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scale strategies tiktok tiktokads

Why TikTok advertising is the number 1 opportunity of 2021 for e-commerce

TikTok. The most downloaded and highest grossing non-game app globally in the first half of 2021, hitting just shy of 383 million first-time installs and an estimated $919.2 million in spending via the platform.

Users tripled between Q1 2020 and Q2 2021.

Additionally, as Apple’s opt-out rates continue to climb in light of ios14 changes, the success and reliability on Facebook’s ads management platform, continues to decline.

As an agency, brand wide we are executing an omnipresent strategy when it comes to maximising budget output for our brands, and the key tool for us right now driving the highest impact?

TikTok Ads.

The opportunity is ripe when it comes to just how early the new the platform really is. Compared to Facebook being the ‘go-to’ for advertising within e-commerce over the past 5+ years, a platform that launched way back in 2004, TikTok only came on the scene in 2017.

Just like Facebook when it first came out, and just as much when something new comes about, it is always filled with doubt, uncertainty, and the usual ‘does it fit my demographic’ questions..

If we have understood anything from working in this space almost all of our adult lives, it’s that the early adopters, win.

& those that don’t act, always do… eventually.

AFTER the opportunities have already been seized, and then they are just playing catch up and trying to stay competitive.

Balenciaga TikTok Ad Example
Balenciaga TikTok Ad

 

How did the fashion labels that are entirely e-commerce only, that boast millions of followers, crazy high engagement rates and legions of fans..

The brands that were set up in a bedroom with nothing more than a dream, a supplier and a wi-fi connection that are now worth $100M+ get to where they are?

They simply got in when no one else was, and took an opportunity to have first mover advantage.

Our guess is, you didn’t have an Instagram page for your brand in 2010 when Instagram first came on the scene?

Well, imagine if you did…

Building a Shopify store and running Facebook ads to it with stunning creatives was the advice to take for mass scale 6 years ago. This still works today, however the brands who did this back then had first mover advantage.

Brands such as MVMT who got in early, made strides ahead of anyone else and took the bull by the horns, created a brand which had a $100Million exit.

 

MVMT Watches
MVMT Watches

Their watches are now very commonly replicated, and ‘InstaBrands’ have saturated their market.

Arguably, if they started again today they couldn’t replicate their success.

Timing was everything.

TikTok now presents that opportunity to brands once again, and it’s one that doesn’t come around often. The chance to strike fast, act early, test, learn & grab market share before your competition even consider setting up a TikTok page.

Getting ahead of TikTok’s opportunity is what brands like MVMT saw in the early Instagram days. If you can make viral, authentic, native TikTok content on the platform, and execute this correctly with the right back end advertising set up, your brand can win big.

100k+ audiences can be achieved within weeks, and store sales can rocket like BFCM on steroids.

From our research, (this was shocking to discover) we have found a plethora of household beauty and fashion names that are dominant on almost every other platform, without a TikTok account!

In our eyes, this just shows how early we are..

..& how early you can be.

Conversely, high AOV luxury power players are adopting it. Such names like Louis Vuitton & Gucci have amassed a large following, and have been running paid ads to great effect.

Additionally, we have seen companies such as Qatar Airways and even Aston Martin running ads on the platform.

 

Still yet to see the opportunity?

TikTok outlined three new e-Commerce integrations that are coming to the app:

– A tool that lets the most popular users share links to products and automatically earn commission on any sales

-The feature for brands to showcase catalogs of their products on the platform

-“Livestreamed” shopping, a mobile phone version of television shopping channels, where users can buy goods with a few taps after seeing them showcased by TikTok stars.

Essentially with the Livestreamed shopping, the T.V. shopping channel will soon be a thing of the past and be an obsolete business model, as TikTok is democratising it.

You now have the ability to have your own e-commerce shopping channel, but interactive AF!

Look Fantastic ran an interactive e-commerce LIVE just last week, and it popped off…

Look Fantastic E-Commerce LIVE

The Chinese version of TikTok, Douyin already generates the majority of its income from in-app commerce, as opposed to branded ads. So, as TikTok heavily invests in the shopping space, soon you’ll be able to click from your favourite brand, directly to checkout.

 

What’s the strategy? 

When it comes to TikTok ads, the front end just like any other advertising platform, is just as important as the back end ads strategy.

The success of TikTok resides in how inclusive it is as a platform. It’s a positive platform, a happy place for creators and scrollers.

While many brands opt to get a ‘polished’ look and feel to their brand through their Instagram feeds, Facebook creatives and often editorial aesthetic, where everything has to be ‘just perfect’, TikTok is a pattern interrupt to this trend.

