We were approached by Velo and Co with regards to selling their face covers off the page.
Previously a product used for sport, they had seen an article in the Wall Street Journal about a runner who had started using her tube bandana as a face cover when out running as she was finding it was getting more and more frowned upon to be running in the park and she did not feel comfortable (both in terms of look and feel) running in a disposable mask.A quick bit of research showed us that places like Amazon and Ebay sold them but only with a delivery time of 5-6 weeks We agreed there was clearly a market, especially if we moved fast.
So Velo Face Covers were born. A website was developed, stock ordered, photos taken, ads created and within 2 weeks of the concept the stock was in and the first ads ran with a small test in Daily Mail Scotland. This uncovered a few issues with Google and PPC, but these we quickly ironed out and within days people were receiving their products – unlike if they ordered them elsewhere. A ‘buy one get one free’ offer with a unique code for each ad meant that we could track the ROI. The demand for the product grew as the Government announced firstly that they advise wearing a face cover when out of home, and secondly that it will be mandatory from the 15th June to wear one on public transport.
One thing we quickly discovered was that if you rely on PPC to drive traffic to your site you can’t compete with Amazon and Ebay – search terms ‘face cover’and ‘face masks’ cost approx 60p a click and the conversions were poor at 3%. When you run an ad in press you can drop these terms and just support your brand: ‘Velo and co’ clicks cost 3p and covert at 25% – making it impossible to make money if online is the only source of promotion. Stick an ad in a newspaper and the whole thing changes.
So many new companies think that digital is the only way, that press has had its day – but if you want to drive traffic to your site, from people who have already decided they are interested in buying your product then you really can’t beat press. Without running these ads, Velo would not have had business and in the 4 weeks since it began they have sold over 5000 face covers from a media spend of less that £10k.
The key was spotting the opportunity, acting fast, taking a low risk and being able to scale up with the supplier quickly and speaking to an agency with experience of selling off the page.
So if you have an idea or existing small business and you hadn’t considered press being the main driver of sales, then give us a call and see if we can take you from zero to hero too.