The Biggest Challenge:

The client initially believed that their products could only be sold during specific seasons and holidays. Our major challenge was to change this perception and prove that any product could be sold at any time of the year.

1. Initial Situation Before Starting the Business:

At the outset, the e-commerce store wasn’t ready for an immediate launch, so we made several improvements before starting:

• Regarding the products, we proposed starting with bundled packages of 6 products as the main focus of ads, rather than working on individual products. This aimed to increase the average shopping cart value.
• We wrote descriptions and organized all the products and offers in the store. This included creating compelling headlines and attractive descriptions that explained each product’s features and specifications, along with adding high-quality images to motivate visitors to complete their purchases.
• Concerning ad accounts, the client didn’t have dedicated accounts on some platforms. Therefore, we began by creating new ad accounts on these platforms and started using the existing accounts, such as Snapchat.
• We built an integrated tracking system by directly linking pixels using Google Tag Manager. This allowed us to track the entire purchase process on all platforms.
• We studied all the previous ads in the client’s ad accounts. Even if there were problems with them, they were still better than starting from scratch.

2. Sales Goal and Plan:

After studying the store, its history, and the best-selling products, as well as scrutinizing past campaigns, we set our sales goal from the beginning:

Sales Goal: Achieve monthly sales of 1 to 2 million SAR during 

important seasons like holidays.

Achieve between 100,000 to 300,000 SAR in monthly sales during other times of the year.

It’s important to note that the store didn’t start from scratch; it already had seasonal sales, although relatively low. After analyzing the store’s situation, we identified the size of the opportunity and set ambitious sales goals based on this analysis.

3. Launch and Testing Phase:

Firstly, Ad Content:

• We capitalized on the product’s strengths to create highly compelling and attractive advertising content that would convince the target audience.
• We devised a content production plan that focused on creating a large volume of content, including images and various types of videos.
• The primary focus was on explaining the product’s quality and details and how it benefits customers.
• We benefited from the store’s strength point, the golden guarantee, which allowed customers to exchange and return products.
• We diversified content types, with some content produced by the client, some by content creators, and others by major influencers.

• Ad content played a main role in campaigns right from the start and continued to be the main driver for six full months. Our ability to create a content production machine was crucial in launching the store.

Secondly: Ad Campaigns

• During the testing phase, we launched campaigns on all platforms (Snapchat, TikTok, Google, Meta).
• We can say that we tested everything possible on all mentioned advertising platforms to achieve the best possible campaign structure in preparation for the scaling phase.
• Audience Testing: We tested campaigns with no interests and with different interests, including individual interests and collective interests in a single campaign.
• Gender Testing: We ran campaigns targeting only men, campaigns targeting both men and women, and campaigns targeting women only. You might wonder why target women if the product is for men only. I will answer this question in the next stage, which is the Scaling Phase.
• Age Testing: We tested all possible age groups, either leaving them open from 18 years old to 65 or more, or focusing on specific age groups, such as 30 to 50 years old.

Here, let me provide more details about what we did on each platform during the testing phase.

First: Meta 

-We launched interest-based campaigns along with general campaigns that focused on acquiring new customers. The goal was to acquire new customers and determine the cost per customer in each campaign type.

-Each campaign included 3 images and 3 videos that operated dynamically based on artificial intelligence, allowing the platform to determine the best-performing content.

Second: Tik Tok

-We launched interest-based campaigns along with general campaigns that focused on acquiring new customers. The goal was to acquire new customers and determine the cost per customer in each campaign type.

Third: Snapchat

-Simultaneously with campaigns involving influencers on Snapchat, we launched general campaigns with no specific interests, focusing only on gender and age to acquire new customers and determine the cost per customer.

-We began testing the ad content created by influencers and used it in our ads.

Fourth: Google

-We ran search campaigns targeting keywords related to the store’s name to gain full control over the search results and benefit from the momentum generated by influencer campaigns.

