Target strength: $5,000 weekly income from Facebook and Instagram selling menswear

Service: targeted advertising
Subject: online store of men’s clothing
Site: https://ombre.ua/
Promotion region: Ukraine
Promotion Period: June 2021 – September 2021

The case will be of interest to those who sell clothes, shoes and other goods by attracting users to the site through Instagram and Facebook. Those in e-commerce who have a wide range of products for different age categories. We will talk about how the correct account structure and constant testing of various strategies and creatives leads to an increase in purchases and a decrease in CRO (cost per purchase), with high competition in the niche.

Who is the client

The client is engaged in the sale of men’s clothing from Poland. Delivery across all Ukraine.

There is a clear Unique Selling Proposition: «The Ombre store is all about clothes, shoes and accessories for creating a male look quickly, and in one place.» Clothing is one of the most complex and specific segments of goods to sell online. In this niche, our client has to compete with other online stores, large marketplaces and clothing stores on Instagram.

Client Tasks

The client wanted to sell his product on social networks and needed a reliable contractor to launch targeted advertising on Facebook and Instagram. I worked with the first contractor until the beginning of 2021 for a year and a half. The client came up with the task of increasing the number of orders and reducing the cost per click. Therefore, Inweb specialists faced two important tasks:

• Raise the average check;
• Reduce the cost of an order (CPO) from PLN 40-50 to PLN 15-20.

Weaknesses and strengths of the project

To figure out what to rely on and what needs to be corrected in the first place, we analyzed the project and the client’s capabilities. Here’s what we got:

When selling clothes on social networks, the audience is brought to the product card. And here everything is very well arranged: product description, photo, characteristics, you can immediately calculate the cost of delivery, you can see clear terms, you can choose delivery to the Nova Poshta office or by courier, it’s immediately clear how to proceed if the goods did not fit.

We realized that the site is ready for advertising and there is no need to finish anything additional.

Promotion strategy

It remains to decide on the strategy, and for this it was necessary to gain access to the advertising account, analyze the unsuccessful advertising campaigns of the previous contractor, and draw conclusions. Based on the analysis, put forward several hypotheses, launch advertising campaigns and see what works.

We carefully and thoroughly studied the advertising activities of previous contractors and identified for ourselves the main signals for those campaigns where there were more or less acceptable results.

What did not like in the analysis:

1. The previous contractor divided optimization campaigns into 3 campaigns for traffic and for sales. At the same time, Facebook tools allow you to optimize campaigns specifically for sales. Facebook is looking for the people most likely to buy when optimizing for traffic, while optimizing for traffic is looking for people who are more likely to click through to the site.
2. Previous campaigns were targeted too broadly, both in affinity and look-and-like (similar audiences) campaigns. For the ads for all catalog sales campaigns, the previous contractor chose «dynamic formats and creatives».

In our campaigns, we decided to narrow the audience to 3-4% for Lookalike, and also to select more suitable audiences by interests. Looking ahead, I’ll say that affinity audiences were worked out at the entire stage of working with the account, right down to demographic data. At the same time, those audiences that bring stable results all the time were singled out. We started with ads in the form of catalog carousels with product groups that were segmented into categories.

What works when selling clothes with a fairly high average check to a cold audience?

In order to understand which combinations of strategies, audiences, and creatives worked best when setting up new campaigns, we needed several weeks of constant testing and reconfiguration.

We started working with a budget that was enough to highlight certain categories of goods (according to the CPO and average bill we needed), and launch tests. We also connected other product categories to see if they would work. At the start of work, there were no restrictions on certain categories and positions of goods. The client did not dictate conditions, we launched those categories that we considered necessary in advertising.

First stage: June, July 2021

At the first stage, we launched catalog sales campaigns optimized for sales with dynamic ads broken down by GEO (separately by cities that brought the most results and other cities) and by the best-selling products from the catalog over the past few months.

But since the seasonality of goods plays a very important role in the clothing segment, we had to abandon this strategy and create campaigns with seasonal product groups. Campaigns were launched in the summer, so the entire men’s summer assortment was taken into work: light trousers and jeans, shorts, T-shirts, short-sleeved shirts. These goods were suitable for the season, but at a price per CPO (40 PLN) they were still not within the limits set by the client.

Orders per day were from two to five. In terms of income, they were also at a low level due to the small number of orders.

The income for June amounted to PLN 18,000, for July almost PLN 33,000.

After the first two months of work, we started testing all campaigns and different bundles of creatives and strategies (geo, interests).

Second stage: August, September. Things went

At the second stage of work, we changed the approach to the structure of advertising campaigns and strategies. Since the promotion fell under the summer season, they began to focus only on the sale of summer items (t-shirts, shorts, sneakers). All these categories of products were combined into one cost-optimized campaign with dynamic ads. One campaign per specific product category, one campaign per Look-alike Audience (LAL), separate campaigns by interests, separately by creatives provided by the client.

We began to get the first results, the number of orders per day increased to 10-20, and the CPO dropped to the level of 20 PLN.

At this stage, we started testing campaigns with creatives for the collected audiences. We set a goal to find audiences that will work in our segment of menswear. Audiences were tested down to demographic sampling. The most effective were broad audiences by interests: brands, sales, menswear.

During this period, we received almost 4 times more purchases per day through Facebook.

Third stage: sales machine

Already in the third month of work, we made a working structure of an advertising account with:

• catalog sales campaigns;
• single-creative campaigns launched to tested affinity audiences;
• shares, which the client provided us to launch.

It was possible not to touch this structure, to work further along the knurled path. But we went a little further and started testing new ad options for the catalog.

We moved away from dynamic formats and creatives and switched to carousel galleries. On Facebook, you can add information from the catalog to cards (price, discount, something else):

We tested the Collection format:

This format allows you to show several products in one post and open a full mobile version of the product catalog in the application itself.

We saw that sales did not fall. Such an advertising format worked without pulling transactions from other ads, but, on the contrary, increased them. Testing creatives is important, because users have different preferences for advertising, and if just a product card worked on some, then a selection of products may attract others.

At this stage of work, already in September, we solved the client’s tasks: SRO: 21 PLN, 363 purchases (in June it was 157), average check 176 PLN (in June — 115), monthly income of almost 64 thousand PLN.

The plans are to continue working, to sell demi-season and winter men’s clothes according to the found working scheme. We want to achieve the best results.

Promotion Results

Collected in the table performance indicators for the entire period:

PM/IM comment

Diana Kovtonyuk, PPC Project Manager:

«It is very comfortable to work with the client, because he has the main quality for successful joint work: involvement in the project. He supports our initiatives, is open to dialogue and promptly responds to requests».

Project team

Dyana Kovtoniuk

Upper Junior PPC PM

Dmytryi Hromko

Middle PPC IM

Customer comment

Yakovenko Vadim, marketing director:

«We have been working with the Inweb agency for more than six months in the direction of targeting Facebook and Instagram. During this time, the guys showed their professional attitude to work, adaptability in performing complex tasks and the ability to achieve the set KPIs.Recommended!»

Now for this customer we also promote clothes for women

Everyone got their bonus: a client of sales and income, and we have another project from the same customer, only with clothes for women. The best assessment of work and an indicator of trust in specialists.