In this ecommerce case study, we highlight how shoe brand Indestructible Shoes utilized YouTube Ads to scale their business profitably.
Indestructible Shoes creates unique shoes that are extremely strong and can protect feet from all kinds of accidents.
They were heavily reliant on Facebook Ads, and were seeing a steadily declining ROAS on that channel.
They knew they had to go multi-channel and utilize YouTube Ads to be able to scale their business. And they have an unique product that is easy to demonstrate on video.
The CEO of Indestructible Shoes realized that YouTube was working extremely well for other brands like Purple Mattress, Poo Pourri, and Dollar Shave Club. However, he had no idea how to run YouTube ads himself, and most agencies and freelancers were focused on Facebook, with YouTube as an afterthought.
He realized that he had to seek out channel experts who focused day in and day out on the platform. That’s why he reached out to Linx Digital to launch and scale their YouTube Ad campaigns.
Linx started the engagement with testing the client’s existing Facebook Ads. Indestructible Shoes were initially wary of investing heavily into YouTube Ad creatives.
However, the initial batch of Facebook Ad creatives did not work at all. Combined with extensive audience testing, the first month ROAS was only .48. This low ROAS for the first month was due to lack of video ads that were made for YouTube (as the CEO wanted to start with existing Facebook Ads). In addition to that, the first month for YouTube is where extensive audience testing and algorithm training is required, and often not profitable for most brands.
Unlike Facebook, YouTube takes a bit more effort to scale and most brands end up giving up on YouTube if they don’t hit profitability in the first couple of weeks of testing.
Understandably, the CEO of Indestructible Shoes was getting a little anxious.
In Linx’s experience, many Facebook Ad creatives simply fail on YouTube. Most brands try to take what works on Facebook (creative and strategy wise) and expect that their YouTube Ads will immediately work. This usually doesn’t happen as YouTube requires a different approach than Facebook Ads.
For example, ads that just demonstrate a product without context or a voiceover typically don’t perform well on YouTube. We realized that the existing creatives didn’t have much of a chance and convinced the CEO of Indestructible Shoes to invest into a live production video (which was a significant investment).
We took the lead on hiring a third party production agency to create YouTube first creatives.
Then, we scripted these video ads using Linx’s in-house video editing formula and project managed the complete production process. These videos used a lot of humour while also demonstrating the product, thus both entertaining and converting viewers.
The winning variation spoke directly to the target audience of hard working blue collar workers who typically purchased these products.
These video ads immediately outperformed the existing client creatives.
With this ad account, we had to test hundreds of audiences to find the dozen or so that worked extremely well. With YouTube, audience testing can often be a lengthy but rewarding process as we find winning audiences that we can spend thousands a day on. This also trains the algorithm to find customers and eventually we were running very broad campaigns. A mistake most brands make is that they run into rough waters when testing audiences on YouTube and then give up. YouTube simply requires more extensive audience testing than Facebook.
During our best month, we generated over $469,000 in at a 2.27x ROAS, which was significantly higher than their Facebook ROAS for that month. With over $1.28 million in sales, the ROI on the creative investment was astronomical. Indestructibleshoes.com also now uses one of the videos as their homepage hero video, and also in their Facebook Ads.
Here’s what the CEO of Indestructible Shoes had to say:
Linx Digital has done what no one else has been able to! They have figured out how to profitably scale Indestructible Shoes YouTube marketing campaigns. From the start of the engagement they consistently increased ROAS month over month, getting us to over a 2.4 ROAS by month four. The impact on our brand is incredible as we’re hitting our direct response goals while getting hundreds of thousands of 30-second plus views per month.
I was skeptical at first and I remained skeptical through the first couple of months even though performance was trending well. By month three, my skepticism waned as it was evident that the Linx Digital team was executing an intelligent strategy. From month three to four revenue increased 43% on just a 5% increase in ad spend. We are now profitably scaling the YouTube campaign and I am a full-on advocate of Linx Digital and highly recommend their services!
- Indestructible Shoes CEO
When this ecommerce case study was written, the next steps for the client were:
1) Script and produce new creatives to keep creative fresh.
2) With audience testing and scaling, focus on very broad affinity, in-market ROI, and topic audiences as the aged algorithm is allowing us to spend profitably on those audiences.
3) Add more upsells and cross sells to increase AOV and CLV.
If you want to find out more about what YouTube Ads could do for your business, jump on a free strategy call with us so we can advise how we can help you grow your company!
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