Brands now have to rethink what is considered to be ‘on brand’, as TikTok completely flips the dynamic you may have had in mind, on it’s head.

TikTok is where your consumers are there to interact with you on a more personal level. If you keep this in mind when thinking up your creative strategy, you’ll win.

TikTok themselves have released the statement:

“Don’t Make Ads. Make TikTok’s.”

This is a fundamental rule to keep in mind. If you are running the same creatives that have worked for your brand on other platforms and are expecting them to convert in the same way, you will likely run budget to the ground.

A user is on TikTok for a reason, and therefore your ad, needs to be inclusive of this reason; they want to feel inspired, find a ‘life hack’, or be taught something new in a short 10-15 second clip.

When crafting your creative, it’s paramount you understand how TikTok works, and how content on there goes viral, before you start.

Our advice is to create content which is as native as possible to the For You Page, aka the ‘FYP!’, add a trending track or VoiceOver, and get creative with it.

Generate content which will endear your audience, make them bond with you, or give them an ‘ah-ha!’ moment of realization that they need your product in their life.

Prepare to disrupt any previous thoughts you had about advertising, and how your brand will integrate with this platform, TikTok is very different to anything else.

…If you want it to work, that is.

Gucci TikTok Model Challenge

 

What Are The Ad Types?

Brand Takeover 

An ad is shown on the app launch screen. Prior to landing on your “For You” pages and starting your daily scroll, you’ll be greeted with a short and sweet ad. These will  either be a 3-second static image or a 3-5 second video without audio. Given the format, these ads are best suited for awareness campaigns but advertisers should expect to pay premium prices for this spot especially since TikTok will only show one Brand Takeover Ad to a user each day.

TopView ads 

These are the easiest way to think about TopView ads is just as a slightly delayed Brand Takeover Ad. They are 60-second videos designed to target your audience in the most effective way possible. These placements are guaranteed to be the first thing your user sees and will most likely interact with.

In-Feed ads

Similar to ads you’re familiar with on Facebook or Instagram, but they’re a part of your daily “For You” feed. The ads that most will run as a core element of their strategy, this ad format can run up to 60 seconds of video with sound and blends seamlessly into your scrolling and exploring. The ones we see the best conversion rates with, and allow us to retarget your audiences nicely.

Overall, on a TikTok advertising level we have been piloting TikTok ads since the turn of the year, and since then have had a wide range of brands do incredibly well. Seeing massively low CPM’s, high CTR’s and handsome ROI.

Our strategy in light of ios14 has very much been an omnipresent and budget maximisation strategy to ensure budget goes as far as it can for our brands, and that we move proactively for the highest returns and sustained scale possible for our partnerships. With this being said, TikTok is leading the way with where we allocate the bulk of that budget, being as much as 70% in some cases.

Our typical structure looks something a little like this:

 

The Normal Company Winning Funnel Structure

On a brand level, it’s very clear that for any brand regardless of industry, the opportunity is a colossal one when it comes to TikTok, you just have to nail the strategy, and get moving before it passes you by.

We mentioned in the title of this blog post that TikTok is the number 1 opportunity of the year.

However, on reflection..

This could well be the opportunity of a decade.

Categories
facebook ads IOS14 Power brands

WANT TO SOLVE YOUR IOS14 TROUBLES? DO THIS. TODAY.

This is a general announcement we have sent out to all of our brands today following recent updates from Facebook, and additional learnings we have seen over the past couple of days as we continue to stay at the very forefront of the environment for our brand partnerships benefit

We also thought we should make this a blog post for two reasons..

1. This stuff is killer content and deserves to be put out there, so why not.

2. Navigating ios14 has been a battlefield for everyone these past couple of months. In particular, we want to help the smaller brands that may not be able to afford an expert agency that has access to this type of information, and could really do with it to just stay afloat and survive in such times. We know it can help, and hopefully it does!

There are two main points to raise as an initial FYI:

1. IOS adoption has went up significantly with their latest forced IOS 14.6 update causing a higher opt-out rate causing a decrease in performance.

2. Starting June 30th, Facebook have CONFIRMED a positive update will be taking place. Facebook shall be expanding their use of conversion modelling to include it in their 7 day click default attribution setting. The inclusion of these new modelled conversions may result in a noticeable increase in 7-day click conversions, and overall ad account performance. Facebook are continuing to improve their machine learning models and expand their coverage of these new modelled conversions, in order for the platform to have greater transparency, of which has largely been lost of late, impacting our capabilities to scale budgets effectively.

