Launched Advertising on Instagram and Reached ROAS of 1765%

The client: Distributor of elite cosmetics and perfumes in Ukraine

The work period: October – December 2020

The task: Promotion on Instagram to increase sales of specific brands. Facebook ad testing

The result: We received a stable monthly income from Instagram. In November – the second month of operation – reached a ROAS (return on ad spend) of 17.65 on the Instagram channel.

Aromateque is a distributor of elite cosmetics and perfumes in Ukraine. We have been cooperating with the client since 2015 in the field of contextual advertising and email marketing. We are working to promote the online store across all brands.

Aromateque has received a request to promote particular brands on Instagram and test ads on Facebook. We upgraded Kevyn Aucoin, Eve Lom, Grown Alchemist the first month after work. In the second, Malin + Goetz add to them, and in the third – Swissline and cosmetics for men Malin + Goetz.

Tasks:

• promotion on Instagram to increase sales of specific brands;
• Facebook ad testing.

The client did not set specific KPIs: we have successfully cooperated with the company for a long time. It trusts us and is sure that we will do our best.

Period: October – December 2020.

Geo: Dnipro, Kharkiv, Lviv, Odesa, and Kyiv are the cities, where Aromateque stores are present.

As a result of the work, we received a stable monthly income from Instagram. In November – the second month of operation – reached a ROAS (return on ad spend) of 17.65 on the Instagram channel.

The case presents data on quantitative indicators and ROAS in the understanding of Facebook – the ratio of the conversion value to costs. We cannot show the profit received.

Preparing to launch advertising campaigns

Step 1. Segmenting the audience of advertising campaigns by funnel

We have worked through all sales funnel stages and identified audiences suitable for each step.

The first stage is drawing attention to brands. We target a cold audience in campaigns with the “Traffic” goal and then select several audiences by interests and behavior for this campaign and divide them into two segments.

First segment:

• interest in the brands Smashbox Cosmetics, Sisley, Eve Lom, Dior, and Kevyn Aucoin;
• audience with broad interests;
• interest in cosmetics;
• interest in skincare;
• audience “Those who are interested in SPA, beauty salons.”

The second segment is the audience “Recent visitors to malls with stores in the cities of presence by interests: Shopping malls, Cosmetics, Beauty, Fragrances or Beautiful Skin”.

The second stage is thinking about buying a product. Select “Conversions” as the goal of the advertising campaign. There are two segments of the “warmed audience”:

1. Users who saved posts or ads on Instagram wrote to Instagram Direct. We urge them to decide on a brand to buy products from later.
2. Those who have already bought from Aromateque + Lookalike 1%; who added the product to the cart but did not buy. We encourage you to choose your favorite brand on the site.

The third stage is the decision to buy. We show site visitors products from the sections they recently visited to remind them of the product and motivate them to buy.

In addition, for the advertising campaign “Sales of goods by catalog”, we gathered an audience of visitors to the pages of the brands Kevyn Aucoin, Eve Lom, Malin + Goetz, Grown Alchemist.

Step 2. Installing the Facebook Pixel

We have prepared TORs (terms of reference) for installing the Facebook Pixel and setting up event tracking on the site: Enter, CompleteRegistration, ViewContent, AddToWishlist, AddToCart, InitiateCheckout, Purchase. We also wrote the TORs for preparing a product feed for Facebook.

After installing the Pixel and setting up events, we checked the correctness of the tracking and, unfortunately, immediately encountered an incorrect setting for passing the value of the Purchase event. The client set up data transfer in the first month of operation. Therefore, unfortunately, we cannot estimate ROAS for October, only the number of purchases.

Step 3. Content preparation

We prepared general recommendations on influential creatives and texts for future ads. The client, on his side, created creatives and texts according to these recommendations, which we took to work.

Of the formats, they mainly used carousels with product photos and added the “To the store” call on the buttons. We also used static banners and videos.

Several examples of ads for different audience segments:

Ads that we showed to cold brand audiences

Conversional remarketing carousel shown to users who saved posts and ads on Instagram or wrote to Instagram Direct.

Conversional remarketing carousel shown to users who saved posts and ads on Instagram or wrote to Instagram Direct.

Dynamic remarketing ad

Start of work and testing of audiences

In October, the first month of advertising, we tested:

• a conversion remarketing campaign with the goal of “Add to Cart”;
• a conversion remarketing campaign with the goal of “Going to the site, making purchases”;
• traffic campaigns with the goal “View landing pages on the site”;
• Campaign with the goal “Product catalogue”.

