Go from a ROAS of 5 to 35 with ads on Le Chemin de la Nature (online training on wild plants and mushrooms)

*Disclaimer: here we give you some strategic keys that we were able to put in place to support growth. For obvious reasons of confidentiality and competitive discretion, it is obvious that only part of the strategy put in place was shared on this article.

Founded in 2011, the Chemin de la Nature offers weekly workshops and internships, as well as online courses to acquire solid knowledge in the field of wild plants and mushrooms.

Growth Room supports the Nature trail since 2019 on the entire Paid media strategy (Meta Ads & Google Ads).

The target of the Nature Trail are generally women aged 40 and 60, the average basket is quite high.

Previously, they had difficulty reaching a young population and were unable to convert with “cold” prospects, but only with “hot” prospects, having to type in the name of the company.

In addition, the company launched a lot of promotional campaigns.

Result? High conversion on promotions but with the consequence of drastically reducing conversions on basic campaigns.

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As a reminder :

• A cold target is a target that doesn't know us;
• A hot target is a target that has interacted with the brand and already knows it.

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The objective of the mission

Set up a system to generate recurring turnover, while making the most of promotional campaigns.

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The overall results

• ROAS went from 5 to 14 in a few months.

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Structuring the Ads strategy

The Ads strategy we had the first 2 years

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Objective : lead generation with free training.

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Results for 2 years :

• +200k registrations (lead email);
• Around €0.30/emails approximately;
• Sequence of emails that leave just after the training.

An example of this ad:

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Then, a retargeting device was activated for all this audience who, in addition to receiving personalized emails, received ads on the Meta or Google network.

The first 2 years, this device participated in the development of the Nature Trail and passed the million euros in turnover.

However, after 2 years, we noticed (logically) a Audience saturation with the consequences:

• Leads that are less and less qualified, leading to a drop in the conversion rate;
• The decrease in ROAS as promotional campaigns are carried out;
• So, a drop in annual turnover.

Our analysis : the large number of long promos (promotions of 2 months every 3 months) has led to a strong saturation of audiences and to necessarily lower the margin (because the price is on sale).

Tips: in addition to leading to a high saturation of the audience, from a marketing point of view, frequent promotion can sometimes make your product seem like a “Cheap” product, which is not the case with Chemin de la Nature, which precisely offers very qualitative training courses.

To get around this problem (saturation + selling at a loss), two levers were implemented at the same time:

• Lever 1 : Take the risk of doing “Threads Rouge” campaigns by taking on new audiences (even if it means lowering the ROAS at the beginning) and by renewing them as much as possible in order to fill the pool of users with people who do not know us, then educate them on training;
• Lever 2 : manage promotion periods over a shorter period of time, and in a more qualitative way with greater effort.

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“Red Thread” strategy

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The mission of the “Fil Rouge” strategy was to continue to develop turnover by stabilizing RoAS and to fill the cold audience pool as much as possible.

For this, it was decided to expand the channels:

• Twitter Ads;
• The founder also started using TikTok by recycling either the video content from the training course, or by creating new content. A strategy that has performed well, with several million views.

We also expanded audiences on historic canals:

• Change of audience every week;
• Retargeting these audiences.

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Quantified objective :

• Target RoAS 2.5.

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PROMO strategy

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The mission of the promo strategy was to maximize RoAS for a limited time.

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Quantified goals :

• Target RoAS 7.

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Assessment of the two levers

Overall balance

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• Since the implementation of the new “Thread Rouge” strategy, overall performances have increased and exceeded the objectives set.
• There is a gradual evolution in the turnover generated by the media for almost normal expenses.
• The overall ROAS (red thread campaigns + promos) is very satisfactory at 9.2 overall and exceeds our target of 7
• The Google network totals one ROAS at +70 (yes yes, that's the real number, not even including the brand keyword) and Facebook has 4.6 ROAS.
• ROAS is only progressing, our “Thread Rouge” strategy is bearing fruit and has a positive impact on overall performance.

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Numerical results :

• RoAS 9.5 vs obj 7.

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“Red Thread” strategy

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All campaigns seem to be profitable, but must be measured over time.

In addition, “Thread Rouge” campaigns play their role in engaging qualified traffic with interesting profitability on Meta & Google:

• Thanks to the implementation of this strategy, the ROAS excluding promotion has been evolving with an ROAS of 6.7 overall since the beginning of July. This exceeds our objective of ROAS excluding promotion at 2.5: at the beginning of July ROAS at 1.9 vs the end of October ROAS at 47 all agencies combined.
• We also note that the ROAS on the Facebook network is evolving and has reached an ROAS at the highest of 5.9.
• As for the Google Ads network, it continues to perform with very good performance levels.

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Promo strategy

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The promos have seen their ROAS greatly increased and represent an opportunity for business development:

• There is a strong evolution in performance, which is explained by the strategy for renewing audiences.
• The global ROAS is increased by the Google part. The Facebook one that remained our main objective in terms of evolution is overall at 4, however, it far exceeds the objective of 7 during the promotional periods.

The increase in performance was mainly felt on Meta with an ROAS reaching 20:

• For several months now, we have noticed a decrease in ROAS at each promotional period. This drop was due to the fact that the audience pool was not renewed.
• The new strategy put in place to counter this phenomenon has made it possible to significantly improve performance and to reach a remarkable level of ROAS as the promotions progressed.
• However, we note that the performances are generally better when the promotions are short (flash sales).

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We can see that the visuals that perform the most are static and short videos, both in terms of conversions and in terms of click rates. On the other hand, GIFs perform very poorly.

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In summary

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The strategy adopted on the “Thread Rouge” campaign allowed the promotional campaigns to generate a very satisfactory ROAS by regularly feeding the audience pool.

Moreover, as has been noted historically, short-term promotions, with a sense of urgency, perform better than long promotions.

Finally, the current results show that investments can be increased in future promotions.

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Our next steps: the 2023 strategy

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We keep that to ourselves! But we are going to count on an even stronger ROAS in future campaigns.

When the product is good, with a high level of satisfaction, there is a path to exploit its potential! This is the case for Le Chemin de la Nature, which is also Growth Room's first historical customer!

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If you also want to test several acquisition levers and with a strategy that is purely focused on ROI, you can book an appointment with a Growth Room expert here