Case · DTC e‑commerce
9 months
From 1.8 to 3.4 ROAS with one hero product
A barrier-serum brand stuck at 1.8 ROAS with nine SKUs and one tired video. We rebuilt the offer around one hero product and shipped 60 creatives in 90 days.
Illustrative
Blended ROAS
1.8 → 3.4
1.8×
→
3.4×
CPA
−38%
€40
→
€25
Monthly revenue
+2.1×
€180k
→
€378k
Illustrative demo figures for a fictional client. Results vary with margin, market, offer and spend.
01
Challenge
Kelpie Skin came to us spending €100k a month, mostly on Meta, at a blended ROAS of 1.8. Monthly revenue sat at €180k and CPA at €40, which left very little after product, shipping and fees.
The account pushed nine SKUs with roughly equal budgets, so no product built enough signal to scale. One founder video had carried the account for five months. Its click-through rate had slid to 1.1%, and every new ad was judged against it and lost.
Only 12% of clicks added to cart, and product pages asked first-time buyers to choose between serums they had never heard of. The brand’s reviews told a clearer story: customers loved one barrier serum and were tired of ten-step routines.
02
Strategy
We made the barrier serum the entry product and moved about 70% of prospecting budget behind it. The other eight SKUs moved to catalog retargeting and post-purchase email, where they sell as add-ons.
Mei’s team rebuilt the product page around one question, “Is your skin barrier damaged?”, with a two-product starter bundle next to the single bottle. Add-to-cart rose from 12% to 14% of clicks, cart-to-purchase from 32% to 38%, and AOV from €72 to €85.
On Meta we cut eleven ad sets down to three campaigns: testing, scaling and retargeting. New concepts got a fixed 20% of spend each week, and winners graduated after 50 purchases. Spend rose only 11%, to €111k a month, while purchases went from 2,500 to 4,450.
03
Creative approach
The brief came straight from the reviews. Jules’s team turned that into the hook “I stopped layering nine serums.” The 9:16 Reels video opens on a single amber bottle, with a creator voiceover about quitting a nine-step routine. It reached a 44% hook rate, about twice the old founder video.
For the feed we paired it with a static built on a plain promise: “Dry patches gone by day 14. Or your money back.” It ran at a 2.9% CTR and became the main retargeting ad.
In the first 90 days we shipped 60 creatives: 22 creator videos, 18 edits and 20 statics, each testing one hook. Blended CTR rose from 1.1% to 1.8%, even as CPMs climbed from €16.90 to €23.90.
Funnel
Where
the
extra
revenue
came
from.
Bar length uses a log scale so every stage stays readable. Illustrative demo data; results vary.
Results
The
numbers,
month
by
month.
Over nine months, blended ROAS went from 1.8× to 3.4×. CPA fell 38%, from €40 to €25. Monthly revenue grew 2.1×, from €180k to €378k, while ad spend rose only from €100k to €111k.
The mix changed too. The barrier serum now drives most first orders, and the starter bundle lifted AOV from €72 to €85. Purchases went from 2,500 to 4,450 a month while impressions fell by about a fifth, because we stopped paying to reach people who never clicked.
Kelpie Skin is on our Scale retainer and tests around 40 new ads a month. Four ads from the first sprint are still in rotation.
Illustrative demo figures; results vary.
Creative
The ads that did the work.
The ads from this account, as they ran. Videos play muted in view; open the creative library to hear them.
Open the creative library
Kelpie Skin · ad
Result 44%
Kelpie Skin · ad
Result 2.9%
Jonas Brandt
Demo testimonial · fictional person
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