Can Kourtney Kardashian Take on Gwyneth? Poosh vs Goop

• Kourtney Kardashian has just launched Poosh, but she will be paying close attention to her competition
• Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goop leverages celebrity to grow traffic and increase revenues from onsite sales
• As Poosh gets off the ground there is much to be learned from the ways Goop generates sustainable traffic to its site

Any new player coming into an established market needs to take a close look at the strategies the incumbents have employed to stake their claim. This is true whether you’re a start-up business looking for ways to establish your brand, but it’s also true even if you’re a Kardashian. This month Kourtney Kardashian launched a brand new lifestyle and wellness site called Poosh, Kourtney’s nickname for her six-year-old daughter.

So far, Poosh exists mostly as an influencer blog generating income mainly through referrals with a small amount of network advertising. Most of the undated articles include a whole bunch of affiliate links for the listed products. The affiliate links seem to be connecting to the fashion and lifestyle monetization giant rewardStyle.

The obvious model for Poosh is Gwyneth Paltrow’s brand, Goop, which began as an email newsletter, developed into a lifestyle site, and is now an eCommerce powerhouse with a recent valuation of $250M.

using Similarweb’s Marketing Solution, companies like Poosh gain the ability to analyze and explore the brands that inspired them and against which they want to be measured. In this post, we will take a look at one of those companies, goop.com, for some insights into celebrity-powered lifestyle and commerce brands.

How is Goop Doing?

In the 12 months from April 2018 to March 2019 traffic to goop.com averaged 1.4M visits per month, up 35% from the previous year. There were also some notable changes in the way goop.com sourced its traffic. The number of visits coming from social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube dropped off dramatically year over year. For many sites, the reliance on traffic from social media can be a danger as algorithms and site policies can have a massive impact on web traffic. Goop was able to continue growing its overall traffic, while significantly reducing the proportion it received from social media. Coupled with an uptick in direct traffic, this indicates increasing brand strength independent of the brand’s presence on other platforms.

Organic Search for Goop

Organic search was the largest single source of traffic to goop.com, overtaking direct traffic in the past 12 months. While the majority of organic traffic on desktop comes from branded keywords, a healthy 43.8% of desktop organic traffic comes from non-branded keywords. On mobile, non-branded keywords make up over 83% of all search traffic.

This list of keywords is very telling for any brand trying to get into this space. It indicates the importance of celebrity branding to Goop’s success. The keyword gwyneth paltrow is a huge driver of traffic both on desktop and mobile for Goop. Furthermore, Goop has invested hugely in and is capitalizing on an additional celebrity brand. Since becoming of Time Magazine’s most influential people in 2015, Japanese organizational guru, Marie Kondo has branched out into books, TV and more. Goop was one of the first sites to champion her KonMari method and this is reflected in the number of Kondo-related keywords driving traffic to Goop, including konmari, konmari method, marie kondo folding and others.

Kourtney Kardashian’s name has at least as much brand recognition as Gwyneth Paltrow’s, but Poosh will be paying attention to how Goop has invested in additional celebrity brands which bring their own following. Creating content around the rights kinds of sought-after keywords to drive organic traffic may be a valuable strategy for any site looking to challenge Goop.

As Marie Kondo considers launching her own lifestyle site, it remains to be seen what impact that will have on traffic to both Goop and Poosh.

Referral Traffic for Goop

Now that Goop has evolved into an eCommerce site, managing a shopping basket and payments on-site, it is increasing the proportion of traffic it receives from referring or affiliate sites year over year. In the 12 months up to March 2019, incoming referral traffic to goop.com was up to 10.6% of total traffic to the site. But that monthly average over a full year does not tell the whole story. Month by month there are large fluctuations in the volume of referral traffic coming into goop.com suggesting that they have not settled on a consistent affiliate strategy. This suggests an opportunity for another site to build strong affiliate relationships to start driving traffic on a regular basis.

Kourtney Kardashian is just getting started with Poosh. It makes sense for her to keep one eye on Goop as the benchmark for lifestyle sites that become successful businesses. She will also be keeping an eye on her half-sister’s successful makeup range at kyliecosmetics.com which leaves out the lifestyle and wellness elements to focus on building an aspirational brand around a single celebrity.

by Similarweb