With point 2, we certainly see a light at the end of the tunnel. The next few weeks will be bumpy but hopefully we’ll see a drastic improvement in July as anticipated since March.

In line with the above, we wanted to share what is working right now and shed light on a case study which could be modelled similarly for your brand..

The clients who are performing significantly well right now are releasing either new offers, promotions, collections/product ranges or re-structuring their offer/landing pages/sales process.

One brand of which has already hit $400k this month, due to some revamping and restructuring of offers.
A lot of this is driven by a sale that finishes end of this month.
They also don’t run sales often so the urgency/desire is very much real, and has caused a stir with their audience who want to fully take advantage of this FOMO inducing campaign.

It’s worth us mentioning that a nice portion of these returns have come from our email campaigns we put in place (money is, has been and always will be in the list long term – this is fully owned by you, and is one of the biggest assets a brand can have when software companies take the control away with such things like ios14). A well nurtured email list will always be a good weapon against change. (Of course with $0 attributed marketing spend to any returns seen here is also a huge plus point)

Here is a separate campaign which went out today for a completely different brand, which goes down a ‘secret sale’ avenue, with added benefits for taking part – something this brand has also never done, so causes high intrigue and uptake.

 

A lot is changing right now and we need to lean into it in every form we can.

– Borders, the world, physical businesses all opening back up

– Weather globally is getting warmer so less time spent online. General market seasonality always seen at this part of the year. 

– Money being spent locally again instead of online.

Therefore, creativity will play a huge level of importance this month…

We suggest to find genuine reasons to run sales, promos or campaigns right now to boost conversion rate and sales:

1. Fathers day

2. Summer sales

3. Revenge travel hype 

4. Flash sale (72 hours/1 week only) 

Evergreen is 100% taking a hit right now. It’ll only get worse before it gets better, so we are encouraging as above, to get creative with your strategies to make the most out of what we can right now, and drive performance to be as high as it can. 

*Photo of brand performance for June thus far – can clearly see when the campaigns went live*

 

 

We would encourage you to utilise this information as much as possible, and use it to get creative with how your brand could strategise this period.

 

Extra point of notice: 

We have noticed performance drop offs across accounts on 1st June. Since then there has been over a 40% increase of users updating to IOS14.5. Adoption rates are increasing fast as you can see: 

Therefore, this really is a time to be thinking different, rather than sitting around hoping to ride the wave.

Your ROAS will continue to be in a downtrend, your marketing budget will be stretched thin, and ultimately you will be leaving opportunity on the table.

We hope this helps, not only to help your brand survive ios14 and the multiple updates Apple are putting out there onto brands, but ultimately we hope this helps your brand thrive, and outpace your competition in such volatile times.

 

 

Categories
Brand facebook ads Fashion

The 2020 King Content Strategy For Brand Scale.

Ads on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram are today deemed the most annoying.

This is according to Business Insider Intelligence’s recent Digital Trust Survey.

Why?
Well that’s simple.

People don’t like being advertised to, especially when they want to scroll and find new inspiration from their favourite bloggers, escape for 10 minutes on a lunch break, play the latest Justin Bieber music video, or see what those they love have been up to.
It’s irritating, and a primary barrier to what they are on the platform to see, and experience.

The results of this survey should come as a wake-up call to marketers and brand owners alike still unsure about native content, or focussing more on the natural, stripped back approach to marketing vs the glossy magazine cover-esque pieces of creative.

So, what’s the solution?

Based off our recent results across our brand partnerships and client portfolio, the fuel for the most recent ROI experienced has been user generated content.
In the last 3 months especially, this has been the primary driver behind results both on an engagement, organic level, but also on the paid advertising front.

Our ethos is simple, and the types of conversations we have been having recently looks a little like this..

Integrate with content your target customers love to see, and be a part of the reason they are on the platform.
Be native.

Don’t be a 1990’s yellow pages advert plastered in the middle of an Instagram feed.

You’ll lose out.

If your marketing is in a designated advert, in between your target customer and the content they want to watch, undoubtedly it will be glanced over or not given attention. Your CTR will be sky high, even on the editorial you spent hours on end in a studio developing, tweaking and editing.
Not to mention the cost for producing your glossy ad.

It just won’t generate interest, and your marketing spend will be wasted because you are going against your consumers’ psychology and frame of mind at that given moment.

Integrate your message into user generated content, and become an intrinsic, flowing piece of the platform experience.

