The Brief
Beauty and the Bees is a natural skin and haircare brand that offers a range of products made with high-quality, plant-based ingredients sourced from Tasmania.
After being in business for more than 20 years, they had a fantastic reputation and produced amazing quality skin and hair care products but struggled to reach a broader audience. Their physical store was very successful but they struggled to reach customers outside of Tasmania.
The skincare brand had used agencies in the past who had made bold promises but didn’t live up to expectations. This had made them wary of trusting their marketing to anyone else – but they lacked the in-house knowledge to run ad campaigns themselves and were stuck at an impasse. They knew by not engaging in online advertising that they wouldn’t grow the way they wanted to. But to put their trust in an agency again, they had to be sure the special relationship they’d worked hard to build with their customers would be respected and understood.
It was also important that there was a clear and rapid return on investment on any ads that were run.
The Priorities
Increase brand awareness
Despite the growing popularity of natural skincare, Beauty and the Bees faced a number of challenges in reaching and engaging their target audience. In a crowded and competitive market, it was difficult to differentiate the brand and stand out from the competition. They had a great product with a proven market fit, but it was time to “get the word out”, expand their audience and introduce new customers to the brand.
Educating consumers about the benefits
Some of their key products, such as shampoo bars, required a change in consumer behaviour. This demonstrates the importance of providing education on how to use certain products in order to get traction.
Launch new products into the market
With innovation at the forefront of their brand, new ideas and new products were being introduced all the time. A solid and replicable launch strategy was needed, so that new products could be sold successfully without having to “reinvent the wheel” each time.
Increase revenue by 20% every month
Beauty and the Bees needed to increase revenue by 20% so they could continue to expand and innovate – it was our job to get them there.
The Challenge
The reason in-person sales were booming is because customers were being educated and entertained in the store, learning about the amazing products and also showing a willingness to change their behaviour to try them out – switching from bottles of shampoo to shampoo bars, for example. The key challenge was to transfer the magical in-person shopping experience to the online arena.
Other agencies had made big promises in the past but failed to deliver – so it was clear we needed to do things differently and deliver results.
Beauty and the Bees had already put a lot of time and resources into creating content for social media, but there was no clarity on what (if any) positive effect this was having – a considered strategy was needed along with some clear measurement tools to ensure that the brand knew exactly what content was driving sales.
How We Did It
Phase 1 – Strategy Development
We conducted a comprehensive review of their store and the brand as a whole. How were they perceived in the market and what was their positioning in prospective customers’ minds?
It was important to know who their customers were, and what their thoughts and feelings were, and most importantly – what motivated them to buy.
In this phase, we collected testimonials, gathered press coverage, conducted consumer research, created customer avatars and established key messaging and crafted unique selling propositions.
Hearing the authentic voices of customers
Don’t just take our word for it – here’s what our customers think!
We’re all more likely to believe the objective opinions of a fellow consumer over what a brand has to say about itself. User generated content (UGC) is therefore a very compelling kind of content, and one that’s essential for any brand to have. We ran a campaign to collect video testimonials which could then be used in future advertising.
We made use of special software to make this process easy for people to upload videos directly from their phone or laptop to reduce friction and provided an incentive for users to submit their videos. The result was almost 30 pieces of amazing User Generated Content that we were able to use in future ads.
Survey says… More sales on the way!
We reached out to existing customers with a survey. We received over 350 replies and this feedback provided valuable information that helped us to understand how people felt about the brand and products, what motivated them to buy, the language they use, and more – all key elements in crafting copy that will resonate with future customers like them.
Through research we found that there were a few key areas that were important to their customers and we used this as a basis to create a strategy that would guide our marketing efforts. By establishing a common language and leaning into the key phrases and motivations that came up again and again, we were able to speak to prospective customers in the most compelling and authentic way.
But we weren’t ready to run ads yet. In advance of sending a lot of additional traffic to their website, we wanted to make sure that those new visitors were shopping, and signing up to the mailing list for more offers. This is where phase two of the project began.