It resulted in 65 Purchase event conversions from 50 unique users. ROAS cannot estimate due to incorrect value transfer for the “Purchase” event.

Critical metrics for campaigns:

• ad campaign “Products catalogue” with optimisation for the event “Purchase” – 14;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion” and optimisation for the event “Add to cart”: purchases – 10, add to cart – 52;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion” with optimisation for the event “Purchase”: purchases – 7;
• ad campaign “Traffic”, cold audiences, the first segment with optimisation for landing page views on the site: purchases – 21;
• ad campaign “Traffic”, cold audiences, the second segment with optimisation for landing page views on the site: purchases – 13.

Among the tested audience segments, the most effective in terms of the number of purchases in October were cold audiences: “Recent visitors to shopping centres with stores in the cities of presence by interests: Shopping centres, Cosmetics, Beauty, Fragrances or Beautiful Skin”, “Broad interests”, “Those who Interested in SPA, beauty salons.

Work with influential audiences and campaign optimisation.

In November, based on the statistics obtained in October, we optimised advertising campaigns: we left the most influential groups and ads and turned off the rest. The budget for the remaining groups and announcements increased. Still, they did not go to further education. We carried out budget adjustments within 25% of the original budget per group. The total budget for all campaigns remained at the level of October.

To increase the reach of the target audience, we added Sanahunt, a Kyiv premium department store, to the audience settings “Recent visitors to shopping centres with stores in the cities of presence by interests: Shopping centres, Cosmetics, Beauty, Fragrances or Beautiful Skin”.

And to get more purchases and make them cheaper, we narrowed down the targeting by iPhone devices, the interests “Luxury goods” and “Online shopping, Engaged shoppers”.

Critical metrics for campaigns:

• ad campaign “Product catalogue” with optimisation for the “Purchase” event: purchases – 16, ROAS – 22.51;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion” with optimisation for the “Add to cart” event: purchases – 9, ROAS – 16.47, additions to the cart – 46;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion” with optimisation for the event “Purchase”: purchases – 15, ROAS – 31.26;
• ad campaign “Traffic”, cold audiences, the first segment optimised for landing page views on the site: purchases – 34, ROAS – 21.81;
• ad campaign “Traffic”, cold audiences, the second segment with optimisation for landing page views on the site: purchases – 6, ROAS – 4.52.

Based on the results of November, we identified two cold audiences with the highest ROAS (they also had a cheaper cost per page view):

1. An audience interested in spas, beauty salons, narrowing down to online shopping, engaged shoppers, and iPhone devices.
2. An audience interested in cosmetics, beauty, fragrances, and the Beauty Skin theme, narrowing to luxury goods and iPhone devices.

In addition to results by the audience, we also tracked results broken down by brand product ads in cold audiences:

• Eve Lom: Three purchases with ROAS 6.32;
• Grown Alchemist: 11 purchases with ROAS 5.29.

We received the most purchases with a high average check from the gallery with Grown Alchemist Deep Cleansing Masque, Grown Alchemist Detox Serum, Grown Alchemist Age-Repair Gel Masque:

• Malin+Goetz: four purchases ROAS 5.72;
• Kevyn Aucoin: 11 purchases ROAS 13.30.

In November, we launched a promo for a cold audience with discounts on the entire range for Black Friday. It brought 11 purchases, while ROAS was 30.26.

In total, in the second month, we received 89 conversions for the “Purchase” event, of which unique buyers made 68. ROAS at the same time amounted to 17.65.

November 2020 Ads Manager purchases and ROAS report

Working with segments for the “Brands” targeting and testing ads on Facebook

In December, together with the client, we decided to work deeper and segment the target audience for interest in brands in December. We jointly selected the most relevant cosmetics brands in targeting with a similar price segment and audience: Smahbox, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Mac, Huda Beauty, Shiseido, Avene, Bioderma, Clarins, Kiehl’s and others.

Targeting promo brand Kevyn Aucoin, women, 25-44 years old interested in Smashbox Cosmetics, McGrath, Pat, Anastasia Beverly Hills, Charlotte Tilbury. Mac Cosmetics and Huda Beauty

Targeting for promo brand Malin Goetz, women, 20-44 years old with interest in Kiehl’s, Collistar, Shiseido, Thank You, Lierac Paris, The Farmacy, SkinCeuticals, L’Occitane, Caudalie, Clinique, Bioderma.

