Online fruit seller Portakalbahcem.com s used the carousel ad format and the Facebook pixel to retarget customers and drive sales of fresh citrus fruits from its family garden—resulting in a 35% increase in turnover from the same month the previous year.
Case study summary
• Turkish Family-run fruit brand wanted to get people used to the idea of buying fruit online
• Used Facebook pixel embedded code to understand user journey
• Discovered people who had taken specific actions and retargeted them with carousel ads
• Portakalbahcem.com saw a remarkable 97% increase in conversion rates
The challenge
2Founded in 2013, Portakalbahcem.com sells citrus fruits that are hand-picked from the family garden it has tended for 100 years. The business now employs 38 people and has put the small town of Finike on the map. Portakalbahcem.com wanted to get people used to the idea of buying fruit online, raise awareness of its unique fresh fruit offering and ultimately drive online sales.
The solution
The Facebook pixel was vital in laying the groundwork for Portakalbahcem.com’s campaign, as it can provide rich insights into the type of audience that the website is attracting. A small piece of code that can be easily embedded on web pages, the Facebook pixel records useful information about a business’s audience, their web journeys and the type of actions that they take on a website.
With this data, Portakalbahcem.com could then discover people who had taken specific actions on its site, such as buying products or signing up for newsletters, and retarget them with carousel ads. Carousel ads are single ad units that contain multiple images and videos, each of which can support a unique link. These ads allow Portakalbahcem.com to show off its products, build the story of the brand and direct people to its website: an essential step in raising awareness and driving up sales.
By rolling out the ads across Facebook, Instagram and Audience Network—using the reach and frequency buying tool to control the overall focus—Portakalbahcem.com’s campaign reached a wide audience at the right time and in the right place.
The results
Turkish universities are now studying Portakalbahcem.com’s business as a marketing case. Thanks to its pixel-powered retargeting campaign, Portakalbahcem.com saw a remarkable 97% increase in conversion rates. Between March 23–31, 2017, the campaign achieved:
• 35% increase in turnover compared to March 2016
• 97% increase in ecommerce conversion rate
• 56% increase in transactions
• 6X return on ad spend
• 13% of overall revenue in March 2017 came from this campaign
Mete Apaydın, Co-founder, Portakalbahcem.com, said: “Our project Portakalbahcem.com and Facebook campaigns inspired other farmers in the Finike area. Now, we are like local heroes. This ecommerce idea and Facebook’s role in helping our business grow are now used as a marketing case at some Turkish universities. Every year we increase our voluntary brand representatives, increase our sales and our brand awareness. 95% of converting customers say they saw us on Facebook or Instagram first.”