Here’s our top reasons why UGC is the way forward for brands that want to scale:

 

1. It’s the human touch

As above, people don’t want to be advertised to. They don’t want to be bombarded by marketing messages and they most certainly don’t want your ad interfering with their user experience on Instagram, Facebook or YouTube.

User generated content goes against ‘marketing’.

It’s a natural, aesthetically on point piece of content that creates a feeling.

A feeling that is in line with who your customer wants to be, how they want to feel, and the desire they have when it comes to the ‘why’ they would buy from your brand.

Here’s the thing: People trust people.

People want to relate with people.

This has been one of our key mantra’s when it comes to strategy calls of late with our clients, especially those in the fashion space.

Those that have adopted this strategy and nailed in on the UGC space to their advantage, have seen all time high conversion rates and revenues reported for the months of July and August consistently.

Instead of scrolling through websites that only tell you their ‘halo’ version of the product, people now prefer a natural, vibey conversation coming through from what they see from brands.

What they crave, essentially, is the human touch to an otherwise lifeless, staged, over-edited piece of content. UGC content provides precisely that – the human element.

It shows the product for what it is, the brand for the feeling they create with a no holes barred approach, and the customers for the community they generate.

Seeing a similar person to you, or a respected influencer wearing the new line is the best way to demonstrate your product to would-be-buyers. It’s the pairing of valuing perspectives of their fellow customers, hand in hand with an unfiltered view of your product in a real world use, often in a real world environment.

This is what UGC provides your brand: The much needed, and much desired help that prospective customers understand the product inside and out, and they get to know what to expect before they even land on the product page.

2. Customer Experience Is Accentuated 

Consider that you have been using the same angles of content for the past 6 months.

Your ads may very much be experiencing ad fatigue, because your product only shows so much.

It shows one angle, repeatedly: Your angle as those behind the brand day to day.

You have yet to mix this up and twist things into the angle you really need to be portraying as priority: Your customer’s view when they have the product.

When this switches up, your intended customer will see something a little like this…

They open up Instagram, scroll along and then get hit with a native ad that speaks the same language as those in which they follow, almost as if the ad they are seeing has been posted by one of their close friends.

Immediately they have minor emotions tied into the creative, and they are getting a sense of feeling with your brand.

The piece of content shows your brand in a native and natural form, and in a way studio content just cannot relay in the same way.

Suddenly, the product has new life to it, a new portrayal, and a new value proposition in the eyes of your consumer.

A different view, creates different reactions. 

They are now viewing someone experience the product in real life and validate all its claims, as opposed to just hearing them.

In short, your consumer is already experiencing the product, and in turn they get convinced that it’s as good as you say it is, and it does exactly as what that customer would expect from a product.

User-generated content adds a dash of authenticity and reverberates with the customer in the most natural form.

It’s a buying accelerator like no other.

3. It Converts 

User generated content drives sales like no other.

When people see for themselves how a product has impacted the life of someone else, and someone they identify with, they begin to find ways the product can help them, and starting selling the product to themselves.

In turn, this creates a higher CTR and traffic generation from this type of content compared to any other because it’s so identifiable.

The metrics align perfectly for any brand looking to scale, because UGC generates interest and more ‘scroll stopping’ than an ad that doesn’t look like it belongs.

It’s why people skip the adverts immediately when they come on T.V. between their favourite show – they know it’s not going to be relevant or personally tailored to them.

It’s another annoying barrier before they get to what they really want to see, and the reason why they are watching T.V. in the first instance.

However, if those adverts were people you adored and identified with showing off their latest buys in the most natural way, you may just hear them out.

Brands get far more bang for their spend, because their spend isn’t being wasted on people scrolling past, but rather the spend on the content is now getting clicks, and clicks create conversions.

You may end up buying something you do not need at all, or find something you may have passed up on initially, because it directly impacted you on an emotional level – it’s not just another advert. 

User-generated content consciously and subconsciously alters buying patterns and increases eCommerce sales twofold with brands who have lacked in that department historically.

Every marketing metric that aligns to sales, rises in all the right areas, and it’s clear to see why.

Categories
Brand Coronavirus facebook ads Fashion

£650m to Zero. How Stubbornness Will Kill Primark.

UK ‘Giant’ clothing store Primark made a grand total of £0 this month on the back of four weeks of closure, and over 60,000 furloughed staff due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Primark’s usual £650m months have plummeted to rock bottom due to their lack of diversified channels, in a world which is changing around them, and one of which they have ignored for many years.

With stores across the world forcibly closing due to the UK lockdown, Primark has been unable to sell any products due to its non existent online presence or diversified channels. In the past, the store has tried to justify this by saying it would not be able to keep prices low if home delivery were an option.

