CASE STUDY:
How We Increased One E-Commerce Store’s Sales By 1387% In 6 Months
Note: For the sake of privacy, we’ll refer to this business as Store 1, due to the nature of the products they sell.
Store 1 came to us looking for a competent team to take over and manage the advertising campaign for their relatively new e-commerce dropshipping store. Prior to us taking the reigns on this account, somebody else had been managing their Google Ads with limited success. Due to the nature of products sold in this store, we were unable to utilize Google’s very effective retargeting capabilities, and still we were able to generate a massive (and ongoing) return on investment and ad spend.
THE GOAL
Store 1’s goal was simple: increase ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) and increase sales.
When we started on this account, ROAS was at 1.0 - essentially breaking even.
Our baseline ROAS for any e-commerce campaign is 2.0 at absolute minimum, with a
benchmark ROAS of 4.0.
STRATEGY
We knew this account would be very successful, once corrections were made, and the proper strategy was implemented. Once we were able to collect data, identify ideal customers, and get product in front of them, it would be a matter of scaling our strategy - removing what doesn’t work, and doubling down on what does. This is the key to maximizing ROAS.
IMPLEMENTATION
The first step - before anything else could be done - was to fix issues with conversion tracking. Without correct conversion data, it would have been impossible to manage the account and scale. Conversion data tells us information about who buys, when they buy, and what they buy. We use this to identify trends and make campaign decisions.
The client had added many, many keywords hoping these would show ads to buyers. The sheer amount of keywords meant that the ads were being shown to many people who would never buy - and this was a waste of ad-spend. Our approach was to observe all points of data - impressions, clicks, click-through-rate, and conversions - and determine which keywords were simply costing money but not performing.
After a certain test period, all under-performing keywords were removed. Eliminating the wasted ad spend would simply drive more traffic through the keywords that were producing desired results. Eventually, the only keywords left would consistently produce results and sales.
A similar strategy was implemented with ad copywriting - multiple variations of each ad were produced, for each ad grouping. At the start of each month, the lowest performing ad variation would be removed, and a copy would be made of the best performing ad, with a minor change to test if it would perform even slightly better than the current best-performer.
As sales increased, more ad-spend was fed to the ad groups producing the most sales. This becomes a snowball effect - more sales creates more conversion data which helps optimize for more sales which creates even more conversion data...you get the idea!
As a general rule, we always run a retargeting campaign to have ads re-appear in front of potential customers who have visited the site. However in this case, due to the sensitive nature of the products being sold, we were unable to leverage this powerful tool. Had we had this capability, the ROAS and ad performance would have been even greater!
THE RESULTS
Simply put, the results of our ecommerce strategy have been tremendous.
Store 1's ROAS when we took over was literally non-existant. Since then, it has gotten better and more effective month after month, like a knife slowly being sharpened over time. At the end of a the first 6 months, Store 1's ROAS was 14.87 (That is $14.87 of revenue for every $1 of ad spend) and the overall 6 month ROAS, including the non-existant start was 10.54
Our incredibly effective marketing strategy took Store 1's monthly sales from a meager $800 in the first month...to just shy of $40,000 in the 6th month.
Its not magic, but as we tell our clients...sometimes it sure feels like it!
IT GETS BETTER!
As we all know, the biggest sales month for most retail stores is December, and this rings true for the majority of online retailers as well. As you can see, it was a very important month for Store 1 to be positioned and ready to SELL. And sell they did!
Store 1’s December sales goal: $67,000
Store 2’s final December sales… (drumroll please)
$114,434.54
ROAS: 14.58
Store 1 went on to absolutely crush its sales goal because of an effective ecommerce strategy and the ability to scale its ad spend as needed.
