How Shoelace was able to jump start this business’ initial sales in ecommerce and exceed expectations

Industry: Book Publishing

Services: Facebook Ads

Starting an ecommerce business can be a challenging and daunting task, especially when it comes to taking the first step to generating those initial sales. That's why it's important to have an effective marketing plan in place to help jumpstart your business and obtain your sales goals. 

One such success story is that of BluSky Publishers, a book publisher that partnered with us to create and execute their ecommerce marketing strategy. BluSky Publishers came to us as a referral and immediately thought we would be a good fit to help jumpstart their business. Because they had absolutely no online presence and had just started their online store, they needed our help to get that initial push in the right direction. So we paired them with one of our Growth Partners, Jessica, who had experience in helping grow ecommerce sales from the ground up. Today we’ve interviewed Jessica to get a better insight into how she achieved her great results. So let’s dive in!

Can you explain the initial strategy for the launch of the campaign?

Jessica: Before coming to Shoelace, BluSky had no online presence, so we needed a strategy that would encompass capturing cold audiences, and build them to new lists we could then retarget later on. We completely focused on new customer acquisition and building up audience sizes in order to introduce retargeting to the strategy. We needed to validate prospecting audiences first and generate purchases, and then we let those audiences dictate the value proposition for the brand and product.

The biggest challenges we identified were that the client only had 1 product to start with, and no historical data. So in order to be successful we would need to set reasonable targets for us to reach. In order to reach our goals while testing on Facebook, we made sure that validating our audiences and creatives was top priority. We gave full 7 day testing periods to ensure that the ads were in fact reaching the correct audiences that we hoped would convert, and we ran multiple audience and creative tests. The goal here was to isolate the ad creative that was most effective and pair it with the audience that was converting the most at the lowest costs.

How did you set reasonable goals and expectations with the client?

Jessica: Communication is key. We aligned on expectations during a pre-strategy call before we even built out the strategy and campaigns. Since the brand was new to the online space and to paid advertising altogether, we set the expectation that this is going to be a challenge from the start. 

So our goal was less revenue focused, and instead, emphasis was placed on gathering performance insights and working towards generating one purchase, then two, and so on.

We didn’t have existing performance data to base our initial targets on, so we set a high yet realistic cost per acquisition target and calculated a breakeven ROAS point based on cost of goods sold.

How important is it for a brand new company to set goals and put a marketing plan in place in order to succeed?

Jessica: When a brand is starting from scratch, they need to dial in their niche and establish a market-message match to carve out their corner in the ecommerce world. It’s essential to digest costs and calculate affordability for advertising. They have to know their numbers and stay focused on important ecommerce KPIs, like purchase volume, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, average order value, and returning customers.

There are 4 important things to consider for launching a brand new campaign that can apply to small and large businesses alike:

Clear direction: Goals provide a clear direction for the company to follow. They help identify what the company wants to achieve and how it plans to get there. Without clear goals, a company may not know what it needs to do to succeed, and may end up wasting time, resources, and money on strategies that do not align with its objectives.

Measure progress: Goals provide a way to measure progress. By setting specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals, a company can track its progress and adjust its strategies as needed. This helps ensure that the company is on track to achieving its objectives.

Focus resources: A marketing plan helps a company to focus its resources on the strategies that are most likely to succeed. By conducting market research, identifying target audiences, and selecting the most effective marketing channels, a company can maximize its return on investment (ROI) and minimize waste.

Competitive advantage: A well-executed marketing plan can provide a competitive advantage. By understanding its target audience and tailoring its marketing strategies to their needs and preferences, a company can differentiate itself from its competitors and build a strong brand reputation.

What are your plans for growing these results?

Jessica: With the UVP (Or Unique Value Proposition) starting to crystallize, we are now able to invest more into what’s working and bring our messaging to new audiences. We can replicate success factors, like the top creative or ad angle, and create new variations that stem from the root of what resonates with the target demographic that’s beginning to form.

Testing and reiterating on our success’ will be the biggest driving factor moving forward, basically using what has proven to work with high-converting audience combinations. 

These 2 iterations of our best ads use both storytelling and social proofing in the copy, which we hope to expand upon with future campaigns soon to be launched.