How Canvas Cutter Got a 2171% Return on Ad Spend with Blaze Digital
Category: article
Apr 29th, 2022 by Keith Worrall
Modified Apr 29th, 2022 at 9:47 AM
Outdoor Business: Marketing Case Study
How Canvas Cutter Got a 2171% Return on Ad Spend with Blaze Digital
Salt Lake City, UT (April 28, 2022) – “Today’s digital marketing platforms provide more avenues than ever to engage and communicate with customers,” says Blaze Digital Solutions owner, CEO and strategist, EJ Saunders, a lifelong outdoorsman who makes it his business to help outdoor companies with great products develop sustainable and adaptable marketing strategies that grow sales and revenues. “But success in any digital campaign requires key elements that are in order, with messaging that’s compelling, consistent, economical, and on-brand.”
Case Study Background
Canvas Cutter makes premium canvas bedrolls for any outdoor adventure and sells them direct to consumers. No competing company matches the quality or comfort of Canvas Cutter’s products. Like so many other outdoor companies, coming out of 2020, Canvas Cutter was dealing with supply-chain challenges and was also facing the reality of trade show cancelations. How would they launch their new product, the Summit ultralight bedroll?
“We had to take a different approach because of the new world landscape,” says Saunders. “The launch would happen solely online and rested heavily on our team to execute and perform as well or better than previous campaigns that enjoyed significant offline backing. We gladly took to the challenge and got to work. The first thing we did was set up a giveaway. The giveaway was done with select partners that had big audiences to help spread the word.”
Pre-Launch Campaign
Saunders continues. “We took a bunch of photos of our latest approved Summit prototype in the field, created a giveaway landing page and built ads and other creative. Then about a month before our official launch, we started blasting the pre-launch campaign giveaway via email, social, and other digital avenues with the goal of collecting the email addresses of everyone who entered. The prize package was a Summit, a BAKCOU Storm eBike, and eBike Cargo Trailer. Because of supply-chain issues, we were only able to get 500 of these new bed rolls, but the goal was to sell out and back order enough for another even bigger order. By the end of the giveaway, we ended up with 316 entries – all of which made substantial purchases to get entered. This was a quality crowd because once a buyer always a buyer. Not only did we build this list but we also created a custom audience in Facebook and Google Analytics of everyone who had gone to the giveaway page and everyone who had engaged with our ads and watched our videos on social media. This audience grew to over 10,000 people, each of whom we retargeted during the official launch.”
The Product Launch
Now that the Blaze Team had its email list and audiences built – not to mention all the buzz that was generated from the giveaway by both companies – it was time to kick off the official announcement. “We lined up a couple emails and created a few more ads,” Saunders says. “We kicked off the official launch announcement just days after the giveaway ended. We emailed everyone on our list and gave them first dibs in getting their hands on this new bedroll. Then, shortly after, we launched the paid campaign and organic social media posts. Because of the work we did beforehand, the launch campaign ended up being a massive retargeting campaign – basically just letting people know that we were taking orders, as they were already familiar with the product. We prioritized the people that engaged with us in the giveaway first, and then released it to the rest of the list after.”
Saunders says whenever you can warm up an audience and get people talking about what you are about to release, it creates an excitement that results in people waiting with cash in hand. The result of the entire campaign was a 2171% return on ad spend. “This was one of the best and most profitable launches Canvas Cutter has ever done,” says Canvas Cutter owner, Seth Larson.
Of course, there are a variety of fundamental tools that should be in place to maximize returns from any product launch or marketing campaign. It gets back to our earlier point about having messaging that’s compelling, consistent, economical, and on-brand. Your website, sales and landing pages, product pages, ad creative, eblast content, blog post content, lead magnets, social media posts, affiliate and sponsored content, industry communications, and podcast content are a few things that, when done well, can multiply returns.
Want to talk more about marketing for your unique business? Click here and schedule your free 30-minute Growth Audit and Assessment with the Blaze Digital Team today.