-We also ran search campaigns targeting keywords related to competitors’ names while continuously monitoring the cost per acquisition.

-We ran other search campaigns targeting all keywords related to the products the store focuses on.

4. Scaling Phase:

The testing phase did not last more than a few days at the beginning of our first month managing the campaign. The reason for this was that we started during the most important season for the client, Ramadan.

In the following steps, I will elaborate on the strategy we followed to increase ad spend from 1,000 SAR per day during the testing phase to spending over 50,000 SAR per day at the peak of the campaign.

• Excluding any ads that did not achieve a return on ad spend (ROAS) of at least 4 times the advertising cost across all platforms. Then, we increased the budgets for successful ads by 4 times.
• Snapchat was the best platform in terms of the number of orders, but it also had the highest cost. We overcame this by focusing on the male segment with the highest demand and narrowing down the age range.
• In Snapchat, we also focused on the types of ads that generated the most sales and paused any ads that did not achieve the desired return.
• We placed winning images and videos in separate new campaigns and gradually increased budgets.

• TikTok was the most successful platform during the store’s initial launch period. The cost was low, and order rates were exceptional. The only issue was the rapid exhaustion of ad creatives. We addressed this challenge through two approaches: First: We proposed more content creators to increase the number of ad creatives. Second: Through the video editing team at Makaseb, we sometimes created 3-10 videos from each original video, with minor modifications.

• The abundance of content greatly aided our significant scaling on TikTok. The primary scaling strategy on TikTok involved increasing the number of successful campaigns and providing new budgets for each campaign.
• Instead of relying on just 3 campaigns on TikTok, we expanded to 9 campaigns and distributed the budget among them.
• On Meta, the most successful campaigns were dynamic ads targeting an open audience, using interest-based targeting, and utilizing a lookalike audience based on previous buyers. The campaign also benefited from the abundance of ad content, including videos and images. 

• As for Google platform, during our major scaling phase, it was time for Performance Max campaigns. In these campaigns, we gathered all the successful videos, images, and ad copies and incorporated them into this AI-driven campaign. The great thing about this campaign was that it delivered remarkable results, with a cost per conversion as low as 11 SAR!

However, it didn’t run for a long period because the client ran out of inventory.

• Campaigns for retargeting were launched on all platforms used, featuring new images and videos to maximize the potential of the significant website traffic. The initial test campaign results, along with the outcomes of the influencer campaigns on Meta, Snapchat, and TikTok, were the foundation for these efforts.
• Email marketing and WhatsApp messages were used to target the audience who had added products to their cart but had not completed the purchase.
• Naturally, campaign peaks occurred during high-demand periods like Eid campaigns and National Day campaigns. Sales during one of these periods reached nearly 2.5 million SAR. In regular months, sales averaged between 200,000 and 400,000 SAR per month. These were the periods when the store would completely shut down throughout the year.

Summary

Merchants in e-commerce need to adopt a mindset of exponential growth and invest in their stores to achieve it. E-commerce is not a magic wand; it requires effort and strategy.

A unique and standout product gives you a competitive advantage over rivals. The product is the most critical element of the equation.

Ad content is the most potent driver and growth source for an online store. Successful content production, editing, and copywriting are crucial, accounting for 90% of the work.

A successful ad strategy relies on continuous and ongoing testing. It’s essential to steer clear of preconceived notions that limit the business and put it into inflexible molds.

Influencer marketing, especially at the beginning of the store’s journey, can rapidly spread the word among the target audience and build trust. However, marketing with influencers alone is not sufficient for achieving substantial growth.

The importance of diversifying visual content between images and videos to achieve the best results, including reducing the cost per order and increasing the average order/cart value.

The importance of platform diversity and not relying on a single platform because as  that case study revealed Google, Snapchat, and TikTok performed well in reaching and acquiring new customers with the least possible cost, while Meta and Snapchat were also effective in retargeting.