In the health and wellbeing sector, Ancient + Brave’s collection of sustainably sourced high grade collagen powders, MCT oil and blends have gained them recognition as one of the UK’s leading collagen brands.
THE CHALLENGE
In our early days with Ancient + Brave the business was setting ambitious growth targets to secure new funding and establish its position in the D2C market. They were firmly out of start up phase, but hadn’t previously gained traction with ads and wanted us to turn that around. In the initial months our challenge was to grow and maintain a 20% increase in YOY sales.
THE RESULTS
Through our first year we steadily stretched the 20% increase, and as we came into our second year more ambitious targets were realised through ads. As we near the end of the second year, Ancient + Brave have grown by 700%, this year alone, and have secured investment for the next stage of their growth. We are delighted to continue on their journey with them.
THE STRATEGY
We began working solely on Meta, and reviewed previous ads activity to gauge a sensible starting point for testing campaigns. With sufficient data on the pixel, and healthy offline lists we were able to establish reliable retargeting campaigns early on.
Finding the right strategy for the top of our Meta funnel was more challenging, but we worked closely with the team at A+B to test multiple audiences and creative, to a point that they were delivering a solid return. As new tools have emerged on Meta over the last two years we have tested and refined exciting campaigns which have supported the phenomenal growth of new customers. Satisfied that the acquisition funnel was delivering a good return we introduced successful campaigns to bolster subscriber numbers.
With the Meta campaigns producing good results, Ancient + Brave soon expanded our remit to take on their Google Ads. Previous campaigns were reliant on branded search - and whilst these converted well they had limited scope for scaling. In the last year we have seen significant new customer acquisition growth through Google Ads using a range of campaigns, including Performance Max, and were among the first brands in the UK to trial Demand Generation. Through our work on Ancient + Brave’s account in 2023, Google identified us as one of 15 ‘Rising Stars’ in Google Ads in the UK.
Finally, TikTok was added to the funnel where we have been able to target a new audience and also drive more cross-platform sales, lowering acquisition costs.
As well as running campaigns for Ancient + Brave we have worked with the in-house team to review the website experience and increase the conversion rate. We have been welcomed as part of the team, enabling us to get under the skin of the business and develop a strategy which has both seen significant growth, and has also supported their brand vision and identity as they've become more established in the market.
WHAT THE CLIENT SAID
"Having worked with a few agencies we knew that Nutshell were the right fit for Ancient + Brave. Julie and Sophie are exceptionally good at what they do. They explain the complicated process of digital marketing with patience and clarity. We have felt completely held and supported at every stage of the process and Nutshell feel like an integrated part of our team.
In addition to being great to work with, we are also seeing some very exciting results as Nutshell are showing their skill in being able to help us scale our revenue. With a keen sense of market and a flair for the creative we work closely with Julie and Sophie on our campaigns. Brilliant work and we thoroughly recommend them! ”
Kate Prince, Founder and CEO