4.28x from $700,000 in annual sales to $3,000,000 in annual sales in 2 years

‍The Brand

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‍Birchbury combines class and comfort with their modern barefoot leather sneakers and dress shoes. Every pair offers the natural movement of feet in flexible leather and no-tie laces for effortless style and comfort.

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The Challenge

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‍Matt, Birchbury’s founder, was juggling Facebook and Google Ads himself but needed to shift focus to other crucial parts of the brand. He sought a reliable team to handle the day-to-day of DTC marketing, ensuring growth in direct-to-consumer sales while hitting profitability goals.

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The Gameplan

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‍To transition smoothly, we kicked off our process. Here's what we did:

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1. Start with a Comprehensive DTC Growth Audit to identify risks and opportunities. Then we followed
2. Set Success Metrics: Defined a Danger Goal to avoid and a Goal Target to aim based on historical data, margin derived from COGS, shipping, transaction costs, pick & pack fees.
3. Hero Analysis: Reviewed customer and competitor data to identify key marketing themes.
4. Data Analytics Setup: Established analytics and key metrics.
5. Content Review: Assessed existing content and created new video and photo materials.
6. Creative Sourcing: Leveraged content from existing customers and creators.
7. Ad Briefing: Developed video ads, graphic ads, and GIF ads based on customer research.
8. Campaign Structuring: Implemented campaigns with cost controls tied to profitability goals.
9. Event Calendar: Coordinated promotional periods like Black Friday and Cyber Monday.

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The Execution

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‍We first introduced new KPIs for daily performance tracking.  Metrics that are closely tied to the efficiency of acquiring new customers and growing the brand. We focused on MER/blended ROAS, Acquisition MER/New Customer ROAS, and Contribution Margin (Dollars Left Over for Operating Costs and Net Profit).

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Initially, we maintained Birchbury’s Facebook legacy campaigns, transitioning only after improving performance.

On a regular basis, we provided a Performance Tracker—an extensive report highlighting progress, challenges, and action plans. Key slides included an Executive Summary and Success Metrics, detailing targets, actuals, challenges, and dependencies. This let everyone know where we were and where to go.

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With earned trust through growth and diligent effort, Birchbury expanded our partnership to include Google Ads management. We identified untapped Google Ad keywords, expanded sponsored ad inventory with Callout, Review, and Sitelink extensions, and discovered that the Free Shipping extension in Google Shopping led to higher CTRs.

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Implementing fundamentals allowed us to break past $1.45M to $2.8M in order revenue in the first year working together.

However, growth came with its challenges. High sales months would lead to inventory shortages of our most popular products when there were manufacturing constraints. This had a negative impact on demand leading to less order volume.

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As a result, Negative Contribution Profit days occurred due to returns. Because we use cost controls, a common challenge is not getting spend within our campaigns an ads. Suggesting that based on what we set our cost controls, we could not get Facebook to spend profitably at the scale we wanted to. Our conversion rate would always be higher when we were fully in stock but it would decrease as inventory sold-out.

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To address this, we captured more demand by giving Meta more to work with to spend more profitably. We made sure to keep our efficiency high with the control of budget towards certain products and varying cost controls depending on unit economics of the products.

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We diversified creative formats, we tested more niched angles to inform Meta to capture new audiences we hadn’t. Niched angles that were further down in our customer research that weren’t as common.

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We tested different link destinations from homepage to product page. We launched advertorials and listicles to open new demand in campaigns. In many cases, changes were small or negligible. But it was the steady, thoughtful test that would put us back on target. With these learnings, we regularly calibrated our inventory pacing aligned with sales from media buying and restock dates.

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As a result, in our second year working together, we went from $2.81M in order revenue to $3.59M in revenue.

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Challenges Tackled

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• Managed negative Contribution Profit by introducing new audience angles.
• Dealt with fast sell-outs of popular inventory by optimizing for profitability over volume.
• Migrated to new data analytics platforms to get an accurate pulse of daily Contribution Profit.
• Ensured long-term profitability with steady inventory sales mapped with media buying.

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The Outcome

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• Year 0 (2021): $1.45M Order Revenue
• Year 1 (2022): $2.81M Order Revenue
• Year 2 (2023): $3.59M Order Revenue

2.48x Growth in 2 Years

14% Increase in YoY Contribution Profit

Ad spend varied from $1,000/day to $7,000/day for Facebook and $1,000/day to $5,000/day for Google based on demand, inventory, and seasonality.

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Overall a theme with Birchbury has been valuing incremental changes. That steady growth driven by first-order profitable marketing, a fantastic product, and loyal returning customers, is a highly valuable asset.