How We Boosted Sales By 270% With Free Trial Campaigns Share: Tribe47 Score Awaiting client review n/a Date Published 16 December 2019 Reading Time 7-Minute Read The story behind this significant growth is one of total funnel remodeling and the timely introduction of a Physical Trial to boost revenue and sales. The Background & Mission PRODUCT: Cosmetic for Women Over 40+ LOCATION: The United States PRICE: $69.95 In what became our most challenging e-commerce project of 2018-2019 we teamed up with a certified gynecologist from the U.S. selling a cosmetic product under her personal brand. Based on her own experience, our client had created a cosmetic cream for women aged 40+ affected by common symptoms of menopause. We began by reviewing our client’s existing fragmented marketing strategy and soon found out that sales were coming mostly from affiliates, therefore incurring a commission cost. Due to the topic sensitivity, previous media buyers didn’t succeed with the paid channels. It required a lot of work and creativity from them to get ad copies and images approved. All these factors made paid media too expensive to run. Instead of the Lifetime Value (LTV) being roughly 3x greater than the Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) as you’d expect in a healthy business, we were seeing 1xLTV=1xCAC! Key Goals 1. Increase Product Sales 2. Leverage Content Marketing & Trial Strategy 3. Make LTV=3*CAC Our Discoveries From Strategy Work We quickly spotted some missed opportunities: 1. Untapped SEO Potential The client’s huge cache of high-quality content couldn’t be found online because it hadn’t been optimized for search engines. A big opportunity to increase traffic to their site FOR FREE had been missed. 2. Brand Building Around the Content The blog’s content was supposed to raise awareness of common problems associated with menopause and promote our client’s product as efficacious in treating them. However, since audiences had not been gathered through blog posts visits and video views, our client had been deterred from remarketing her product via paid media (Facebook and Instagram). 3. Effective Remarketing to Drive Sales There were key remarketing opportunities missed: targeting sales page visitors with sales offers or advertising to customers at those crucial ‘add to cart’ and ‘abandon checkout’ stages, when they demonstrated an intent to purchase the product, but didn’t. 4. Proper Tracking and In-Depth Data Analysis Multiple systems were in place inhibiting proper tracking and preventing the exploitation of the synergy between different channels. Ad testing had not been carried out to find out which banners and copies had performed successfully. What We Suggested as a Solution Our client’s fragmental marketing activities had failed to produce sufficient results (cost per acquisition was too high), so we aimed to build a new effective funnel model that would result in LTV=3*CAC. We proposed a trial campaign to increase sales, and a total revamp of our client’s funnel to this: Why offer a physical trial of the product? By giving away free samples of the product we were able to build a hot audience who could distinguish our brand from others, trusted it, and were more likely to purchase a full-size version of the product and remain loyal to it. Those who participated in the trial were later remarketed to with sales banners, product videos, and a thoughtfully constructed sales email sequence. So, how did we go from implementing the new funnel to achieving 169% growth in revenue? It took serious data analysis, intensive monitoring of certain KPIs, and the deployment of some pretty cunning tactics. Get comfy because we’re about to reveal the strategy in detail… The six most important tactics we used to build the funnel were: Tactic I: Content First We analyzed search queries to ensure our client’s blog posts contained the keywords their target customer persona searched for. Then, we created several blog posts addressing the most-searched-for menopause problems which the product was designed to solve, making sure that all texts were SEO-optimized. We ensured readers could buy trials of the product from links in the blog posts, and from banners promoting the trial located inside the blog articles. Then, we used paid targeted promotion to bring this content to the right audience. Tactic II: Physical Product Trial Since the trial product decreased the total CAC, users were only permitted to order a single sample once. As the main strategy, we promoted blog posts through different paid channels to build audiences we could remarket to with trial ads. Users who abandoned the checkout process were sent emails showing the benefits of the trial product. This tactic convinced 7% of them to complete their purchase. Finally, we used Push notifications & pop-ups to minimize the number of users leaving our website without ordering a trial. Tactic III: Converting Trial Purchases Into Sales After ordering the trial, users received carefully plotted email sequences featuring educational videos on how to apply the product alongside testimonials and reviews designed to increase the client’s trust. Each sequence concluded with a time-limited discount offer to purchase the full product. Users were also shown ads a week on from purchasing the trial. Furthermore, we used deep remarketing to show ads to people who visited the sales page or who added the product to their cart but didn’t buy it. Tactic IV: Seasonal Promotions We used seasonal real-time marketing connected to holidays, for example offering a 24% discount on the product plus free shipping at Christmas. These offers were only presented to warm audiences gathered through content promotion and HOT audiences already primed to buy. These time-sensitive holiday offers were supported by ads and emails that drove traffic to the promo landing page where the offer was displayed. Tactic V: Overcoming a Sensitive Topic with Smart Ad Ideas Certain words just aren’t ad-friendly. We make it our business to know what the rules are so that an ad doesn’t end up being hidden. For this project, we asked our team of expert content creators to make banners and ads that spoke in metaphors. This meant that we could allude to sensitive areas without using language that might result in censorship. Tactic VI: KPI Monitoring for the Whole Funnel Proper tracking and reporting can identify a funnel’s weak points and stop you spending money on ads that have proven ineffective. We worked with our client to set KPIs, then introduced a funnel tracking plan to measure the results at every stage from brand awareness to customer retention. Together we defined which data sources to use in reporting (Facebook, Ontraport, Google Analytics) and placed all the pages under one domain for accurate data tracking. The Results Free Value Upfront We created a new funnel connecting content marketing with trial distribution to build an audience of people interested in sampling the product, then to purchase a full-size version. To increase brand awareness and establish trust in the product among our client’s customers, we offered free samples and shared free educational content on topics related to the product. Our content distribution strategy proved effective across our client’s social media channels: +858% reach on Facebook +57% Facebook Subscribers +65% YouTube Subscribers. More users landed on the blog (148% raise in unique pageviews) and more articles were accessed via the email newsletter (31% growth in Click-Thru-Rate). Distribution of the product to audiences warmed by content and the free trial resulted in a 78% decrease in CAC when compared to product distribution to cold audiences. Just 7 months after implementing the new funnel we designed, our client was able to scale sales by 270.06% and increase revenue by 169%. Visit Tribe47 to see what tools we used to achieve the goal!