What do you need from us to get started?

Access to your ad accounts, analytics and store, and a call to understand your margins and goals. We handle the setup from there.

Do you work with brands outside India?

Yes. We run campaigns for brands worldwide, across markets, currencies and languages, and plan around your customers and time zones.

Digital marketing case study

How a D2C food brand grew to 3.4x return on ad spend in two quarters

Northwind Pantry sells small-batch sauces, spices and pantry boxes online to the US, UK and EU. Ad costs were climbing faster than sales. We rebuilt how they found, won and kept customers across every paid and owned channel.

Industry: D2C food & beverage
Timeline: 6 months
Services: SEO, Social, Paid ads, Email

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Return on ad spendwas 1.6x: 3.4x
Cost per new customer$58 → $34: −41%
Monthly revenue from marketing$118k → $286k: +142%
Revenue from emailwas 9%: 27%

Overview

Project overview

Northwind Pantry came to us with a loyal but small audience and an ad account that was getting more expensive every month. Organic reach was low, most buyers ordered once, and nobody could say which channel was actually paying for itself.

Business: Online store, Shopify
Markets: US, UK, EU
Monthly ad budget: $85k
Our team: Strategist, 2 media buyers, SEO lead, designer

Our goal

Grow profitably: lower the cost of every new customer, then turn more of them into repeat buyers.

The challenge

Why growth had stopped paying for itself

Northwind Pantry was spending more every month to stand still. Our audit and twelve customer interviews showed five reasons why.

See what we did

Every new customer cost more01 / 05

Key finding

$58

to win each new customer

Cost per new customer, by quarter ($)

A year beforeWhen we started

Broad-match search and lookalike audiences were buying clicks from people who were never going to spend $40 on a pantry box.
- Broad keywords bought irrelevant clicks
- Ads chased cheap, low-margin orders
- No one switched off losing campaigns
Every new customer cost more01 / 05
Key finding
$58
to win each new customer
Cost per new customer, by quarter ($)
39
44
51
58
A year beforeWhen we started
Google Ads, Meta and the store each reported a different revenue number, so budget followed whichever report looked best that week.
- Browser tracking missed many sales
- No profit data in the ad platforms
- Budget moved on gut feel
Nobody knew which channel worked02 / 05
Key finding
3
tools, three different revenue figures
Almost all organic visits came from people already searching for Northwind Pantry by name. Recipe and product searches went to competitors.
- No content for recipe searches
- Slow pages held rankings back
- Few links from food writers
Search only found people who knew the brand03 / 05
Key finding
84%
of organic visits were brand searches
Organic sessions a month (K)
16
17
18
18
A year beforeWhen we started
Product pages took 5.8 seconds to load on mobile, and checkout asked for an account before it showed the cost of shipping.
- Slow pages on mobile
- Forced sign-up before checkout
- Shipping costs hidden until the end
Checkout lost buyers at the last step04 / 05
Key finding
5.8s
to load a product page on mobile
Site conversion rate (%)
2.4
2.2
2
1.9
A year beforeWhen we started
“It wanted an account before it would even show me shipping, so I left.”
Shopper, 41, research interview
Email was one monthly newsletter sent to everyone. Nothing reminded a happy customer to reorder when their jar ran out.
- One newsletter for everyone
- No reorder or win-back emails
- No reason to come back
Customers bought once and never returned05 / 05
Key finding
71%
of customers never ordered again
Repeat purchase rate (%)
34
32
30
29
A year beforeWhen we started
“I loved the chilli oil, then forgot what the shop was called.”
Customer, 29, research interview

Strategy

What we did, channel by channel

Every channel was rebuilt around one question: does it bring in customers at a profit?

Paid search

Split brand, product and recipe searches into separate campaigns, added 1,400 negative keywords and moved bidding to profit, not revenue.

Return on ad spend

1.8x4.1x

Paid social

Replaced studio shots with creator-led cooking clips, tested 6 new ideas every fortnight and switched off losing ads within 72 hours.

Cost per new customer

$71$38

SEO & content

Built a recipe hub around the products, fixed speed and crawl issues and earned links from food writers in three countries.

Organic sessions a month

18K51K

Email & CRM

Welcome, browse, cart, post-purchase, reorder, win-back and VIP flows, each tailored to what the customer bought.

Share of revenue from email

9%27%

Results

Results that made an impact

Six months in, every channel was cheaper to run and the customers it found came back more often.

