“We are struggling to move beyond ₹4 Lakh per month in sales, we wanna grow”
This was the challenge from the founder of this lifestyle brand
And Boy! We did Grow
Results
Background
The brand had been operational for more than a year, for the first months they grew consistently over 30% but at around 4Lakh per month the growth stalled.
For over 3 months they were stuck at the same revenue despite various efforts, so we decided to take a look and give it a shot.
This is a bootstrapped brand so writing was on the wall
We need to grow profitably otherwise we don’t survive
Audit & KPI’s
Before taking up any brand we go through the account and see the challenges, and approaches taken and find issues that need to be resovled on priority to unlock growth for the brand.
During the audit we found two main issues
- Lack of creative direction, which led to poor creative testing
- Foundations were fine but the structure did not support the scale
So, we got on a call again to finalize everything while also discussing on KPIs, their goal for the first few months was to touch the 10 Lakh monthly revenue mark in the next 45 days
Fact: We touched the ₹20 Lakh mark in just 28 days
Before running any ads, we have an internal calculator template (Let me know in the comments if you want, will share it) used to calculate the CAC, breakeven ROAS, profit margins, and other KPIs for ads.
KPIs were filled in and targets were set.
September – November (Setup)
Launched 4 campaigns with each one for a different objective
Creative testing (1) – This is a simple campaign with 3 to 5 ad sets, in each 3 to 5 ads where multiple creative types from Images to videos, to GIF’s, are tested. This is primarily used to test angles in ads and see which audience resonates the most with
Before investing heavily on creative (in production or in ads) first create an MVP and test it out at small budget
Prospecting campaign (2) – This is an ABO campaign to search for valuable audience groups from interest stacks to broad to lookalike audiences and find the best audience categories
Expanding Audience campaign (1) – This was later launched as the management in the prospecting campaign was a bit hard we segregated into another campaign for prospecting
First, when using interest stacks we looked at direct interest regarding the product, then later also started targeting legacy brands, and models (Celebs) in the category to capture the affinity audience (the ones who are savvy about the category)
As for the Lookalike audience, started with website traffic then slowly moved to page and Instagram profile engagers lookalike strangely social media lookalikes performed better than website traffic
Creative
This was the biggest driver compared to everything, rightly so as the lifestyle category is all about amazing visuals and status
- Reel-first creative ads – We knew our best audience spends the most time on reels, so all the creatives were made native to reel placements.
- No-text creatives – Contrary to popular belief of stuffing copy into creative, strangely (Looking back rightly so) a no-text creative, just showing the product use case with cinematic shots was the winner
- Carousels – A lot of brands operate on extremes in creatives image/video very few use carousels, and yet we found the biggest opportunity to tell the story there. The primary angle used here was how this product enhances their status (also a bit of ego)
By the end of this period, we had 3 clear winners accounting for more than 70% of daily spend
Results
In the first 6 days of launching the campaign, we touched ₹1 Lakh in a day mark at just 22k in spend
Client’s response
December – March (All about scaling)
We set up multiple scaling campaigns
Advantage+ Campaign – One thing we missed initially (but later did it right) was to set the budget cap on existing audience targeting so this campaign just targets new audiences
CBO campaign – Duplicating the best audience with the best creatives from the previous month into a cost cap CBO campaign to control costs while also scaling the budgets.
Usually, the cost cap is 20% higher than normal CAC to provide room for the Zuck lord to test and spend efficiently.
Creative
From the previous period, we had found 3 winners, but we were quick to notice the creative fatigue kick in and performance dwindles. We knew we had to find a new winner
Along with winner creatives from the previous month, we started testing new ads, new angles, new visuals
- Model-first creative – A model holding the product with a cinematic shot and text overlay, so the ad itself exuded the luxury of owning the product (Classic arouses desire from the audience)
- Typical trending music reel – Picked up a few trending music in reel and used them in ads, which automatically grabs the maximum attention of buyer (as it’s trending). This is a double-edged sword hop on trends early (or don’t) if you have to hop on late the audience would have developed a blind spot to that
One pattern if you have noticed in creative direction here, is we don’t jump on bandwagons like UGC and stuff, not all brands are meant for that (this sure wasn’t)
So, before hopping about trends
Stop -> Think -> Does it apply to my business?
Then go
December and these winteryyy months are quite slow for this category, yet we broke the 20 Lakh monthly barrier to set a new high in January
Client appreciations
Thank you for reading
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