Crio Bru, which takes its name from the rarest and finest cacao bean in the world, the Criollo bean, is an innovative DTC brand that acquires cacao beans at a fair price and cultivated sustainably, then roasts them and grinds them, so that customers can brew 100% cacao at home in a coffee maker or a french press. Crio Bru cacao is keto, paleo, non-GMO, and kosher.
Cameron Archibald, the owner and CEO of Crio Bru, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and, before joining Crio Bru, had a successful career as a brand manager at General Mills culminating in running a $475 Million portfolio of brands. He’s been the CEO of Crio Bru since February of 2018, and first began working with 4080 Marketing in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Cameron Archibald, the owner and CEO of Crio Bru, holds an MBA from Harvard Business School and, before joining Crio Bru, had a successful career as a brand manager at General Mills culminating in running a $475 Million portfolio of brands. He’s been the CEO of Crio Bru since February of 2018, and first began working with 4080 Marketing in the fourth quarter of 2020.
Offering ground cacao beans for brewing in coffee makers and French presses is innovation in a new space. In the beginning, Crio Bru products were offered in retail stores, but the innovation was such that consumers needed more education than a retail environment could offer. This was holding Crio Bru back from the growth it needed.
Going direct-to-consumer gives Crio Bru the opportunity to speak directly to consumers, but reaching the explosive growth potential inherent in brewed cacao wasn’t happening. Archibald had some success running Facebook ads in-house, but believed much more growth was possible – if he could only find the right partner to help.
The search was frustrating. “A lot of the fundamentals weren’t being addressed by Facebook ad agencies,” Archibald says. “Things like knowing your consumer. Knowing their needs. Knowing the psychographic information about what motivates them. And what motivates them to purchase, and what is their path to purchase – I wasn’t hearing that.”
Archibald (like many) heard something else – that brands who run their own Facebook ads are usually happier with the results than those who have an agency run the ads for them.
Archibald wanted the expertise of a Facebook ads agency. He found fast talk instead.
“Within the Facebook ads industry right now, there are a lot of hacks, a lot of snake oil salesmen, a lot of get-rich-quick kind of schemes. They just have that feel of ‘Oh I know everything, let me tell you.’”
But in working with them, Archibald often discovered he knew more about Facebook Ads than the supposed experts – before he consulted with 4080 Marketing.
“Making that jump to using outside help was a big decision for us strategically,” Archibald says. “But we felt as though we were ready to take it to the next level and felt it was worth a shot.”
Solution
Ethan Bence, founder of 4080 Marketing, explains how his team listened to Archibald’s needs, relied on him for his deep knowledge of his consumer, and proposed a path forward that he accepted.
The solution 4080 Marketing created with Archibald was straightforward: marrying the fundamentals of brand building to the fundamentals of Facebook Ad systematization.
1. Structure
First, the 4080 Marketing team helped to structure Crio Bru’s ad account, and got back to basics. They structured the Crio Bru ad account so that testing would be systematic, and the right ads would appear to the right consumers at the right point on their buying journeys.
4080 organized the account into a fundamental Facebook Ads marketing structure:
- Top of funnel
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Middle of funnel
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Bottom of funnel
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Retention
- Top of funnel
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Middle of funnel
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Bottom of funnel
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Retention
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For Crio Bru, they especially honed in on the Top of Funnel, in which they set up audience testing and creative testing – and then, having found what works, scaling it.
Getting the account into this detailed, systematic testing was critical.
2. Black Friday / Cyber Monday Prep
Because of the timing of Crio Bru’s onboarding with 4080, which was right at the beginning of Q4 of 2020, Black Friday / Cyber Monday was a crucial time to prepare for. That meant systematic discovery of what was working, as described in the funnel testing above, especially the top of funnel.
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It also meant going beyond looking only at ads. This holistic approach, including product pages and other landing pages, stood out to Archibald. He explains,
“4080 could take me from ideas and fundamentals to actual practice, marrying Facebook Ads fundamentals to a holistic marketing approach.”
Specifically in preparation for an explosive-growth Black Friday and Cyber Monday, that included conversion optimization testing of ads, ads components, landing pages, and landing page components.
3. Systematic Right-to-Left Testing
Right-to-left analysis was key. 4080 Marketing broke down each stage of the Crio Bru funnel, then pinpointed where the funnel was working, and where it was not working.
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“So for example,” Ethan explains, “The Crio Bru consumer clicks an ad. Then views a landing page. Then adds to cart. And initiates checkout. And finally completes the purchase. We could look at the conversion rate for each of those stages of the funnel, and figure where it needed to be improved.”
In some Crio Bru instances, they had a really low add-to-cart rate. Which means 4080 Marketing could test a few things, Ethan says.
“We could change the angle of the ad. We could change the angle of the landing page. We could build more trust. And solve the problem by testing, without guessing.”
4. Creative ideation and creative angles
4080 also focused on creative ideation and creative angles. Instead of merely saying “It’s not coffee,” 4080 helped Crio Bru to test countless other angles: hot brewed cacao as a treat in the evening. Or as a part of a morning routine. Or as a health and wellness drink, or a mental focus beverage. Every iteration yielded valuable results that helped to accelerate growth, all while speaking to different segments of the market.
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RESULT
Systematic implementation of the fundamentals of Facebook ads, married to the fundamentals of brand building, yielded impressive results.
Crio Bru’s Q4 jumped 200% year over year after working with Crio Bru only a few weeks.
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Plus, the growth wasn’t just a Black Friday phenomenon, as evidence shows. Since working with 4080, Crio Bru is up almost 150% year over year, throughout the year.
4080 helped Crio Bru scale from $5 Million in annual revenue to $9 Million, in a period of only one year.
“It’s due to our ads,” Archibald says. “Our ads are really what drives our business. So that’s been a huge game changer for us.”
Because ground cacao for brewing in coffee machines is still an innovative product in a potentially vast new consumer space, and because Facebook ads married to DTC marketing fundamentals have proven extremely powerful, Crio Bru can expect a future of continued explosive growth.
Crio Bru + 4080 Marketing: A Q4 Jump of 200% YOY
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DISCLAIMER: The sales figures stated on this landing page are our personal sales figures and in some cases the sales figures of previous or existing clients.
Please understand these results are not typical. We're not implying you'll duplicate them (or do anything for that matter). The average person who buys "how to" information gets little to no results. We're using these references for example purposes only. Your results will vary and depend on many factors including but not limited to your background, experience, and work ethic.
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