Organic sessions / month: 51K; +182%was 18K
Return on ad spend: 3.4x; +113%was 1.6x
Site conversion rate: 3.6%; +89%was 1.9%
Repeat customers: 44%; +52%was 29%

Social media campaigns

Short cooking clips from real customers and creators replaced studio shots, and cut paid social cost per customer from $71 to $38.

See the campaigns

More revenue from marketing every month$118k in March, $286k in September: +$168k
Ad spend over the same periodRevenue grew more than six times as fast: +22%
Six-month value of a new customerUp from $61, thanks to email and repeat orders: $96

Timeline

What changed, and when

Results don't arrive all at once. This is how the six months unfolded, so you know what to expect.

Month 1

We could see what worked

Tracking fixed. For the first time, every channel's real profit was visible, and $9k a month of wasted spend was switched off.

Month 2

Cost per customer fell

Restructured search and new social ads brought the cost of a new customer from $58 to $44.

Month 3

More visitors bought

Faster pages and guest checkout lifted the conversion rate from 1.9% to 3.1%.

Month 6

Growth paid for itself

Email drove 27% of revenue, organic traffic was up 182% and budget could rise safely.

Who it's for

Is this right for your business?

This kind of programme works best for brands that sell online and already spend on ads, but can't say what each channel earns.

Book a free discovery call

A good fit if

You sell online, directly to customers
Ad costs are rising faster than sales
You can't say which channel pays for itself
Most customers buy once and don't come back

What you get

A full audit of tracking, ads, site and email
A named strategist and a fortnightly call
New ad creative, tested every two weeks
A live dashboard showing profit by channel
A monthly report in plain language

Process

How we delivered it

Five steps from the first audit to a programme that runs and improves itself, over six months.

1
Audit
Tracking, ad accounts, site speed and every channel's real profit.
2
Measure
Server-side tracking and one attribution view everyone trusts.
3
Rebuild
Campaigns restructured by intent, new creative, faster checkout.
4
Retain
Seven email flows segmented by what people bought.
5
Scale
Budget rules tied to return on ad spend, reviewed every fortnight.

Tools we used

GA4
Google Tag Manager
Google Ads
Meta Ads
TikTok Ads
Search Console
Ahrefs
Klaviyo
Shopify
Looker Studio

Client voice

In the founder's words

What Northwind Pantry's co-founder says about the six months since the rebuild.

Sample

“For the first time we know exactly what a customer costs us and what they're worth. We spend more on ads than we did a year ago and make far more money from it.”

Hannah OkaforCo-founder, Northwind Pantry

FAQ

Digital marketing questions

Straight answers for brands planning to grow online.

Paid search and social can improve within weeks once tracking and campaigns are fixed. SEO and email build over three to six months. Northwind Pantry's cost per customer fell within the first two months; organic traffic grew over six.

It depends on your margins. A brand with 60% margins can profit at 2x; one with 30% margins needs far more. We set targets from your real profit per order, not an industry average.

The ones your customers already use to find products like yours. We start with an audit of what is working today, then add channels one at a time, each with its own budget and target.

Your ad accounts stay in your name and you pay the platforms directly. We manage the campaigns, and you see every change and result in a shared dashboard.

Server-side conversion tracking, GA4 and a single attribution view, with your margin data fed back to the ad platforms. Every channel is judged on profit, not clicks.

Tell us what you’re building.

Share a few details and we will come back to you to plan the next step.

What happens next

1
You share your idea
A few lines on your goals, users and timeline are enough to start.
2
We talk it through
We discuss your goals on a call and suggest an approach.
3
You get a proposal
We follow up with a proposal and clear next steps.

Project details

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How a D2C food brand grew to 3.4x return on ad spend in two quarters

Project overview

Our goal

Why growth had stopped paying for itself

Every new customer cost more

Nobody knew which channel worked

Search only found people who knew the brand

Checkout lost buyers at the last step

Customers bought once and never returned

What we did, channel by channel

Paid search

Paid social

SEO & content

Email & CRM

Results that made an impact

Social media campaigns

What changed, and when

We could see what worked

Cost per customer fell

More visitors bought

Growth paid for itself

Is this right for your business?

A good fit if

What you get

How we delivered it

Audit

Measure

Rebuild

Retain

Scale

Tools we used

More digital marketing work

Related articles

Services behind this project

In the founder's words

Digital marketing questions

01How long does digital marketing take to show results?

02What is a good return on ad spend?

03Which channels should my business use?

04Do you manage the ad spend or do we?

05How do you measure what's working?

06What do you need from us to get started?

07Do you work with brands outside India?

Tell us what you’re building.

Project details

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