In this post, we will share our insights and case study on how we grew an e-commerce sports gadget store.
We will keep it as short and straightforward as possible.
THE STORE
This store is working in the sports gadgets niche and particularly helping golf players.
Average monthly sales were $33k – $40k a month.
November and February are the only times when they are running sales offers that averaged $70k – 80$k.
Everybody can have an amazing sales month and brag about how they grew the business, when in reality that’s not the case.
Product price – $295 – $495 ( People were able to do product upgrades after purchasing the $295 version)
THE SITUATION
Their main acquisition channel was Facebook.
They only 1 winning active ad that was generating most of the sales for the past 6 months.
They were running multiple campaigns with CBO and inside the CBO campaign were interest ad sets, and lookalike ad sets, which had to go.
They were also using retargeting campaign that was primarily advertising to people who previously saw their content. This also had to go.
The ad was advertising the product and not really focused on customer needs, wants, and problems.
They didn’t have the right CPA goal ($55 CPA at that time)
They didn’t have good email marketing.
They only sent out campaigns after 60 days of people purchasing the $295 product.
WHAT DID WE DO TO GROW THIS BRAND?
1. We calculated all the numbers to set a clear target CPA which was $90 and later even $105.
2. We did audience research where we noted down the customer’s main
- problems that they would love to fix
- true desires, what is the desired outcome of using the product
- their needs
After we had this it was time to create multiple ad video scripts around these previous things that I mentioned.
In total, we came up with 60+ video ads, each of which had 3 hook variations.
Luckily the product was really good and we were able to get videos from pro coaches, pro players, and so on.
4. Once the ads were ready we simplified the Facebook ad account structure with just one CBO- Campaign using the previous best-performing lookalike audience at the start.
And this was the time when we introduced BROAD to this account and we were shocked that broad targeting outperformed the lookalike audience even for a super niche product like this one.
This was the account where we were completely sold on using BROAD always and not even touching any other “BS audiences” and just focusing on marketing.
I cannot state on how important is to focus on your marketing message and make sure that you are talking to your customer via your ads, your landing page, and then email.
5. We created a new email post-purchase flow where we gathered information about how customers like the product ( we used this info to create more ads)
Also in this post-purchase flow was an upsell after 3 months of customers using the product where we introduced the second level of the product.
6. We split-tested at least 30 product page copies and layouts until we found the winning one.
7. We also introduced bridge pages which were an absolute killer.
This was the reason we were able to increase the CPA goal from $90 to $105 to acquire as many customers as possible.
THE RESULT
The first month after implementing the things I mentioned above we hit $65k with $75 CPA.
The second month we hit $95k with $86 CPA
In the third month, we hit $134.1k with a $91 CPA.
In the fourth month, we went back to $91k in revenue due to some ad production issues.
In the fifth month, we ended with $117k with $106 CPA.
With the rapid growth of this company, we also started to grow our tour pro player list that was using this product as well as the best golf coaches.
At this point, it was easy to obtain video materials from players and coaches and we have never gone below $180k a month at this point.
This growth was done primarily with three advertising channels (70% Facebook, 25% email, and 5% affiliates)
There were two main things that really helped this business grow
- Measuring the time between the first purchase and the upgrade purchase
- Understanding the audience to the core of the bones and creating messaging that speaks to them.
it’s not just about ads it’s about the whole thing.
The message starts with the ads then it should continue on the landing page, the product page, and ends when the customer unpacks and starts using the product.
Anyways sorry for the long post. We hope that we brought you some value.
Thanks for reading.