Arthouse: Meta Paid Social at Christmas (2024)
The Charity
ARTHOUSE Unlimited are a charity dedicated to showcasing the artistic talents of adults living with diverse learning and physical disabilities. Their sales help provide new and inclusive opportunities to the people they support.
The Brief
Having never run any Paid Media campaigns before, ARTHOUSE Unlimited had ambitious targets to increase their sales revenue, grow reach, and demonstrate a positive ROAS (Return on Ad Spend). All during their most important time of the year: Christmas.
ARTHOUSE Unlimited were looking to grow the direct online retail side of the business, with the most important (and competitive) time of the year for gifting in sight. As they had not run Paid advertising before, this was a significant next step, with high stakes to succeed.
Moreover, they had recently migrated to Shopify, and needed initial technical support around tracking and setting up consent management.
Our Approach
With no prior Paid advertising and no historical data to guide us, this campaign was a true ground-up test. We proposed Meta Ads as the best option, given that the charity had a strong organic following, and because of the storytelling strengths of Social compared to Search.
Our strategy encompassed several key steps:
- Linked Shopify with Meta pixel for conversion optimisation and automatic feed integration.
- Tested Shopping ads (catalogue/feed) against standard campaigns.
- Ran comparative tests of product-led, artists-led and Christmas-led ads.
- Focused on strong remarketing audiences to build learnings initially, before exploring prospecting (including lookalikes and interests).
- Strategically weighted spend to align with key times in the run up to Christmas.
Results
Through an extensive test-and-learn approach across ad formats, creative variations, and audience targeting, we exceeded revenue targets and validated Paid Social as a powerful longer-term growth channel.
The campaign achieved its target revenue a week before the peak period. By its conclusion, we had exceeded our target sales revenue by 29%:
We found that the standard ads performed the best overall, but catalogue/feed ads still played a key role in remarketing. The content pieces that achieved the most engagement were Meet the Artist videos, which conveyed the ARTHOUSE Unlimited ‘story’ most effectively, a key priority of the strategy.
We reached over 300,000 users across Meta platforms, helping establish a halo effect that saw non-Paid channels improve and will continue to reap benefits over future campaigns.
“We approached the Christmas 2024 Meta Ads campaign with clear goals and a strong sense of what we wanted to achieve, and the results exceeded expectations. Not only did we surpass our sales target, we reached a much wider audience who really engaged with our artists and their work. Working with Uprise Up was a fantastic experience. The team brought thoughtful strategy, clear communication and real expertise throughout. It’s been a strong foundation for growing our digital marketing approach.”
Marketing Manager at ARTHOUSE Unlimited