A 99% jump in website sessions, a Meta ad people are sharing for fun and what happens when you get too in your head about a thirty-second video.
Quick catch-up: we’re spending a year giving Sweet Darl’n, Amanda’s gourmet sweet treats start-up, completely free digital marketing and documenting every step. Last time we got the email foundations in place, launched our free marshmallow welcome offer and started building out a Meta ads strategy. Now our ads are live and we have our first proper set of results to talk about.
The numbers are in and we’re sharing all of them
As promised, each month we’re lifting the veil on all of our key metrics to track how everything is going. Good news is there’s no need to sugar coat (or in Sweet Darl’n’s case, sprinkle coat) how things went for our first full month in the market.
This is what month one looks like against our 12-month benchmarks:
Website sessions: 957 → 1,908. Up 99%.
Orders: 17.5 → 24. Up 37%.
Revenue: $1,118 → $1,673. Up 50%.
The year-on-year comparison tells an even wilder story. The same month last year saw 463 sessions, 4 orders and $186 in revenue.
This month we drove 1,908 sessions, 24 orders and $1,673. That’s a 312% jump in sessions, 500% in orders and nearly 800% in revenue.
But before we start printing t-shirts, a bit of honest context. Amanda was on maternity leave this time last year, which means the year-on-year comparison is stacked against a business that was, in Amanda’s own words, “more or less dead online.”
As she put it, “it’s really good to see that you can have your business basically offline for a year and then a year later be able to revive that. That was something I was really scared about post maternity leave.”
So the baseline was low, but a meaningful improvement is still a meaningful improvement. And in our experience, it’s not always about just riding momentum, but rather the combination of having the bones of a solid business mixed with the right marketing that really makes the difference.
A tale of two hooks
The Meta ads only went live on the 25th of the month, which means the bulk of the results above came before a single ad ran. The early signs from the campaigns themselves are arguably the more exciting story.
Amanda filmed two versions of her hero ad with slightly different opening hooks.
Hook one: “these are our bestsellers.”
Hook two: “we’re best known for our wagon wheels.”
Hook two drove 590 add-to-carts at 54 cents each, with 8 attributed purchases. Hook one pulled 78 add-to-carts at 51 cents. As Maddie rolls through the insights she notes the gap between the hooks is “barely anything” and it’s a little mind-bending that the results show such a difference.
We’re keenly aware that Meta has a tendency to take an early performer and run with it, but it’s also validation that running an A and B is always worth the effort, even if the difference is little more than nuance.
Better still, people are genuinely enjoying the ads. Hook two racked up 147 reactions, 5 comments and 11 shares. And that’s from a campaign with conversions as the objective, not engagements. As Caleb observed, “a conversion-based campaign is racking up really good engagement even though engagement isn’t the objective. It’s clearly good content that’s working.”
For creators, the content struggle is real
Here’s something that’ll be familiar to pretty much anyone who’s ever had to create content on demand: Amanda got a little in her head about it.
After delivering one strong video, she hit a wall. Stopped filming when she was sick, lost her rhythm and somewhere along the way convinced herself that everything needed to be perfect before it could go live.
“I cannot shut the f*ck up,” she laughed, describing her attempts to nail a clean two-second hook. “I cannot be succinct. I put a camera in front of myself and I’m like, here’s my life story, this is my blood type.”
The irony? The one video she did post organically, initially shared as a trial reel, picked up 30,000 views. Which is a fairly convincing sign that the content direction is right and people connect to what she has to say.
Caleb was also quick to reassure Amanda to “not let perfect get in the way of done”. Quality content is obviously important, but content done genuinely is always better than perfect. And content that’s a little scrappy is certainly better than none at all.
Amanda’s back on the grind and plenty more creative is coming.
Time for a facelift?
A related, and honestly quite charming, side effect is that while thinking through the unboxing video concept, Amanda realised she wasn’t entirely happy with Sweet Darl’n’s current packaging. Rather than just quietly shelving the video, she sat with the feeling and started working through some solutions.
“It’s been a really nice side effect of doing all of this,” she reflected. “It’s making me consider how I want the brand to be perceived now versus when I first had the idea.”
Not something that showed up in a dashboard, but not nothing either.
Training the pixel
The Meta campaign is currently running as an add-to-cart objective rather than a straight sales campaign. This is intentional. Before asking Meta to go and find buyers, we need to feed the pixel enough data that it actually knows what a Sweet Darl’n buyer looks like. Once we hit the threshold, roughly 30 to 50 purchases, the campaign switches to sales-based.
Caleb’s description of that moment is that “it’s kind of like unlocking a whole new level.”
The budget is currently holding at $50 a day, and we’re watching closely for the right moment to make the switch and go up another gear.
New faces at the counter
One of the quieter but genuinely exciting signals from the past week is that almost every single order has been a first purchase. Amanda’s been eagerly watching each one come in, checking whether it’s a returning customer or someone new.
And what does the list show? “First order, first order, first order, first order.”
It matters because up until now, Sweet Darl’n’s online sales were largely kept alive by loyal existing customers. Getting new people through the (virtual) door is the whole point, and it’s starting to happen.
“You obviously want returning customers,” says Amanda, “but I don’t want just returning customers. If you’re getting first orders, you’re growing. So that was something I was really excited about.”
Sales are also coming in every day now, which is a shift in itself from historically more sporadic orders. Amanda’s partner Lachie, who handles fulfillment, did note the uptick in activity.
“I (had to say), hey, that’s good,” Amanda laughed, keenly aware growth does come with some unavoidable growing pains. We’ll interpret that as a success.
A note on recipes
As the ads pick up reach, more people are engaging in the comments, including, as it turns out, some very eager customers asking Amanda for her recipes.
Caleb offered the definitive response, “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and he can feed himself. Unless you’re the one selling fish, in which case you’ve just ruined your business.”
Amanda will be replying to comments. She will not be sharing her recipes.
What’s next
Google Ads are being set up, the Father’s Day brief is in the works (September has a way of creeping up on you) and the Meta attribution window is being widened to capture more complete data on what’s actually driving sales. And in the backend, the email flows and ads are starting to function as a proper ecosystem rather than separate moving parts.
Oh, and perhaps most importantly we finally got around to trying the wagon wheels ourselves. The traditional flavour was the standout and one member of the team may have been onto their second before anyone else had finished their first.
We’re not naming names. But it was Caleb.
