Hoxton Macs
How we beat the pandemic demand surge in 2021 with the exact same ad spend.The headline figures…
- 80% Conversion rate improvement
- 60x Social ROAS
- 40% Growth in revenue
Background
Hoxton Macs, from humble beginnings in 2014, are aiming to be the biggest and best seller of refurbished Apple products in the world. To date, they’ve sold more than 40,000 Apple devices, all whilst maintaining 5-star customer satisfaction.
The Challenge
Maintaining performance that would compare to the incredible highs of 2020.
We’ll probably never see another year like 2020 for ecommerce — it was very much a case of the right place, right time. Any YoY figures in 2021 are incredibly skewed for many retailers.
It was particularly kind to the refurbished MacBook market. As many companies sent staff to work from home where possible, business boomed as new devices were required for the home office.
With a strong surge in demand in 2020, the challenge for Hoxton Macs was maintaining or beating 2020 lockdown revenue performance. With a relative fall in demand, this felt either impossible, or at least very difficult, and would likely require a hugely increase in advertising spend.
The Work
We’ve used our full suite of services for Hoxton Macs including intent-capturing SEO & PPC, and demand-generating paid social advertising.
The task was simply to do better than an unprecedented year in which the entire working landscape changed. Would we be able to maintain the revenue seen in 2020?
The answer, it turns out, is a resounding yes.
We saw an immediate upturn in performance when taking over the Google Ads account in March 2021.
What followed was an incredibly successful launch of social media ads via Facebook & Instagram — a tactic which was brand new to the business opening a whole new avenue of revenue.
We added SEO later, with a view to deliver a long-term, sustainable traffic source to the business.
The Results
Revenue increase of 40% vs 2020 during the months May to August.
It’s fair to say we exceeded our own expectations on this one! From May onwards, we’ve seen a healthy increase in overall revenue figures, comfortably beating 2020 results by >40%.
To make things even better, we’ve done this without increasing ad spend at all. We’ve worked hard on the account to find the highest intent traffic possible. We’ve maintained around 8000 users via Google’s paid clicks, but our traffic has converted almost 80% better. This can make a monumental difference to an ecommerce sites profit margins – it’s MORE sales on the SAME marketing spend!
Take August 2021 vs August 2020, we achieved a 1.7% conversion rate vs a 0.6% conversion rate previously. With our help Hoxton Macs achieved nearly 3.5x as much revenue than during the same month of the previous year via Google Ads.
And let’s not forget the paid social campaign! In its very first month, it generated over £80,000 in revenue at a ROAS of nearly 60x. Yes, 60 ROAS! That’s what can happen when you ride the wave of Apple properly!
The Future
Hoxton Macs now have considerable market share in the refurbished macbook industry, what’s next?
With Hoxton Macs, we’ll be looking to maintain these high standards in the short term, whilst maximising profitability in the long run. As advertising costs continue to rise, SEO will become more and more important.
We’re keeping a close eye on competitors for Hoxton Macs, and will be organising holiday and seasonal campaigns for the business. Want to be our next case study?
