Finding the gift buyer

The Challenge

When we took over the account, we faced a "cold start". Blue Elephant hadn't advertised on Meta for years, which meant we had zero historical data to lean on.

We started with our tried-and-tested strategies, but quickly realised that they weren't working for this particular audience. A major challenge was to identify the buyer. Often it's not the parent shopping, but an aunt, grandparent or friend looking for a christening gift. Targeting only 'parents of young children' was not enough. We needed a way to capture gift givers at the right time, without burning budget on the wrong people.

The Solution

We decided to scrap the old plan and start again with a complete technical and strategic reboot.

• Technical Optimisation: We secured tracking and optimised product flows to ensure that Meta's algorithms got the right information about which products were shown to whom.

• Data-driven targeting: Instead of guessing who was an aunt or grandma, we built a funnel structure. We used inspirational adverts to capture broad interest, then used retargeting and dynamic product ads (DPA) to target those who showed concrete purchase intent.

• Creative Testing: We launched extensive image and video testing to see what made the gift buyer stop. By letting the data determine the visual language, we were able to reverse the trend.