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Skyrocketing ROAS + Significant Cost Savings for an Online Retailer

Sector: Online Retail / Growth-Stage CPG
Services: Rebrand • Marketing Audit & Operations • Successful Sale/Exit

Background

A growth-stage CPG company, with peak revenue of $10m+, had sized up quickly during the covid era, but its marketing operations were disconnected and its expansion lacked focus.

As the covid era passed, the company lost profitability and the fundamental issues were exposed. The company turned to Sorted partners Cathy Mores and Sarah Humphrey to rebrand, refocus digital operations, lead product development, and ultimately serve as an outsourced team for marketing operations. Cathy and Sarah worked for over a year as the company streamlined operations and improved profitability, ultimately resulting in a sale of the company.

The Challenge

The initial challenge was a rebranding effort initiated to support growth in artist partnerships and position the company to acquire new customers from a younger demographic. This included comprehensive brand strategy and positioning, visual development and execution of new standards.

As the team audited the company’s digital stack, they uncovered massive technical debt, including an unstable and outdated Shopify theme. The process for gating content was convoluted and relied too heavily on manual processes, and significant technical errors were impacting SEO and accurate analytics reporting. 

The team also discovered that internal staff needed training and education to use the tools at their disposal, and to manage underperforming vendors across marketing operations.

 

The Brand Lift & Operations Overhaul

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Brand Strategy

Rebranding effort to position the company to appeal to a younger demographic and support growth in artist partnerships.

  • Brand visual standards
  • Templates for website headers, social media, and email marketing
  • New product packaging design and experience
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Website Redesign & SEO Overhaul

  • Audited and trimmed hundreds of pages
  • Technical SEO audit and corrective actions
  • Redesigned the website and upgraded processes using the existing platforms, with no downtime
  • Complete email marketing automation overhaul to correct broken sequences
  • Email list audit and cleanup to improve deliverability and drastically reduce costs
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Product Design & Production

  • Product development including art kits, printable instructions, and complete books
  • Oversaw photo and video production, including small team of in-house photographers and videographers
  • Brokered print projects with cost of appx $500k
  • Generated over $2m in new revenue within a 12-month period, overseeing entire design to delivery process
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Google Ads Overhaul

Complete restructure of account setup to increase ROAS by 2.5x

  • Set up thematic product feeds and related PMAX campaigns with new assets
  • Repaired conversion tracking for max conversion value bid strategy
  • Eliminated poorly managed broad match keywords and set up robust negative keyword strategy
  • Eliminated no-win products from product feed, where the company wasn’t competitive on price or selection

Highlights

Liaisoned to the holding company’s COO and board of directors. Within 18 months, turned months of negative revenue into positive cash flow and positioned the company for a successful transition in ownership.

Re-branded and reworked the retail website site using their existing e-commerce and logistics platforms.

Took charge of new product design to create some of the some of the company’s most popular products, consistently selling out.

Brokered print projects with cost of appx $500k and generated over $2m in new revenue within a 12-month period, overseeing entire design to delivery process with Kansas City-based production partners.

Replaced two consulting firms and an internal staff member that was reassigned, taking ownership of ads, analytics, website operations, SEO, and email at a fraction of the cost savings they uncovered.

Despite an immediate 50% reduction in Ad spend, and without using branded keywords, Sorted improved ROAS (return on ad spend) by 2.5x.

Why It Worked

The rebrand across product design, packaging, and merchandising better spoke to the core audience with an upgraded aesthetic. On the website, better sales pages, improved search functionality, and more accessible design resulted in a better user experience. The partnership with Sorted resulted in renewed focus, a refreshed brand, enviable advertising metrics, streamlined operations, and greater internal capacity.