BEACHBODY
The US fitness brand implemented Instagram and Facebook campaign optimizations to lower acquisition costs by 30% and improve reach and conversions during the valuable week between Christmas and New Year’s.
Beachbody offers on-demand exercise programs, nutrition plans and a full community of support to help people get fit, get healthier and lose weight without signing up for an expensive gym membership.
decrease in cost per acquisition, compared to same time the previous year
increase in subscriptions, compared to same time the previous year
Beachbody sought to make the “Q5” 2018 time period between Christmas and New Year’s Day — when inventory is cheaper and people are likely to set annual fitness goals — more profitable by driving subscriptions to its workout streaming platform, Beachbody on Demand, at a lower cost per acquisition.
In partnership with its agency, SocialCode, Beachbody shared its Q5 Instagram and Facebook campaigns with a broad audience of US and UK adults 18–54. The team created and targeted lookalike audiences based on lists from Beachbody’s customer relationship management (CRM) system, to focus on potential subscription customers. The team based the audiences on new Beachbody users, occasional users and “superstar” users, and delivered tailored messages to these multiple groups.
Using the automatic placements feature, the team delivered the ads to Instagram feed, Facebook News Feed, Messenger and Audience Network, depending on which placement was most cost-efficient in driving the best results at any given time.
Beachbody and SocialCode initially developed multiple video ads and 2 photo ads for its Q5 campaign. Upon realizing the strength of the photo ads’ performance as the week progressed, the team quickly added 4 additional photo ads. By the end of the campaign period, photo ads accounted for half the overall spend and drove 30% lower cost per acquisition than video assets.
Beachbody measured campaign performance directly in Ads Manager and determined success by measuring against daily cost per order goals throughout the campaign. By implementing a mix of Instagram and SocialCode best practices for bidding, campaign setup, audience strategy and budget optimization, Beachbody improved year-over-year performance for this important sales period.
These best practices included implementing lowest cost conversion bidding with a bid cap, grouping retargeting and prospecting audiences into separate campaigns to allow for more control over the budget split, testing multiple lookback windows (15-day, 30-day, etc.) for retargeting and bidding more aggressively against the shortest lookback window to reach higher-intent audiences.
Beachbody’s Q5 campaign, spanning December 26, 2018–January 1, 2019, reached a larger audience and increased conversions at a lower cost than previous campaigns, delivering:
30% decrease in cost per acquisition, year over year
72% increase in subscriptions, year over year