But, this in our eyes is an all too familiar phrase and string of excuses similar to that of brands and stores that we have seen fall at the hands of a digital first world over the past 18 months.

Primark however, like many physical stores have now had the shock which would have been inevitable regardless; adapt to e-commerce, or face a harsh reality check at some point. 

Chief executive George Weston said: ‘ABF has been squarely in the path of this pandemic. At Primark we have 68,000 of our people receiving furlough payments from governments across Europe, without which we would have been forced to make most redundant.

‘From making sales of £650m each month, since the last of our stores closed on 22 March, we have sold nothing.’

With this highlighting how George Weston and his board have failed to acknowledge and take action on what it means to have a digital strategy, the company and their staff are now paying the price of an ‘adapt or die’ retail world.

George added: “In time we can rebuild the profits. We can’t replace the people we lose.”

Shortsightedness can prove to be a killer even at the best of times and when business is booming, however at this current time especially, the so-called-giants will face a harsh reality which could see many household names pay the ultimate price.

The value of diversification for brands and stores is becoming apparent, as it always will when it becomes too late, but always pushed aside when times are good.

The question poised on Primark and their Directors is now this: Should we shift to e-commerce as a priority? 

The answer, is undoubtedly so, but equally it took a worldwide pandemic for them to emerge out of a cave, and ask what should have been a question they answered with tenacity when they had an opportunity to thrive, rather than merely scrap to survive.

Myles Broom

Categories
Brand Long Read SMM

In Musk We Trust: What Your Brand Can Learn From Tesla

Tesla. We all know the name, and will have our own opinions of a company which is consistently seeking innovation and has carved it’s way as the pioneer of electric vehicle ownership. However, how can your brand see Tesla in such a way that would be of benefit?

With Tesla, something is very different, and it all stems for the C word.

1. Customer Centricity

Everything at Tesla embodies an experience which is customer centric. From the website user design, right through to the ownership after care everything is built around the customer in such a way that majorly disrupts the car industry.

It’s such an integral part of Tesla, and this is why Tesla owners genuinely want Tesla to be successful on every level. Tesla owners want to be a part of the Tesla journey, the Tesla ethos, and see the company be a major success. They are raving fans, rooting for the company to dominate. An extremely high 80% of customers buy or rent another Tesla for their next car after buying their first, and it’s no surprise.

What can you learn from this? Create an experience that is adored, fine tuned to focus on creating loyalty and you will have something truly special; an experience that sticks in the mind of your customer. With this you will have them for life, time and time again.

2. A website that oozes class, and makes the buying process a breeze

Go on the Tesla website and you will see a user experience that is far beyond any capability of it’s competitors. Car sites are traditionally sticky, bulky and difficult to navigate. Check out BMW and you will see how their site homepage is busier than the sale rales at TK Maxx, cluttered with corporate jargon and taking the customer away from what they want to see, and straight into what the company feels is important.

Tesla on the other hand, much like their vehicles is sleek, smooth and crisp. It’s so clean we would eat our breakfast off it.

It creates an experience that mirrors the Tesla ownership experience. Experience here is the important word when thinking of your brand like Tesla; you want to create a feeling of ownership of your product, even before it has been ordered.

The call to action on each slide is an enticing button which is seamless with the web design, taking you on a customer journey which focusses on you beginning your Tesla ownership ride.

Within just TWO clicks from the homepage, you are given the ‘Buy a Tesla’ option.

Now, we don’t know what your product is, however if it is anything smaller or less pricey than an $80,000 electronic vehicle and your customer cannot buy it within just two clicks…

…What are you doing?!

From here, picking out your vehicle and having all of the key questions answered without needing a “questions” section shows just how advanced they are on the market.

Tesla Custom Build

Car information, price, savings you’ll be getting, a bar to change your payment method, delivery date, and a customer journey bar at the top to show you that you are only 3 steps away from having your Tesla fully spec’d out, it’s all so clean and is exactly what the customer wants to see.

Tesla have gone for minimal styling here, keeping things light and simple for the customer for something that historically has been such a complex purchase for many.

If Tesla can do this on one of the biggest purchases an individual can make, why isn’t your site following suit?

