She's Birdie: How This Safety Brand Grew from $30k to $7.5 Million (And What You Can Learn)

She's Birdie: How This Safety Brand Grew from $30k to $7.5 Million (And What You Can Learn)

Founded in 2019, She's Birdie set out to make a difference, creating portable safety alarms that help women feel more secure in their everyday lives. Their mission resonated, and without any outside funding, they quickly became a leader in the personal safety market. But after an initial $30K sales surge, growth stalled. A bold new strategy changed everything, doubling revenue in a single month and catapulting them to a remarkable $7.5 million by year's end.

She's Birdie's rise wasn't accidental. Richie Mashiko, their Head of Growth, masterminded their success with a blend of digital marketing savvy, strategic influencer partnerships, and data-driven decision-making. He's ready to share his proven methods, offering a blueprint for scaling your eCom brand.  Below, we’ll cover: 

1. Essential Tips Before Investing in Paid Socials
2. Where and How to Invest in Your Ad Strategy
3. Achieving Growth Beyond Ads

Let’s dive in.

Three Essential Tips Before Investing in Paid Socials

Through trial and error, Richie gained valuable insights from his advertising experience and has developed key strategies for building a strong foundation in paid socials. Here are three actionable tips to consider before beginning your journey in paid ads:

Tip #1: Tell a Story 

Everybody loves a good story, especially one they can get behind. To streamline your ad success ensure your brand communicates a compelling story that embodies its mission. Engaging storytelling in your ads can captivate consumers, making them more likely to engage, click, and potentially purchase your product. 

Tip #2: Solve a Problem

The success of She’s Birdie's safety alarm stems from multiple factors, primarily its innovative approach to addressing a real need.Before its introduction, there was no clearly defined market for such a product, making it essential for the company to cultivate awareness about its importance. By effectively demonstrating how the product addresses a specific problem, the company was able to significantly attract consumers and enhance their willingness to make a purchase.

Tip #3: Product Offer Should be Profitable 

In the world of business growth, a key distinction between successful and unsuccessful products lies in their profitability: a high markup with a gross margin over 50%. Brands often face hurdles in acquiring customers if costs surpass their budget, stalling growth. Thus, Richie suggests ensuring a pricing strategy that yields a gross margin above 50% before investing in advertising.

Where and How to Invest in Your Ad Strategy‍

There is no faster way to reach a broad audience of potential customers than through paid social media. The key question is: which platforms should you invest in? Here are Richie’s top three advertising channels that provide a worthwhile return on investment:

Facebook Ads: 

She’s Birdie has been leveraging Facebook ads for over four years, establishing it as their most successful advertising platform. Over this period, they have tested various advertising strategies and have now honed in on their most effective approach. Moving away from interest groups and lookalike audiences, Richie and his team now target broader audiences, leveraging Facebook's Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns to optimize ad delivery for ideal customer reach.

Google Ads: 

Google Ads, a platform that excels in capturing potential customers through intent-based search advertising, is the perfect choice for effectively connecting your brand with a highly engaged audience. By targeting users actively searching for related products or services, Google Ads ensures that your ads are seen by individuals already interested in similar offerings, potentially leading to higher conversion rates and a more efficient use of advertising spend.

‍TikTok: 

Regardless of what your brand offers, it's crucial to leverage leading and trending platforms. TikTok ads, resonating strongly with younger demographics due to the platform's focus on creative content, enable brands to authentically connect with new audiences, serving as an effective strategy for expanding reach and engagement.

Remember Budget Allocation and Monitoring

Navigating ad creation complexities can be costly. Richie advises strategic budgeting and monitoring ad spend according to your e-commerce model. For one-time purchase businesses, setting a precise efficiency target and tracking MER is crucial. 

For brands with repeat customer revenue, analyzing MER and customer cohort lifetime value, considering acquisition channels, is recommended. Richie also stresses continuous ad campaign monitoring, suggesting tools like North Beam for effective optimization.

Affiliate Marketing and Product Seeding

With an Instagram following of over 102k, She’s Birdie has effectively harnessed the power of affiliate marketing and product seeding. The company capitalizes on these strategies through its She’s Birdie Brand Ambassador Program, which attracts a network of mini influencers and marketers. Ambassadors benefit from a 10% commission on sales they generate and a 15% discount for their families and friends, which they can offer through a unique code. Richie points out that product seeding is among their most successful and stress-free strategies, having only two requirements for influencers: 

• More than 10k followers
• Mission-aligned individuals

Richie has found that the mission-driven nature of She’s Birdie resonates widely, attracting partnerships ranging from small influencers to Netflix actors. This broad appeal is largely due to the compelling, purpose-driven narrative of the brand, which inspires authentic endorsements.

Achieving Growth Beyond Ads

Beyond advertising, enhancing profitability and scaling revenue involves increasing customer lifetime value and acquiring new customers. She’s Birdie is committed to this, constantly exploring innovative strategies to surpass their growth targets. Here are three effective strategies for early-stage, newly launched, or struggling e-commerce stores looking to boost their performance:

Offer Testing

As She’s Birdie prepares to expand their product line, they are eager to employ offer testing to optimize their upcoming releases.The strategy includes upselling, limited-time offers, and bundling to increase transaction values and sales numbers. Richie recognizes the potential in offer testing but stresses caution; poorly designed offers can harm even the best products by failing to meet customer expectations, potentially damaging the brand. Thus, experimenting with various offers, assessing their impact, and refining them based on these insights is crucial for sales enhancement.

Omnichannel Experience

Omnichannel is a business strategy designed to deliver a seamless shopping experience across all channels. Adapting this approach is essential in ensuring a cohesive customer journey and consistent brand representation at every touchpoint. This is achieved by regularly reviewing all platforms that sell or promote the brand's products, ensuring they uphold a uniform design, detailed presentation, and consistent customer experience.
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Site Speed for PDPs

‍An engaging product page features rich designs and multiple images to attract buyers, but these can slow load times, risking visitor drop-off. To mitigate this, Richie and his team have optimized their website's speed through the help of Nostra to ensure a seamless user experience and propel their growth. He recommends other e-commerce brands do the same, emphasizing that quick load times are essential for maintaining visitor engagement and boosting sales. This is particularly important for product detail pages, as they are typically the first to be reached after clicking an ad.
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Furthermore, slow site speeds not only impacts engagement and conversions but also affects your site’s SEO ranking. Google penalizes slow-loading pages, resulting in reduced search visibility for your store. 

Building a Foundation for Sustainable Growth

Achieving sustainable growth goes beyond simply acquiring customers. It demands a multifaceted strategy that encompasses powerful storytelling, tactical advertising, and the enhancement of the customer journey. If ensuring long-term growth is top priority to your eCom store consider working with Nostra, we streamline your website optimization ensuring the fastest load times, freeing up your time to focus on broader business objectives. Let Nostra help your growth initiatives, book a demo today.