Overview
Outer, the direct-to-consumer furniture company that makes superior, weather-resistant sofas and outdoor accessories was named the fastest growing brand in the United States in 2020. Outer was introduced to The Social Savannah via MarketerHire and within 3 weeks of starting, they were scaling new paid digital campaigns.
I’ve been working with the Outer team for over a year now, helping them continually expand their brand by making sure that their digital ad campaigns are creative, consistent and noteworthy. You can check out their ad library with the ad creative my team and I have created here.
It’s been one of the proudest moments of my career to say I helped Outer go from a brand that came to market in 2019 to summer of 2020, in the middle of the quarantine, to being named the fastest growing DTC brand in the U.S.
"MarketerHire helped us identify a super rockstar talent, Savannah. Not only was she really talented but the culture fit and communication was really on point."
Jiake Liu
Co-Founder & CEO, Outer
Increase In Google Ad Spend
Increase in Facebook Ad Spend
QoQ Revenue Growth
QoQ Increase In Site Traffic
The Challenge
Outer had just come to market their first product in 2019, having been featured on SharkTank showcasing their signature outdoor sofa that is well worth the investment. Although the air time created an enormous spike in site traffic, there wasn’t a single purchase conversion resulting from the TV spot. This made it clear to the Outer team that they needed a full-funnel marketing strategy to nurture their new leads, and scale their paid efforts.
“We were still a really small team at that point,” said Corinne Crockett, VP of Marketing at Outer. “It was only myself and our community manager who made up the entire marketing team, and we were 10x-ing the business. We needed help scaling our digital campaigns to match the explosive organic growth. That's where MarketerHire [and Savannah] stepped in.”
Their main product offering, a weather-proof outdoor sofa sectional, has one of the highest AOVs in eCommerce, making the sales funnel much more complex and lengthy. In order to establish brand trust through digital ads, Outer had to continually put out high-quality ad creatives and nurture the consumer through the entire funnel from prospecting to retargeting.
In the midst of the pandemic and the beginning of “outdoor season,” home renovation projects were all the rage. People were spending more time at home, searching for ways to make the most of the circumstances and outdoor furniture became a hot commodity, and in-turn very competitive industry.
Outer was just starting out with Google Ads, having virtually spent $0 on the platform before. Knowing the nature of furniture and the heavy competition on Google it would be no easy task to scale.
The Results
Using my years of advertising experience and marketing knowledge to deliberately scale digital ads, Outer experienced immense growth and more than favorable results, even during the height of the pandemic. Within 6 months of working together, we were seeing ad spend growth of 10x on Facebook and 100x on Google.
“Working with Savannah feels like she’s just an extension of our team but with a lot more experience she can bring from other brands.”Jiake Liu
Co-Founder & CEO, Outer
Outer experienced a whopping 659% Q/Q (quarter of quarter) growth after I scaled their ad spend. Taking advantage of the spike in demand during COVID, I was able to scale Outer’s Google Ads campaigns 100x, making it one of Outer’s largest revenue channels, and even beating keyword bids by top furniture brands like Pottery Barn, Home Depot, and even Wayfair within 2 months.
On the other hand, the growth on Facebook can be attributed to a vigorous creative testing cycle that me and my creative team piloted for Outer. Leveraging DCT (Dynamic Creative Testing) within Facebook’s platform to optimize best-performing creatives and learning from the results, I tested a variety of ad creative formats to ultimately determine which resonated best with the audience. I was able to pinpoint the best performing demographic from creative testing and create dynamic personalized ads for those regions in the US where the purchase intent was higher -- Texas, Florida, and Georgia.
The variation in creative allowed us to learn from and improve our ads each week, gathering data from best-performers (what worked and what didn’t) thus allowing us to increase overall ROAS by almost 4X and simultaneously decreasing CPP.
Digital trends are ever-changing so, that’s why I continued to test on a weekly basis — everything from UGC unboxing experiences to product animations to static lifestyle imagery.
“Savannah has been an enormous help to our success during this time of hyper-growth.”As UGC (user-generated content) becomes more and more efficient for eCommerce brands, whether offering a $15 water bottle or $5,000 outdoor couch, it has become the focus for Outer to work with content creators to produce organic experiences that I convert into ads. My creative team and I generate concepts for Outer’s content creators to follow.
This growth journey with Outer is far from over, and I’m certainly thrilled to continue working with them through 2021 on Facebook, Google, and Pinterest. To read more about the success between Outer’s and The Social Savannah, click here.
By The Numbers
Scaled Facebook Spend 10x
Scaled Google Spend 100x
659% Quarter Over Quarter Growth
17x Increase in Traffic From Paid Search