3. A Digital Only Strategy

In 2020, customers will more often than not, be starting their purchase online. That means that digital provides customers their first impressions of the brand. Tesla stands out right away with a strong digital presence, in a way that is mission focussed and depicts the why behind the brand in such a way it creates legions of fans even from those who have never even sat inside a Tesla cockpit. Instead of being pushed into a sale by a well oiled car salesman wearing a Datejust, they are given information to make their own choices through the omni channel experience online. Such things have been taken to the extreme by Tesla too, in 2019 they shut down all of their physical Tesla showrooms and stores. They are the only car manufacturer to have an online only presence which was a major shift for the market, and one which is radically innovating, going against the grain of the supposed ‘need’ for physical locations for car companies.

When you focus on where the customer is, how they want to shop and why they shop for what they do, you’ll find that the online experience is paramount.

4. A Mission Beyond The Product

Tesla is hugely mission focussed beyond all else. Excusing the pun, the cars themselves are just a vehicle for change. In Tesla’s words their purpose in the world is to “accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy.”

Existing for more than profits, making money and selling their new cars and getting them out onto the roads, Tesla has built an identity for carving a strong mission that everyone buys into. It makes their employees more engaged and dedicated to the ultimate cause, which encourages them to deliver a better customer experience because there is a paramount ‘why’ behind everything Tesla stand for.

On the other end of this, Tesla owners are a part of something. A movement for change, for the better.

If your product or brand doesn’t have a central purpose aside from selling, you may be at the mercy of brands that can have people buy into a ‘why’.

In Musk We Trust,

The Normal Company

Categories
facebook ads Fashion Long Read

THE STEP-BY-STEP FORMULA: $308K AT A 6X ROI IN 60 DAYS FOR A WOMEN’S FASHION LABEL.

On this Normal case study we are going to go DEEP on the process for achieving multi 6 figure results within a 60 day period directly from Facebook and Instagram advertising. If you have a fashion brand yourself or are in the e-commerce industry in general, you may want to take note…

It goes without saying that 2020 is going to be another tough year for brands that rest on their laurels. We all know that brands are popping up left, right and centre, and the competition is fierce. An edge on your market is forever key, with constant evolution and innovation now a necessity.

In fashion, trends last as long as the sun in the U.K! The needs and wants of customers will change each season, and the desire for top quality products that also meet the financial needs of a customer is a constant moving bar. If you’ve been in the space for a long time, you’ll know that you can be the ‘next big thing’ one month with sales coming in by the bucket load, a PR’s dream and every influencer and her dog wanting your jumpsuit, yet the very next month have cobwebs in the stock room.

For sustainable success in fashion eCommerce you need an overall strategy that complements the Facebook environment, and in this hot topic we are going to break down the scalable and sustainable system we integrate into the fashion brands we partner with closely.

This is what will be covered:

• How to use new collections and new item launches in the most effective way

• How to use sales and flash sales to boost your overall sales and profitability

• How to use ‘signalling’ as part of your overall strategy to boost sales by 10X

• Our proven formula behind selling ‘collections’ instead of singular products

In addition to these points, we will also dive deeper (For the nerds reading this, like us) into the specific points that are Facebook marketing related.

1. THE STRATEGY

Something we noticed is that when most fashion brand owners launch a new collection, they more often than not have the same strategy that simultaneously takes effect in line with every season. It goes a little something like this:

They put their entire new collection on the website, throw up some ads saying ‘AW20 collection launched’ and send people to their site via the usual; Instagram post, Instagram story post, chuck a few influencers in the mix to push it….

…then wait for the sales to come. 

This works, to a certain degree. Especially if your collection is good.

BUT…

By splitting up your collection into multiple parts you can drip feed your audience with several new styles every week or 2 weeks and especially keep your warm audiences engaged and coming back.

We’ve seen this work magically. When collections are drip fed into smaller collections and have a ‘staggered’ approach, you maintain a key behaviour from your customers: Hype. 

Besides new items, as a brand owner you always have to deal with items that are not selling or slower weeks when you don’t have any new item launches. You also have to take into account when people are buying, and when they aren’t buying.

Take this part of the year for example; Dry January. 

This isn’t just the alcohol free month, ohhhh noooooo. It’s dry AF for the shops, the stores, and of course, most brands just like yours. 

So instead of marking down everything at the end of a season or hoping it will sell out at full price, introduce flash sales in the weeks that you don’t have any new item launches or when you anticipate slow sales. A good ‘CLEARANCE’ produces a good amount of FOMO. 

By using flash sales and suggesting these to a few of our fashion clients, we were able to generate one week of over $100k in sales at a 10X ROAS, for a brand which has a relatively small following of 40k on Instagram.

Even though we were giving discounts on products, this still brought in more than enough profit which exceeded their break even point, and of course the ripple effect of new customers that did their first ever purchase with the brand, is great for the long term. 

