Facebook ads case study: Skincare brand grows revenue by 1,164.36% in 16 months

Table of Contents
In this Facebook ads case study, I’ll share how we grew an organic skincare brand’s e-commerce revenue by 1,164.36% within 16 months.
The total investment was €21,996.53 in Facebook ads and €3,597.03 in Google display ads.
This investment returned a total of €306.944.90 in gross revenue with €45,336.45 directly from Facebook ads (Google Analytics data, last-click attribution model) and €16,247.91 from the Google display network.
Details about the case study:
- Dates: Sep 24, 2020 – Jan 24, 2022, 16 months.
- Business model – E-commerce direct to consumer.
- E-commerce platform – WordPress + WooCommerce.
- Vertical – Organic skincare product manufacturing brand.
- GEO – EU.
- Locale – Undisclosed due to privacy reasons.
- Target Market / Audience Size – 500k – 550k.
- Primary customer acquisition channel – Facebook Ads.
- Auxillary channels – Google display network (mostly for retargeting), FB & IG organic social posts, Email blasts for sales campaigns.
Here’s a quick video of the accounts.
Strategy Overview
Our primary goal was to generate ROI from Facebook & Google ad campaigns.
Therefore, we applied a simple & tested formula:
- Choose a locale with the highest chance of success.
- Run conversion ads optimized for purchases. 95% of our campaigns were optimized for website purchases (with a few webinar & online event campaigns.)
- In the initial phase, test audiences, ad creatives, products/product categories & campaign structures.
- Analyze & evaluate the data to determine which ads & campaign structures generate the highest ROI.
- Keep the best-performing ad variations running.
- Turn off all non-performing ads (low/negative ROI, high cost per customer acquisition, high cost per link click.)
- Test more ad creatives & products with the winning ad campaign structure & audience.
- Rinse & Repeat.
Account & Campaign setup:
- Before running a single campaign, we set up all the technical details (pixels, conversion events, conversion API, UTM link tracking, Google Analytics E-commerce tracking, etc.)
- Campaign objective – Sales / Conversions.
- Conversion event – Website Purchases.
- Winning campaign structure – one campaign, one ad set with a 50 euros per day budget, and many individual ads linking to each product or product category page. When testing, I added the new ads to the winning ad set.
- Target Audience – Women, 25+, Broad targeting (no interests, lookalikes, etc.) Exclusions – 30-Day Purchases.
- Budget – First three months 500 euros / month on FB, then 1500 euros / month on FB & 300 euros / month on Google Display. Additional budget boost on sales campaigns. On Black Friday, we increased the budget up to 100 euros/day on FB.
- Placements – Automatic. I’ve tested auto vs. feeds only vs. story only, and automatic placements outperform manual placements every single time. I do recommend creating & adding the correct image/video sizes for each placement.
- Metrics – Reach, impressions, frequency, link clicks, cost per link click, Link click-through rate, Add To Cart, Initiate checkout, Ad spend, Purchases, Cost per purchase, ROAS.
- I compared Facebook ads manager data with Google Analytics data to get a more accurate representation of campaign performance. This is important because Facebook uses a different attribution setting (7 days after clicking or 1 day after viewing) than Google Analytics (last-click attribution). Also, Facebook reports have had slightly inflated & inaccurate conversion metrics in many of the accounts I’ve worked on.
Creative strategy:
Ad Copy:
- Most of the ads followed the AIDA formula – Attention, Interest, Desire, Action.
- For body copy, there’s a limited amount of characters before the text is cut off by the “see more” button. The main purpose here is to attract the attention of our audience.
- If the person clicks on the see more button, the rest of the ad explains the benefits of the product.
- At the very end, there’s a call to action.
- The strongest appeal usually is self-interest. What’s in it for them?
- For headlines, I like to figure out the most compelling benefit or the results we’re promising. Making it short & straight to the point worked best.
- For sales/discount campaigns, short & punchy copy with discount percentages & dates when the promo is running worked best.
Visuals
- We used 95% of image ads for our campaigns because they are faster & cheaper to design than video ads.
- The best performing images are usually collages:
- If you’re selling a physical product, the product should take up most of the space & should be the focal point of the ad.
- A human face or body (depending on the product) helps attract the attention of our target audience.
- If the product is marketed to women, use a picture of an attractive woman.
