Given that the only profitable ads to date had been during Black Friday & the build-up to Christmas – there wasn’t much useful insight to be gained from them, so we pretty much started from scratch.
The foundations were in place to make things work – great products, an easy-to-use website, and an audience who seemed very targetable (car fans, or friends/relatives of car fans)
Initial testing found that their higher-ticket Custom Artwork service, (tested across multiple locations and interests) was patchy and inconsistent in terms of purchases, but that the standard pieces showed promise – with some profitable audiences identified, and profitable retargeting in place.
On targeting – Selling products for a specific and passionate niche means that there are lots of potential targeting options – so we were able to test different combinations and find the profitable pockets.
On Creative – From testing initially broad copy with a variety of product images, we were able to identify strong performers early, and then further test variations to keep improving the Key Metrics over time.
On iOS updates – This business was always subject to a lot of ‘delayed attribution’ from paid ads, so when the iOS updates reduced our tracking and reporting abilities in Q1 of 2021 (meaning that the reported metrics in FB were consistently around 1/3 of the true figures), we switched to a broad-view measuring approach, using a combination of data from Google Analytics, Shopify, and user-generated responses (asking individual buyers where they found us).