HappyEarth is a startup from crowdfunding in Taiwan. Their main business is selling eco-friendly hand-written notebooks. In 2017, they made a decision: ENTER the US MARKET!
But they have some problems…
The cofounder (Hong Brown) discussed the US market situation with me after they launch their products to US markets for a couple of weeks. He had no idea why their marketing efforts were almost in vain.
This product is emphasis on environmental protection so it is made out of recycled material. The main idea is to encourage people to reused one-side blank paper.
Research
I interviewed three native speakers. The sense of environmental protection strongly depended on personal belief. However, all of them thought it is difficult to carry out especially for recycling.
In a word, if you visit five places, you can find five different kinds of the method for waste-sorting.
In addition, according to EPA, the US recycling rate in 2014 was only 34.6%. Compared to other countries, the US is placed the latter class.
Based on these information, I redefined the market landscape and focused on versatility. The feature of the eco-product temporarily became a subsidiary point. I tried to teach users studying from common usage into real green way.
A/B Testing
Facebook Ads Targeting V.S. Non-targeting
When using Facebook for targeting, here was the detail setting:
Buyer Profile: Green Living
Interests: eco-friendly
To test the performance of our targeting, I ran A/B testing, and controlled group with all the same settings (all US people). Here were the results:
When targeting users via our criteria, it not only resulted in better watch rate of ad videos, also watched longer on the Canvas video (Facebook interactive full-screen Video ads, see here), all contributed to a better CPC and purchase rate.
Facebook Ads Eco-film V.S. Versatile-film
In December 2017, our team made a new film in order to focus on the initial idea: Recycling.
I compared with other period performance. The result indicated:
It meant that users preferred the product versatility to the eco-product even if they were considered themselves as green-living people.
The performance in three months was
- Facebook ads CVC $0.13-0.25, CTR 4.5%-5.5%, CVR 5%
- Sell-through rate over 80%
- Fans of English speaker increased 762 people; fans of European non-English speakers increased 44 people.
Conclusion
There were two vitally important factors that decided this product marketing: Target audience and ads content.
Only if green-living people and the product versatility operate together will they boost the sales funnel.
Besides, I overhauled official Web site (https://happyearthnotebook.com), redefined the product’s feature on Amazon and created a fan-sharing page.
All I want to do was point out the affordance of this product and set up an appropriate conceptual model for users.
About the process of optimizing website, please see HappyEarth UI Optimization.
