Case Study: We Helped An E-commerce Brand Achieve 4X+ ROAS With TikTok Ads

About Our Client

This client is Senere Shop, an e-commerce store supplying a variety of products, ranging from laser hair removers to hair extensions.

Their trending items are great for catching the attention of TikTok users. They primarily target Gen Z and Millennial consumers within European and US markets.

Senere Shop employed TikTok advertising campaigns that specifically targeted their key potential customers to drive sales. 

Senere Shop managed to attract some visitors along with sporadic purchases but failed to produce enough profit.

Their advertising campaigns were too expensive and didn’t meet their expectation. The Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) was low and inconsistent, usually just around or below the break-even point (between 1.5x and 2.0x), with a high cost per acquisition (CPA).

Consequently, they could hardly operate profitably and scale the business through TikTok ads.

Introduced by fellow marketers, they decided to partner with GDT Agency for a way out.

Challenges & Objectives

The main difficulties facing the Senere Shop included the low ROAS, high CPA, limited conversion rates (CR) from ad traffic, challenges in scaling profitable campaigns, and potential limitations posed by their standard TikTok ad account.

They approached us with several objectives, including boosting sales from TikTok ads, reducing their CPA, and increasing ROAS profitably.

Reasons & Solutions To Senere Shop’s Issues

Our partnership with Senere Shop was initiated in Q1 of 2023. The analysis of Senere Shop’s past advertising campaigns, ad creatives, and landing pages revealed the primary reasons behind their poor TikTok ad performance.

Below, I will present them one by one and reveal how we addressed these problems.

Non-native, ineffective ad creatives

When looking at their ad creatives, we immediately noticed that they didn’t align with TikTok’s native style.

Most of them were repurposed from other platforms like Facebook and looked overly professional.

Meanwhile, TikTok users typically prefer ads that feel organic and natural to the platform.  That’s why they failed to capture their attention in the saturated feed.

This partially led to a low click-through rate (CTR), high cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), and poor conversion rates.

➡️ Solution:

We assisted Senere Shop in making genuine video content that fit specifically for the TikTok platform.

Using UGC (user-generated content), trending sounds/formats, and a benefit-centric marketing strategy, Senere Shop successfully created native, clear, and actionable advertising content for TikTok.

Example:

• Ineffective ad creative: A studio-made video showing product features with a generic musical background.
• Effective ad creative: A phone-made video featuring a genuine customer demonstrating the product in excitement, using a trending TikTok song, and displaying key benefits through text overlays.

Poor targeting & campaign structure

We noticed that Senere Shop was constantly using broad targeting through their campaigns without testing specific audience target segments.

Also, they didn’t optimize the campaign structure for the learning phase or identify winning ad creatives for specific audiences.

This mistake resulted in unnecessary waste of ad spending on non-relevant audiences, difficulty in diagnosing problematic areas, and inability to scale winning elements for maximal results.

➡️ Solution:

We advised Senere Shop to use interest-targeting options relevant to their products, retarget users who have shown interest in their shop, and expand reach to lookalike audience groups based on their customer lists.

We instructed them to optimize TikTok campaigns for a more effective learning phase, A/B testing, and scaling procedure. The key was to separate ad groups by audience segment and split ads by ad content variant. 

Lack of dynamic optimization & scaling strategy

The 3rd problem Senere Shop faced was about ad budget optimization. Their strategy was both reactive and inconsistent. They failed to identify winning ad groups and reallocate funds quickly to scale profits. 

Therefore, they missed opportunities to maximize returns from high-performing ads, and wasted funds on low-performing ones, leading to overall low ROAS and unprofitable campaigns.

➡️ Solution:

We advised them to track ad performance regularly every other hour, focusing on key metrics like clicks, CPC, CPM, CPA, and CR.

Then, based on the real-time data, decide to pause or edit underperforming ads and scale up winning ones gradually every 2 hours.

Ad account performance restrictions

It’s an unwritten fact that businesses using standard TikTok ad accounts often face performance inconsistencies, slow ad reviews, and low spending thresholds. This is especially true for new accounts with a short spending history or inconsistent management.

This was potentially another cause that hindered our client’s ability to scale campaigns and maximize profits from TikTok ads.

➡️ Solution:

We provided them with GDT Agency’s premium Tiktok ad accounts for rent. These accounts stay in better standing with TikTok’s algorithm thanks to our official partnership with the platform.

Typically, agency ad accounts have no spending limit and allow advertisers to scale ad budgets safely, quickly, and effectively.

Results & Stats

By implementing a multifaceted optimization strategy along with utilizing advanced TikTok agency ad accounts, Senere Shop saw significant achievements and growth after 90 days, including higher engagement rates, improved CTR, lower CPA, and optimal ROAS. 

The following statistics will help you understand the significant improvements our client achieved:

• CPA decreased by around 40%, from $35 to $21.
• CTR improved significantly from 0.8% to 1.5%.
• The website conversion rate from TikTok ads soared noticeably from 1.5% to 2.5%.
• Monthly ad cost scaled by 5X, from $5,000 to $25,000 per month.
• Sales revenue from TikTok Ads increased dramatically by over 300%, from $7,500 to $100,000-$112,500/month.
• Average ROAS increased by ~250%, from appro. 1.5X to 4.0X-4.5X.

Conclusion

Thanks to meticulous campaign analysis, continuous content testing and optimization, and strategic budgeting and scaling through premium agency accounts, we successfully helped Senere Shop profit from their TikTok ad campaigns. 

The company now spends a major budget on TikTok advertisements every month to receive sizable and measurable profitable transactions.

Want to reach profitable scale levels like Senere Shop? Get in touch with GDT Agency (via the contact info below) for a free consultation.

Note: The client’s name has been changed for privacy protection.

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