- If the product is marketed to men, use a picture of an attractive man.
- The images of the people you use in the ads should have the qualities your prospects are looking to acquire.
- Stay away from basic stock photos as most people can recognize them. Authentic-looking photos worked best.
- For organic skincare products, using some of the ingredients found in the product for your collages can also be utilized.
- Since Facebook removed the 20% text rule, adding text with benefits or product use cases to the image can also be utilized.
Compliance
- The personal attributes policy is the most commonly violated policy.
- To avoid getting your accounts disabled, follow these principles:
- Focus on the product benefits, not the user.
- Don’t call out the user directly.
- Don’t use direct questions like “Do you have baggy eyes?”
- Don’t make the users feel like you know any personal information about them.
- Even though using the word “you” in ads isn’t prohibited, I avoid using it when working in health-related niches.
- Here are approaches that have worked for me:
- Write in a general, non-user-user-specific way. Talk about the problem, the solutions, the transformation & the results your customers have had in a general way.
- Write about the ingredients your product has, and how each element helps with specific problems.
- Write a story about a person (whether real or fictional) who struggled, but overcame their issues by using the product.
- Write a story of transformation in the first person. “How I overcame…”
- The policies are written ambiguously for a reason. This allows Facebook to evaluate and enforce the policies on a case-by-case basis.
- Your track record matters. If you abide by their rules and build up a solid reputation, you may get away with a more direct approach.
- Using gray area tactics will be detrimental to your longevity on the platform.
Sales campaigns
We ran a total of four major sales campaigns within a year and a few minor ones on seasonal holidays.
The four sales campaigns:
- August sales campaign – Buy one, get one free.
- Early November Sales Campaign – up to 50% off.
- Black Friday – up to 70% off.
- Christmas Sales campaign – Gift Sets/bundles up to -20%.
Sales campaign structure:
- A week before the campaign, launch an ad announcing the dates and discounts to build up anticipation.
- About four hours before the campaign launch, add the sales campaign ads. If you have a less seasoned account, you might want to do this earlier or even pre-schedule the ads to launch at the specified time.
- Then on the morning of the last day of the sales campaign, add a scarcity ad announcing that the sale is about to close.
The best timeframe for a sales campaign was four days.
The first and last day of the campaign generates most of the sales volume.
Results
Facebook data
- Total ad spend – €21,996.54
- Purchase conversion value – €305,544.78
- Reach – 310,746 people reached
- Impressions – 6,979,629 total
- Frequency – 22.46 per person
- CPM – €3.15 Per 1,000 Impressions
- Link clicks – 54,450 total
- Cost per link click – €0.40 per action
- CTR – 0.78% per impression
- Add to carts – 28,133
- Initiate checkout – 16,288
- Purchases – 6,198
Google ads data
- Ad spend – €3,596.95
- Clicks – 75,391
- CTR – 0.96%
- Purchases – 330.00
- Revenue – Google ads conversion tag wasn’t set up properly so the data isn’t accurate.
Google Analytics data
All traffic sources:



Facebook campaigns
- Users – 48,653
- New users – 37,127
- Sessions – 58,034
- Transactions – 1,084
- Revenue – €46,003.35
Google ads campaigns
- Users – 32,100
- New users – 23,710
- Sessions – 59,325
- Transactions – 214
- Revenue – €14,262.02
Key Takeaways:
- Test ad creatives, products, product categories, and campaign structures to find out what produces the best results.
- Once you have the data – scale up your winners.
- It’s important to set up the technical details before running a single campaign.
- Optimize for sales and choose the correct conversion event – purchases.
- Compare the data of the ad platforms with google analytics. There’s a high chance you’ll see discrepancies.
- Use UTM parameters to get accurate data in google analytics.
- It’s easier & more profitable to scale a best-selling product than it is to sell a product that is not in demand.
- Most of the efforts should be focused on designing the best ad creatives. The AI algorithms of the ad platforms are highly advanced & sophisticated. If you set up your campaigns for sales, they’ll try to get you as many sales as possible.
- If you have high-quality ad creatives & a fairly broad audience, your ads can run for months without annoying the people even with high frequency (ours was 22.46 per person).
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Walter Voronovic shares accurate, honest & pragmatic information on how to use the internet to build profitable digital business assets.
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