Frederick Mountain Group has consulted with this client for several years before being hired in August 2020. The client is an artisan who builds high-end leather accessories. She has reached out to FMG on previous occasions for strategic advice on growing her company.
COVID-19 and the economic fallout hit this entrepreneur hard. Within days of state and federal quarantine orders being issued, the entrepreneur lost over $50,000 in orders.
As she has done before, she contacted us in July for advice. We gave her our suggestions. The suggestions worked so well she hired us formally in August. Through our efforts, sales started increasing. With shipping delays and supply chain interruptions, the Christmas sales season was in jeopardy. We helped structure a sales strategy to capitalize on holiday shopping.
As a result of hard work and good strategy, the company’s 2020 gross sales increased 51% over 2019. In 2021, we helped grow the company another 43% compared to 2020.
Challenges
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In 2020, Covid-19 outbreak resulted in cancelled sales & canceled in-person events at retailers where the entrepreneur sold her goods.
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Entrepreneur had spent a significant amount of time and money on major print campaigns with limited ROI
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The digital marketing approach was sporadic and disorganized
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The entrepreneur had to pivot to digital quickly to recoup her losses and continue to reach her revenue goals.
The entrepreneur had to pivot to digital quickly to recoup her losses and continue to reach her revenue goals.
The Solution
Website/News/Blogs
The entrepreneur’s past success was due in no small part to her ability to create beautiful products and also beautiful marketing materials. The entrepreneur made significant investments in product photos and videos.
We leveraged the existing collateral to tell interactive stories in paid advertising on Facebook/Instagram and Google.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is still one of the most powerful marketing tools. We took the product photos and videos and reformatted them into emails. The emails prominently displayed the products with easy calls to action and one-click purchase options. Email became one of the highest revenue sources for this client, accounting for over 20% of revenue.
Facebook & Google Ads
With millions of people shifting to online shopping because of COVID-19 safety protocols, the online shopping space is more crowded than ever.
We set a $2000 per month budget to spend between Facebook Business Manager and Google Ads.
We targeted high-income zip codes around the country. Because the product is a high-end luxury good, the price point is not for the casual shopper. We had to ensure the re-targeting and customer capture were converting so we could continue to engage and convert the customer.
We also uploaded a product feed to the Google Shopping network to help create additional sales opportunities for the brand. Within 30 days, we started seeing new customers. We also significantly increased the email subscriber list.
Building A Sales Funnel With Ads
We evolved our ad strategy based on the response from the market. We initially set up the campaigns for conversions, but this caused issues for us. The overall sales volume was not high enough for Facebook to optimize the campaign. This resulted in a high cost per click and learning limited campaign state.
We pivoted and created a bespoke campaign structure using the tools within Facebook Ads Manager to build a funnel. The entrepreneur had recently hired a creative agency to film video content which we used as the media assets for the campaigns.
We created an awareness campaign using a lookalike audience. For the media assets, we used her product highlight and brand overview video. Any users that interacted with that media were retargeted with product-specific videos of the entrepreneur showing the features and details of each bag. Finally, any users that interacted with that content were retargeted with a Shopify Catalog campaign for the bags they viewed on the site.
This strategy helped control costs and maximize engagement. We were able to achieve a CPC of $.22 and a CTR of 5.86%, far exceeding industry-standard performance.
A New Sales Model
As with many businesses, the company experienced significant supply chain interruptions and shipping delays. These issues came to a head at the end of the 3rd quarter when it was clear the manufacturer would not get the company its raw supplies for construction until December.
We implemented the “scarcity” model pioneered by SUPREME. Our solution was to set up everything for “pre-order” with a promise of delivery by Christmas Day. We helped the company redesign its website to enable orders before the product was on hand.
Customers were excited to be the first to get a chance to order these hand-crafted, limited-quantity goods.
By working with the supplier and helping the company organize its staff for a final push, every order was delivered on time.
Results
- The company’s gross sales increase by 51% compared to 2019.
- In 2021, the company grew another 43% compared to the 2020 success.
- By the end of 2021, we 3X’d the monthly sales average from $4K to $11K.
- By 2022, we grew the customer base by 45%.