Flannels Sale 2020

 

2. THE NORMAL COMPANY HACK TO RUNNING SUCCESSFUL FLASH SALES AND NEW LINE LAUNCHES

It’s simple: Just putting your new products on the website and creating an ad saying ‘new products in’ or ‘SALE NOW LIVE’ is not the best action plan. This is also an off the cuff knee jerk reaction often when thing’s aren’t going so well, and it often comes off that way too.

So, with this being said, something we found very successful is the drip feed of these events, and the pre-hype around them.

The way we do this is we build a high amount of anticipation for new item launches and flash sales by notifying everyone in the warm audiences (and some cold) what will happen, ahead of time. 

We run ads building up anticipation for new products or for the upcoming sale and what we see is that people engage with these ads extremely well. What we find is a ton of comments tagging their friends to notify them too, a lot of inboxes as to ‘what might be coming’ and the organic reach on posts getting a nice perk up too.

We run a mix of video views, engagement and conversion ads in this stage depending if it’s a new product or a flash-sale. It’s paramount that the creatives and copy is on point for this to be put to best use, so always having this pre-planned and created a month or two in advance is almost essential. Get some sexy content, and be prepared for a blow up!

 

Oh Polly Campaign with Abs Benson

Now, when the sale starts or the new items come in, we would have in turn built up some hefty audiences to target and put into our ‘sale funnel’. 

One of our campaigns saw a 24 hour period reach the same sales volumes as an entire month before we were working with the brand. 

Something to keep in mind in fashion overall from an ad and strategy perspective is that you want to try and focus on selling the collection/brand instead of selling a single product. Unless you have massive volume behind the products and can replenish stock at the click of a finger. 

When you focus on your specific products it’s easy to get people to buy that product, of course. But, if you don’t have the volume to back the sales you will quickly have to stop scaling. This has happened on occasion with some of our smaller brands who unfortunately didn’t have the capacity to keep the fuel on the fire, and therefore stunted their own growth and capacity for scale. 

A secondary note here, is that the average order value will also rise as people are shopping an entire sale and will add a few more things to their basket as they are in a ‘sales frenzy’ state of mind, rather than just going on your site to grab the dress they’ve had their eye on that just got a price slash. 

3. NAILING THE FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM ADS 

Firstly, we would like to just raise a little piece of value around how to positively impact your CPM. Of course, when running effective campaigns this is a key metric for any brand, and so the impetus on this is high for us.

What we noticed on this particular brand account before we ran the large campaign, is that when the brand themselves accelerated their posting schedule to 5-7 times a day following a prior conversation we had with them around frequency of social media activity, the CPM came down a TON! 

We compared this client (posting multiple times a day for 30 days) to clients posting 3-5 times a week and the CPM compared to them selling in the same niche, same audiences and similar price range was up to 50-60% lower.

The big thing to note about posting multiple times a day is that you’re also engaging a much bigger part of your audience organically. People engage on Facebook and Instagram which feeds the warm audiences in your funnel. 

The Normal Company tip: POST, POST, POST. Go H.A.M!

So, what we have identified is that the absolute best practice in the fashion space is to post multiple times a day. Focus on delivering value here too. 

Make these posts have the sole focus of building a community around your brand; get people commenting, build relationships, and form a connection between you and them. Get some style files posted, raise some questions and raise some eyebrows. 

There’s no right or wrong way here, but more so about making things non-sale related and making sure the frequency is of a very high level.

If you think you’re posting a lot already, post more. Trust us on this. 

Missguided make your mark campaign 1

4. CREATIVE IS THE VARIABLE

This was highlighted a little above, however to go a little deeper here the most important element to being successful on Facebook and Instagram at the moment is the creative. It’s the number 1 variable between success and failure, and rightly so.

…Would you buy from a brand which had poor creative? No.

That’s because a creative has to resonate with you or it won’t get a sale from you. 

We see it all the time, the difference in running an account at a 2x return or a 5x return has most of the time nothing to do with audiences, ‘hacking’ the algorithm, manual bidding or anything like that. It’s almost always down to the creative that goes hand in hand with our process.

If you’re on board with us already, you would have definitely have had this conversation with us on a strategy call! 

For this particular fashion brands’ account we had a lot of good creative to work with. They were very forthcoming with us and always have been when it comes to giving us a plethora of top quality videos, images, GIF’s and everything in between. Our dropbox is constantly replenished with bountiful content!

Anything we need, they were able to produce it and at a quick turnaround rate.

Speed is king. 

With this large volume of content at our disposal we had from the brand, we created different videos for different steps of the funnel, all based around where the buyer was in their customer journey. 