Targeting for Grown Alchemist promo brand, women, 18-34 years old with interest in Kiehl’s, Collistar, Shiseido, Thank You, Lierac Paris, The Farmacy, SkinCeuticals, L’Occitane, Caudalie, Clinique, Bioderma.

The test showed average efficiency. Campaigns with cold audiences, which brought in more purchases a month earlier, had better ROAS than campaigns targeting interest in brands that were similar in price and audience.

Also, this month, we tested ads for Malin+Goetz cosmetics for men. Still, we didn’t receive purchases and decided to reallocate the budget to other campaigns.

Carousel advertising Malin+Goetz men’s cosmetics

Before the New Year holidays, we launched the Melting Discounts promotion. This action did not result in an advertising campaign with the goal “Traffic” for a cold audience. There were no additions to the cart, no purchases. But for a hot audience – those who added the product to the cart but did not buy – the action worked well: 10 purchases and ROAS at the level of 12.22.

Announcement to promote the New Year’s promotion “Melting discounts.”

Testing ads on Facebook did not work well: only one conversion we received for the “Purchase” event. As a result, we abandoned promotion on Facebook. We reallocated the budget for remarketing and cold audiences across brands on Instagram.

When allocating the budget to effective (working) bundles of audiences and campaigns, 23% less funding was allocated than in November. As a percentage, 45% is allocated for tests and 55% of the total budget for effectively linking audiences and campaigns.

Critical metrics for Instagram campaigns:

• ad campaign “Traffic” for a cold audience with optimization for landing page views on the site: purchases – 34, ROAS – 12.26;
• test Advertising Campaign “Traffic” for a cold audience with optimization for landing page views on the site, testing ads with Malin + Goetz men’s cosmetics: purchases – 0;
• Advertising Campaign “Traffic” for a cold audience with optimization for landing page views on the site, testing targeting with cosmetic brands similar in price segment and audience: purchases – 7, ROAS – 1.81;
• Advertising Campaign “Traffic” for a cold audience with optimization for landing page views on the site, promo New Year’s promotion “Melting discounts”: purchases – 0;
• Advertising campaign “Product catalog” with optimization for the “Purchase” event: purchases – 2, ROAS – 5.36;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion” with optimization for the event “Add to cart”: purchases – 2; adding to cart — 9; ROAS – 3.05;
• remarketing with the goal of “Conversion” with optimization for the “Purchase” event. Discount offer -35%: purchases – 10, ROAS – 12.22.

Critical metrics for Facebook campaigns:

• Advertising Campaign “Traffic” for a cold audience, landing page views on the site: purchases – 0;
• Advertising Campaign “Product catalog” with optimization for the “Purchase” event: purchase – 1, ROAS – 0.8;
• remarketing with the goal “Conversion”, transition to the site with the goal “Purchase”: purchases – 0.

In total, in December, we received 56 conversions for the “Purchase” event from 49 unique buyers. ROAS at the same time amounted to 6.30.

Ads Manager Report on purchases and ROAS, December 2020

Conclusion

To achieve effective results in the promotion of luxury cosmetics brands, we used:

• The client prepared high-quality visual content according to our recommendations. If the mass market can afford medium and low-quality photo images and product shots, then high-end brands cannot because they are aimed at aesthetics and positioning themselves as a dream brand;
• Formation of a relevant message for each specific brand;
• Deep study and segmentation of the target audience. The principle of segmentation in cold audiences was to identify people with similar interests and needs (interest in certain cosmetics brands, cosmetics in general, skincare, spas and beauty salons, etc.; recent visitors to shopping malls). Remarketing was segmented based on user behaviour on the website and the Instagram page: they covered those who interacted with ads or social media accounts, visited product cards, made purchases, and added products to the shopping cart on the website. Also connected look-alike;
• A clear structure of the advertising account, which allowed us to control the budget and advertising effectiveness;
• Testing and quick optimization of campaigns after receiving statistics for the first month of advertising;
• Dynamic and conversion are retargeting as a logical continuation of cold audience targeting campaigns. They “catch up” with users and motivate them to convert and thus pay for themselves and bring high income;
• ROAS indicator (return on advertising costs) as the primary promotion KPI. Constant monitoring of this indicator allowed us to turn off vulnerable groups and ads and reallocate the budget to good, influential groups and ads.