01Where it started
The shop had a good organic base: a strong social following that brought orders even without advertising. But from 2023 revenue was falling. Between September 2023 and August 2024 it took 27% less than the twelve months before; in the first eight months of 2024, 37% less. Advertising meant boosted Instagram posts: lots of clicks for a few cents, no purchases recorded. Money went out without knowing how much came in.
02What I did
- Measurement first. Purchases and the value of every order recorded on Meta. From then on every euro spent has its revenue next to it.
- Account rebuilt from scratch, in September 2024. Three campaigns with three jobs: sales to people who did not know the brand yet, bringing back people who had already visited the site, and new-arrival alerts with the "remind me" button.
- Making the brand known. Before every new collection, part of the budget to show the name and the clothes; then the sales campaigns on the collection.
- TikTok next to Meta, from January 2025. In some months it brought more orders than Meta.
- A monthly report on real revenue. Meta and TikTok spend and purchases set against the shop's revenue, not only against what the platforms say.
03What worked, and what didn't
- The decline stopped right away: in the first twelve months the online shop's revenue grew 15%, after a year at −27%.
- Returning customers grew too: revenue from people who had bought before went from €186,000 to €223,000 in a year.
- The average order rose from €56 to €71.
- November 2024: 518 purchases from Meta, €4.55 each.
- January 2026: little stock, campaigns paused for several days, the worst month of the period.
- From January to May 2026 a purchase from Meta cost about twice as much as the year before: more spend, lower return.
- The online shop did not record well where each order came from: to measure the effect of advertising I had to compare revenue with the trend before.
04Results and source
Revenue from the online shop (total sales per month) and, for the earlier years, from the client's accounting software. Spend and purchases from Meta Ads Manager and TikTok Ads. Meta and TikTok together claim €455,742 of sales, but they also count orders that would have come from social media anyway. So the number I use is a different one: the revenue above what the shop would have made if it had kept losing 27% a year. That is about €290,000 over 21 months, €5.80 for every euro of advertising. Even in the most cautious case, as if without advertising the shop had stayed flat instead of falling, it is €102,000 more.