If you’re not running effective Facebook funnels at the moment, one key thing we would advise here is to refresh the content every 2-3 weeks if possible, especially on the high performing campaigns! Keep it fuelled, and you’ll keep growing. 

 

Missguided make your mark campaign 2

The last thing you ever want to see is ad fatigue due to creatives becoming dead.

If you don’t focus on this creative part, you’re not going to be successful with Facebook ads at scale. You NEED creative, and you need it almost on tap. 

If you don’t, there’s someone in your space that will be doing this and guess what?

They’ll be bigger than you and take your customers. 

This is a big statement, yes.

So, how did we come to this conclusion? 

Since dynamic creative appeared we’ve been working on a system of using this in all our creative testing. 

The system we used to use was as follows:

• Campaign with 4 ad sets – all ad sets had 1x CPA as minimum budget (around 10% of the account spend for the campaign total)

• The ad set targeted the best performing audience, most of the time a 1% LLA works well for us.

• Every ad set had 3-5 ads and we would split out all of the videos, images, carousels and collections ads in a solid distribution.

5. CREATIVE TESTING THE NORMAL WAY 2.0

We warned you we would go a little nerdy here, and it’s about to be so.

With dynamic creative, we have tried to simplify this process a bit. We now use the following process:

We create a dynamic creative campaign with again the best performing audience (1% LLA or Customer List)

In the dynamic creative we put the following:

• 3 Copy Versions

• 5 Images/Videos

• 3 Headlines

• Product Page URL/Homepage URL/Top Performing Collection URL

We test this again at minimum 1x CPA and let it run to 3x CPA so we can see what the winning combination is. We then take the winning post ID from the dynamic creative and see how this performs on it’s own. We also turn this winning combination into a collection ad to see how this performs.

At the same time we create a dynamic creative version around the best product or best image/video combination to see if we can optimise this one further.

The winners out of this test we move into the scaling campaign.

If we don’t need new creative in that campaign because performance is good, we put the creative in a PPE campaign for engagement and build out the creative library.

Don’t stop this process, just rinse and repeat, and keep it in an evolution cycle. 

The type of creative that worked best for this particular brand were high quality HD video ads (both normal and collection) and carousel ads. (Also note your video ads need to be the right format for Facebook / Instagram placements).

So, with this being said we would clearly recommend you get some epic video content produced. It’s worth doing this, and doing this well, as with the right Facebook strategy in place you can really scale to the moon. 

Your investment into content can be paid back 100X over with the likes of our system in place. It’s often the main thing we need from you!

 

Balenciaga Summer 2014 Promo

6. A DIFFERENT TACTIC TO PLAY

There are a couple of other things we’ve tested that have produced wild scale for a couple of fashion brands, and this brand in particular reaped the reward by having the following in place:

CBO Structure:

A simple CBO going out to cold audiences.

We put different products/collections in different CBO’s and used a strong variety of audiences in each separate CBO. 

When we found a clear winning audience within a performing campaign we would put this into its own campaign with 6 duplicates to see how it performed on its own.

We saw that big audiences performed better and created a structure where we would spend 40% of our budget on small lookalikes, 40% of budget on bigger lookalikes of up to 10% and audiences of up to around 20 million people, and finally we would allocate 20% of the budget on broad audiences specifically. 

We will mention it again in case you missed it: The key for this campaign working so incredibly was the fact that we could cycle through creatives and have a fresh load of files at our fingertips. 

Retargeting:

For retargeting something we were really successful with in this account is targeting the email list in a separate campaign, split into different audience segments. 

Aside from this, what we also did was retargeted the bottom of the funnel audience twice over.  We created 2 campaigns targeting the same audience of people that added to cart.

We were getting around $1.50 add to carts so these audiences were massively effective. 

Campaign A – Conversion Campaign with DPA ad targeting the add to carts, we kept the segments big enough (3 day and  4-10 days) as we saw performance was best in bigger audiences.

Campaign B – This was a simple reach focussed campaign with strong creative video ads, targeting the exact same audiences as campaign A with a 100% overlap to hit them with a different piece of content. This worked like clockwork. 

This strategy worked extremely well and delivered a 10x+ ROI on both campaigns. 

If you held on here right until the end, you’re serious about 2020!

We hope this was of value, as these exact strategies and hacks entailed are what we used to grow a fashion brand to $308K in sales on one campaign alone.

Any questions, feel free to drop us a line! 

Written by Myles Broom, with help from the wizard; Cameron James. 

The Normal Company