Kicksta Case Study
Kicksta is an AI-powered, Instagram growth tool. It enables eCommerce companies and influencers to grow their following, and sales from Instagram, with minimal-hands on effort. The tool works by engaging with similar accounts in the same niche, on behalf of the user or brand. Kicksta has been used to help grow companies like Orginal Grain, Vincero, and Arcana.
Kicksta was already generating hundreds of conversions a month before we started working together, but their customer acquisition cost was too high. In just 60 days, we lowered Kicksta’s CPA by 59%! Here’s how we did it.
Identified Leaks In The Budget
The first thing we did was investigate the impact of Kicksta’s YouTube shorts and Google Display campaigns.
The analysis showed they were not influencing customers as intended. These campaigns were expensive, yet they were only showing up in a minuscule percentage of Kicksta’s customer journeys. We decided to shut them off.
This turned out to be the right decision. After two months of data, we did not notice any drop in sales, or even soft metrics like email sign-ups or organic social media engagement.
Used Custom Landing Pages To Make Low-Performing Keywords Profitable
We knew that the majority of Kicksta’s ad traffic was coming from three types of searches.
searches around getting more followers
searches around getting more likes
searches around getting more views
We knew that the majority of Kicksta’s ad traffic was coming from three types of searches.
searches around getting more followers
searches around getting more likes
searches around getting more views
The problem was that the traffic seeking more likes or views was not nearly as profitable as the traffic seeking more followers.
The landing page that had won all of Kicksta’s previous A/B tests, spoke about how the tool helps users get more followers.
But.. we suspected that was only because the majority of the clicks were coming from people searching for ways to grow their following.
So, with respect to the past data, we kept the winning landing page live for all of the 'grow followers' keywords; and we only ran the A/B test for the keywords around getting 'more likes.'
It was a very simple test. Instead of talking about how the tool helps users grow an Instagram following, the new page talked about Kicksta helps users get more likes.
The results were better than we could’ve hoped for! Ads for likes keywords were converting almost 5% more often, AND we were able to repeat the same process for the bucket of keywords seeking out more views.
Scaled Success From Kicksta’s Organic Content
We also took advantage of the fact that Kicksta gets a lot of organic traffic.
We set up a funnel in Google Analytics that looked like this,
We took advantage of this by setting up a funnel in Google Analytics that looked like this,
Step 1: first-page visit = blog_title
Step 2: completed conversion action within 7 days
The funnel revealed over 10 blogs were converting traffic into customers at a rate above 2%.
We looked at Google Search Console to see which keywords were bringing traffic to these blogs and then we started bidding on those keywords, using the blogs as landing pages.
The paid traffic converted at the same rate the organic traffic did!
Unfortunately, after factoring in the cost of paid traffic, only a few of the blogs were profitable, but nonetheless.. it was an easy way to add a small bump in sales every week!
Separated The Ad Groups More Granularly
We noticed a few things about Kicksta’s ad groups. They had a ton of keywords, they had duplicates, and they all used the same ad copy.
First, we removed underperforming keywords that weren’t getting any impressions or conversions, and then we grouped the ad groups according by the search theme.
This allowed us to write tailored ad copy for every unique theme. It also enabled us to use custom landing pages for each ad group as well (though, the effect of using unique landing pages is yet to be determined).
Overall
Improving this account involved some maintenance activities (we added hundreds and hundreds of negative keywords), some analysis, and some time, but we were able to cut customer acquisition costs significantly for Kicksta, ensuring their Google Ads Campaigns were profitable!