STT PPC Case study

About the product

Sell The Trend is a software designed for dropshippers, providing an all-in-one tool to find the best-selling products, sell them, and create pages for them. The platform's primary goal is to simplify the process of setting up an e-commerce business by providing users with a comprehensive set of tools and features that help them identify profitable product niches and create optimized product pages quickly.

Main challenge

Sell The Trend's primary target audience is solopreneurs. Because the market vertical is oversaturated with other products the Sell The Trend software required a highly efficient PPC strategy that would generate a profit while remaining cost-effective.

To make that happen, Sell The Trend knew they had to optimize the whole funnel, not just PPC channels, which included working on their conversion rates from free trial to paid. They were looking for a team that can support them through the whole process.

The issues

• High CPA
• Low conversion rate from free trial to paid
• No funnel in place
• No effective reporting to evaluate the real cost per sign-up/cost per trial/cost per customer
• Relayed on only one ad network - Facebook ads

Main goal

Together will Sell The Trend founder we decided to create a PPC strategy that will provide the most cost-effective and repeatable results.

Once we set our goals and KPIs, we created objectives that will help achieve our goals.

The objectives

• 1. Create a tailored PPC strategy for Google Ads and Meta ads for each part of the funnel
• 2. Properly set up their funnel analytics to track profitability and determine which campaigns were generating the most profitable leads
• 3. Develop dedicated landing pages for each customer vertical and continually optimize funnel to increase their conversion rates ROI
• 4. Determining how to improve conversion rates in the funnel Landing page visit ➝ Sing up page view ➝ Signed up ➝ Free trial (with required credit card)
• 5. Improve their onboarding email sequences to increase the free trial to paid conversion rate, with the goal of achieving a 250% increase

PPC Strategy

In order to create a tailored strategy for Sell The Trend, our first step was to find what the most profitable customers were, understand them, and find the most profitable ways to reach them. What this meant was doing in-depth audience & keyword research to find the low-hanging fruits in a very competitive industry like dropshipping.

How we did it

• Found high-intent keywords that were on a lower CPC side
• To increase the relevance of remarketing advertising, we segmented and funneled remarketing audiences on Google and Facebook ads.
• Conducted comprehensive audience research and prospecting for Facebook ads in order to maximize the likelihood of targeting cold audiences.
• Structured campaigns on Google Ads and Facebook to be as aligned as feasible.
• Established profitable PPC benchmarks such as desired funnel conversion rate sign up ➝ free trial ➝ customer; profitable cost per sign up; free trial; customer, profitable customer acquisition costs, CAC payback periods.

Results

We build campaigns one by one, and once we tested them out, and assessed them as profitable, we would expand on them and move on to testing another one.

This helped us achieve sustainable sign up and free trial costs while expanding the accounts, without straining the budgets. This way we also got info on which were the most profitable customer verticals and which ones were the fastest to convert, which helped us understand the overall funnel.

Over a period of time, this PPC strategy proved to be sustainable and easy to scale.

Funnel analytics & reporting

Sell The Trend had a very basic analytical data setup and rather vague insights about funnel performance before we started working on the project. We began implementing Universal Analytics and GA4 after we identified the entire visitor journey and funnel.

What we did

• Sketched visitor journey and funnel
• Developed a detailed funnel analytics data implementation strategy
• Set everything in the way to get granular PPC reports (cost per conversion type, conversion rates, customer acquisition cost, revenue, etc.)

Results

After completing all tasks, we successfully pushed all required data into both Google analytics properties and gained clear visibility into funnel performance: Landing page visit ➝ Sign up ➝ Free trial with CC ➝ Purchase ➝ Customer LTV

*By understanding these indicators, we were able to identify successful benchmarks, such as which ads bring clients with a profitable CAC payback period and lifetime value.

Landing page & funnel optimization

Since dropshipping is a very competitive niche, to achieve (and sustain) a profitable CPA, we had to work on optimizing all landing pages as well as the funnel.

How we did it

• Created dedicated product and competitor landing pages
• Created remarketing landing pages for each part of the funnel (TOFU, MOFU, BOFU)
• Segmented audience based on landing page visits
• Created lead magnets - and made a special email sequence for nurturing those leads

Results

With these optimizations, we ensured consistent conversion rates across the funnel.

Free trial to Paid optimization

To maintain profitability, Sell The Trend had to convert more of their free trial users to paid customers. What we noticed is that a lot of users weren't using all the features Sell The Trend provided, in a lot of cases, because they weren't familiar with them. In order to get them to know all the features Sell The Trend had and convert them to paid customers, we needed to optimize their onboarding process.

What we did

• Created dedicated email sequences and ads that will target the "Sign-up drop-off users"
• Created a dedicated onboarding email sequence for all new users that activated them to get back into the software
• Created NPS surveys to users that started the trial, were active but churned either way

Results

By implementing these actions, we improved the free trial to paid customer conversion rate by 12% compared to the period before. By having more activated users, it was easier to monitor which features were used the most by users which gave us insights on what to focus on during the onboarding and what features will attract the most paying users. After a couple of months, we saw an increase in retention rates as well.

Goals achieved

During our year-long collaboration with Sell The Trend we created a PPC strategy for them that was easy to sustain and scale while maintaining profitability across the funnel.

Here are some of the main metrics:

• 300% increase in sign ups through PPC ad networks
• 35% increase in Sign up to Free Trial (CC) conversion rate
• 65% decrease in cost per Sign up
• Considerable savings in ad budget waste (that usually happens due to poor targeting, post-click experience, irresponsible ad campaign management, etc.)
• 25% increase in open rates and click rates in automated email sequences

In conclusion

We had a long and intense collaboration with Sell The Trend where we worked on many aspects of their business, not just paid acquisition. You can see some of the other work we've done for them over the year, that was more focused on branding and messaging. Our collaboration was fulfilling and creative for both us and Sell The Trend, which helped both Sell The Trend and us, grow as businesses