Phase 2 – Optimising for new traffic
Give Less, Get More
The site was running a 20% off promotion for all new customers. This evaporated a significant chunk of the brand’s revenue. The first change to implement was reducing their sitewide offer to new customers to a 10% discount. This immediately improved the profitability of every new customer by 23%. We also made changes to the content so that the focus was no longer on discount-focussed customers, but rather those looking to invest in quality.
Email Marketing
As we were preparing to send a lot of traffic to the website through paid ads, it was important that we were able to collect the details of as many visitors as possible in order to continue the conversation if they left without purchasing. After all, 95%+ of site visitors won’t purchase when they visit your site.
To make sure we were getting the most out of every visitor, we set up popups on the site and set up the following automated email sequences:
Welcome Series
A five email series welcoming new subscribers that introduced them to the key benefits of the products and built rapport with brand storytelling.
Abandoned Cart Series
A two email series to remind users that left the site without purchasing the products in their cart.
Abandoned Browse Series
Designed to remind site visitors to come back to the site to make a purchase.
Customer Winback
Given that this is a consumable product, we sent out repurchase reminders to prompt them to buy again at a time reflective of the time required to re-order.
Customer Thank you
We wanted to make sure that customers were feeling the love and feeling encouraged to come back and shop more, so they were sent a thank you each purchase to give them plenty of reasons to shop again.
Phase 3 – Deploying Ads
Now we had a strategy and a range of assets produced, we started running ads across social media and on Google.
It’s important to approach advertising in a considered way. We needed a range of different approaches to appeal to different types of customers. After having a clear understanding of the value proposition and what is important for this brand’s customers, we then created ads that appeal to different customers’ desires.
For some customers, value for money is most important. Others may be more interested in having a smaller environmental footprint. By testing a range of hooks and angles, we were able to understand which messaging and ad styles worked best for this brand.
After creating hundreds of ads across the past few years, we’ve developed a winning playbook with Ad Recipes to stimulate sales. Some of the formats we used included:
- Product Walkthrough
- Us Vs Them
- Brand Story
- Advertorial
- Featured Testimonials
- Statistics (based on survey results)
- Features Pointout
See below for examples of the creative we developed.
The reality is that 80%+ of ads on social platforms won’t work but the 20% that do can really explode a brand. The key with paid media is to find that 20% – this requires constant testing. We tested multiple new creatives each month and found the winning ads. We improved and iterated on these and incremental improvement in results followed.
Over time, we increased the spend as we found which ads, products, hooks and angles worked best and created a reliable and steady additional stream of income on repeat for this client.
The Results
The results were immediate.
We turned on the email marketing at the beginning of October and the results were immediate. In the first 60 days the email sequences generated $15,000 in revenue. Additional promotional emails were delivered to the existing email list to generate further sales.
We turned on the email marketing at the beginning of October and the results were immediate. In the first 60 days the email sequences generated $15,000 in revenue. Additional promotional emails were delivered to the existing email list to generate further sales.
We started selling so much – Beauty and the Bees actually asked us if we could slow down a bit so that they could increase their fulfilment resources! We helped grow the online business and get it on track to deliver sustainable results over the long term.
Some of the other key wins from the campaigns included:
Key results
- Biggest ever month in November 2022
- Eclipsed their biggest ever sales day by 20%
- Increased revenue by 189% within the first 4 months
- Improved the store’s conversion rate from 5.18% to 6.43%
- Had an 84% increase in transactions
- Decreased cost per customer acquisition by 34%
The Lessons
Why did Impactiv8 succeed where other agencies failed? It’s because we choose to do things differently. We take the time to really understand our clients – their positioning, their products and their customer base.
In the constantly changing landscape of Meta/Facebook, it can be a real challenge to get ads working. We’ve proven time and time again that with the right approach there is still plenty of money to be made on social media. If anyone has told you that Facebook Ads don’t work anymore, it’s likely the problem is their approach, not the platform.
The results didn’t come immediately. It takes time to be able to test and refine the strategies and techniques in order to deliver results like this. When we work with clients like this that have faith in the process and let us work our magic, we can achieve great things and we’re pleased to be a part of this brand’s success.