefore, in general, we found ourselves a business that was in dire need of some changes.

A big challenge was the fact that we had to market an adult store, an ‘unconventional’ business, but we managed to come up with unique ideas to resolve the problems we faced.

The biggest issue was the website. 

Temporary fixes

The owners were a bit hesitant about the idea of creating a new website from scratch.

Therefore, we introduced some temporary band-aid fixes at first. We changed the look to make it more modern and intuitive by:

• rearranging homepage elements
• making new visuals for brand identity and product categories
• removing irrelevant elements

Now finally, when opening the website, potential clients could immediately see the products that were being sold.

Solutions

New brand

We modified all of the texts on the site to make them more intelligible and to emphasize what makes Fortuna a great adult store (e.g. their discreet packages, quick delivery, quality products, etc.). We changed the names of all products to make them compatible with the aforementioned Google instructions. In the „Thong G-String“ example, we changed the name to „Thong, black leather, size U. – G-String“.

After changing the product names, we tackled Facebook.

We changed the profile and cover photo from the former generic sexy girls to the brand new shop’s logo. We started posting again and more often (once a week or more often), but quickly realized there was no point in that. Because of the business’s sensitive nature, audiences were reluctant to interact with the posts. Despite the great number of likes, people rarely engaged with the content.

However, through posting on Facebook we developed new & fresh brand elements for Fortuna’s style. Those styles we later implemented on the new website and the physical location of the shop.

Old logo

New logo

Sign in front of the store

Artwork for store entrance

We tried using Facebook ads, but unfortunately due to the site’s name and industry, they were not approved. This was an important restriction in the marketing of the store. We had to turn our attention elsewhere.

Effective PPC campaigns

We started doing Google Ads. We researched the relevant keywords, wrote the ad copies, and launched the campaigns. Online sales started once again. The results were quite encouraging.

Example of Fortuna’s Google Ad on SERP

To this day, we maintain a high ROI with Fortuna’s Google ads. However, we knew we could achieve even more. 

High online visibility

Fortuna was buried in the deepest depths of the Google SERP, so the only organic traffic it received was thanks to the existing (… and weak) brand.

Finally, we managed to improve the rankings of the two main keywords and bring a huge chunk of relevant organic traffic.

Fortuna’s rank improvement over time

When we performed a local Google search for adult shops ‘near me’ there was no info about any in the area. Instead, there were listings of adult shops in nearby cities and even other countries.

Taking into account that GMB’s position is affected by three factors: relevance, distance, and prominence – we knew there was a lot of unused potential for Fortuna’s GMB listing.

We took over Fortuna’s (at that time unverified) Google My Business and started working on local SEO as well. It didn’t take too long until we got to the top of the local 3-pack!

Fortuna’s GMB listing

Very soon, more and more people started appearing at the store. 

How did we do it?

We’ve updated GMB with all the possible information:

Lots of images

The number of photographs they had on the GMB account was low in comparison to their competitors. We asked the owners to take a bunch of shots of their shop, which we later added to the GMB profile alongside new branded visuals and product images.

Naming and optimizing all the product categories

We added all the information into the product GMB section: product categories, images, descriptions, and price range. We also linked them to relevant pages.

Adding business hours

Potential customers need to know when they can visit the shop. 

Modifying the business name, primary and other categories

We modified the business name so that the searcher’s intent matches SERP results.

Adding primary and secondary business categories was next on our to-do list.

Post updates

We make sure to post every update about Fortuna’s offers and news on GMB.

That way we get more space in Google SERP and provide relevant and up-to-date information to customers.

Fortuna’s GMB posts

Replying to reviews

Positive or negative – there’s no difference. If you want to be professional you have to deal with both in the best manners.

Other info

It’s very important to add as much info as you can about your business. Some of the other information we updated is:

• business description
• service areas
• opening date
• service options
• payment options
• and attributes

Finally – a new website

There was only one thing left to do – create a new website!

The owners, satisfied with the results we achieved, agreed to this.

Hero section of a new website (desktop)

After only a few weeks, the new website was up and running. It was beautiful, elegant, fast, and mobile responsive. Sales went through the roof.

The next four months were the four most profitable months in Fortuna’s history.

December sales were even crazier. It was a combination of SEO – both local and organic SERP listings, PPC campaigns, and Christmas sales.

2020 in review

It’s important to add – in the past there were almost no conversions done through mobile devices. Making the website responsive on all devices was a huge turning point for Fortuna’s business.

More than 80% of conversions in our PPC campaign are now done on mobile!

2021 and 2022 in review

Our 2020 successes were no match for the results we achieved in 2021!

We continued optimizing and adjusting the budget of Google Ads and worked on new promotional campaigns.

The numbers were astounding. Compared to 2020, in 2021 Fortuna achieved a 66% total increase in sales and a 180% increase in deliveries. Bear in mind that 2020 was already the best year in the shop’s history! 

2022 was another great year. With every new month, there has been an increase in sales. We made Fortuna into a recognizable and strong brand.

Fortuna’s story has been an amazing one. Our relationship with their team has been smooth and fruitful. We can’t wait to see what the future brings and we are ready to set some new records!  

Working with Adonomy was a great experience. They were always coming up with new ideas and keeping us notified. Day by day, we could see our sales go up!

– Ratko Šakotić, CEO, Fortuna

What’s next?

Our current goal now is maintenance: we will continue monitoring Google Ads, producing great creatives, and coming up with new marketing ideas.

We are sure that even better results await Fortuna.

If you would like to experience a similar success story, contact us today.