Timio is an Amsterdam-based educational toy brand. It helps educate children aged 2-6. After coming from a mildly successful Kickstarter, the owner Basile Fattal, approached us to grow his direct-to-consumer sales through his Shopify store.
The problem? 0-pixel data.
Kickstarter doesn’t track conversions, so we were essentially working off a fresh account. Selling a new product with little historical data to work from presented us with a tough challenge. Nevertheless, we saw potential in the uniqueness and value of Timio and decided that we were confident in the product to take it on.
Within just a few months we were able to grow the sales from €0 to €100K/mo with only Facebook ads as a marketing channel – we had to scale the spend down due to stock issues.
So how did we scale a new product with 0-pixel data to a 7-figure run rate?
Since we had no historical data, we dug into the basics. We spoke with Basile to identify the unique value propositions and angles we could come up with to sell the Timio. Here we brainstormed the following angles:
Screen-free parenting
Educate your children about new words and languages
Homeschooling your children due to COVID-19
We also crunched Timio’s unit economics to work out ROAS targets. Since the Timio is an electronic product and heavier than the standard B2C e-commerce product, the COGS are slightly higher than in the usual apparel and beauty niches we work in. We worked out that, in order to remain cash flow positive, we would aim for an account-wide ROAS target of 3, and scaling if we maintained 2 on prospecting. This is usually higher than most of the brands we work with, however, Basile was a single owner who has bootstrapped his company. Therefore it was imperative to consider this when investing his marketing spend.
Once we dissected our main value propositions and unit economics, we began with developing our campaign strategy to start growing Timio.
To see what angles and creatives would resonate and convert with our potential audience of parents, we systematically tested each one in our creative testing campaign.
We take one creative angle or concept (e.g quarantine) and run multiple creatives with that angle using dynamic creative testing. Any creatives that perform above our target ROAS in testing we then aim to scale on high-budget CBOs.
We’ve found that UGC videos combined with demonstration videos helped us to make converting creative. Having the children play with the toy and show them having fun was imperative to show a strong concept of use so the parents could see how the Timio could fit into their children’s daily lives.
Parents want to feel like they’re doing the best for their children, so emphasising how the Timio can enable them to have screen-free educational fun (as opposed to playing games on the iPad/tablets all day) and reduced mood and sleep issues helped to convey emotion and impulsiveness to purchase the Timio. Sell the sizzle, not the steak.
We anticipated that FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) would play a big objection in preventing customers from buying.
It’s not the easiest sale, a new product without similar competitors, the user can’t physically hold the product before purchasing, and buying from an unknown brand would create some hesitation. So we ensured on our retargeting campaigns that we used heavy social proof, reviews, and 10% discounts to convert customers who were on the fence. Once we dissected our main value propositions and unit economics, we began with developing our campaign strategy to start growing Timio.
Despite starting with no purchase conversions on the pixel, broad audiences worked best on the account. This is where we just specify the country, age and gender and nothing else. That’s right – no lookalike or interest-based targeting.
In theory, specifically targeting our ideal audience would work best – parents with kids aged 6 months to 3 years, but once again Facebook’s algorithm proves it can target better than humans. This goes to show how important targeting through your creative is, as opposed to media buying tactics.
As shown in our prospecting campaigns here, you can see how broad audiences outperformed our purchase lookalike audiences.The main way we scaled Timio was simply through continued creative testing and horizontal scaling. We continued to produce different creatives and copy for winning angles which saw stable performance.
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The main way we scaled Timio was simply through continued creative testing and horizontal scaling. We continued to produce different creatives and copy for winning angles which saw stable performance.
Despite starting with no purchase conversions on the pixel, broad audiences worked best on the account. This is where we just specify the country, age and gender and nothing else. That’s right – no lookalike or interest-based targeting.
In theory, specifically targeting our ideal audience would work best – parents with kids aged 6 months to 3 years, but once again Facebook’s algorithm proves it can target better than humans. This goes to show how important targeting through your creative is, as opposed to media buying tactics.
As shown in our prospecting campaigns here, you can see how broad audiences outperformed our purchase lookalike audiences.
We advised our client to sell on the US market. As a brand paying 21% VAT (European tax on sales), the client was able to increase profit by not having to pay VAT on US sales. We always try to advocate brands scaling in the North American market due to the increased population, higher disposable income, avoidance of VAT, and that the main language is English.
So here’s an overview of our marketing strategy to grow the sales of a new product to a 7-figure run rate. Growing the sales of a new product on a fresh account proves again how robust the Venture Beyond growth strategy is for scaling e-commerce brands.
If you have new products you’d like to launch, or would like to grow the sales of your existing ones – get in touch with the form below to see if we’d be a good fit to work together.
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"We're now in our third month with Venture Beyond and very happy with their service. They go beyond social media advertising. They also advise you with improving website conversion and have a very good creative team."
Basile Fattal
Founder, Timio