Case Study:
New Markets Validation through Strategic Analysis and Creative Strategy

Results
Achieved

+ 0 €
Investment Gained in Crowdfunding Campaign
+ 0 %
Increased Orders 2023 YoY
+ 0
New Customers Acquired in Q1
  • STRATEGIC ANALYSIS: CUSTOMERS, SURVEYS, MARKETS
  • VALIDATION OF NEW MARKETS
  • PLANNING Q4 AND 2023
  • CREATIVITY OPTIMIZATION AND SCALING

The Project

Small Giants is an Italian company that promotes sustainable insect-based alternative proteins, making them accessible to Western culture through snacks such as crackers, rusks, burger mixes, and many other products

The company has been mentioned several times in such publications as Sole24 Ore, Financial Times, Wired and many others.

???? July 27, 2023 closed an investment round on Mamacrowd raising more than €800,000 from more than 490 new members, with a pre-money valuation of €3.7 million

The Goals

We were approached by Edward, co-founder of Small Giants in January 2021 with the goal of:

– Increase sales volumes both on the online store

– Support offline sales in the UK as they were present in the Sainsbury’s chain

Challenges & Starting Situation

  1. We started by putting focus on the UK market, as that was what was asked of us, especially for the offline part.

    However, this also proved to be a great challenge, as the investment was limited to one country, without taking into account other potential markets.
  2. The other challenge, probably the biggest, is being able to generally sell products that are totally against Western culture. In fact, in Europe in 2021, the consumption of insects as an alternative source of protein was totally new and never considered.

    We needed to structure a communication strategy that touches on points that will stimulate users’ curiosity to try something new, leveraging the benefits of consuming these products.

STRATEGY - ACTION PLAN

PHASE X - ADV IN UK AND SENTIMENT ANALYSIS

We started to push products in the UK market for both the offline and online part on the ecommerce.

Leaving aside the offline part, online sales at the UK level proved to be very difficult due to very reluctant market to the product with a sentiment in the comments under the ads 99% negative, combined with a CPM and CPC too high per average cart (about 38€)

PHASE 0 - STEP BACK + STRATEGIC ANALYSIS

We realized it was time to phase back, go back and analyze the market by doing a deep analysis on surveys done, consumption habits, propensity to try such foods, etc.



We thus realized that:

  • There were many more customers in Italy interested in this product than in the UK market
  • There are other countries in Europe to go and validate

PHASE 1 (THE REAL ONE) - EUROPE TEST

We thus carried out a rapid validation test throughout Europe. We took advantage of the Weglot app and a few days we were able to have the site translated into multiple languages unknown to us.

At the creative level, we went and took the best historical Italian and English creativity and “shot” it all over Europe.

The goal was to validate new countries, not to go for profit.
Here are Google Analytics results on the European test (click to see details)

small_giants_google_analytics_countries

PHASE 2 - PLANNING Q4 AND 2023

After conducting a survey of all customers that gave us several insights, including new product ideas & more buying brakes.

We have planned launch periods for new promotions and new products, thanks to the Ecommerce calendar

small_giants_calendario_ecommerce

PHASE 3 - OPTIMIZATION AND SCALING CREATIVITY

Bi-weekly we would go to conduct creativity tests, report all results on a shared table called Creativity Report

small_giants_report_creatività

Thanks to this procedure, internal and external content creators always knew in real time what was working and what was not working.

We would then share insights on possible iterations to be made to further improve the KPIs of winning creatives.

PHASE 4 - DASHBOARD LOOKER STUDIO INTEGRATED WOOCOMMERCE

Through the API integrations of Woocommerce, Facebook and Google Ads, we developed a dashboard to monitor the progress of sales and return on investment on a day-to-day basis.

In this way, owners can get an overall view at a glance of how performance is going, given all acquisition channels

(click to see details)

small_giants_dashboard_analytics

Here Are Some of the Winning Creatives

small_giants_creative_2
small_giants_creative_1
small_giants_creative_3

Testimonial from Francesco, the Co-Founder

We had someone we could trust by our side.

We had an experience with another agency, but the performance wasn’t going well in terms of sales growth. However, working with Marco’s team, we managed to see an increase in sales volumes.
We experienced solid growth in our eCommerce, and at the same time, we gained a better understanding of our buyer persona who buys our product.
Thanks to this, we continuously tested and experimented with new creatives, audiences, and markets, figuring out what worked and what didn’t.

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