Executive summary
UK cosmetics brand is a beauty brand operating on Shopify in the UK. They engaged BeingEcom to solve a specific problem - too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation - and to build an operating model that would keep compounding after the engagement ended. Across 60 days, we shipped a full ads programme (3 core workstreams), instrumented measurement against a trailing 60-day baseline, and delivered -38% on cac alongside supporting lifts in cac, roas, reach.
Where UK cosmetics brand was stuck
Too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation. On a Shopify store operating in beauty, that pattern shows up as a plateau: paid spend rising, blended margin falling, and the operator making decisions on gut feel because no scorecard existed for ads.
The four blockers we found
- Too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation.
- Beauty competitors were compounding advantage on the exact creative angles and audiences UK cosmetics brand was ignoring.
- No repeatable ads scorecard - decisions were made on gut feel rather than a weekly profit-per-order readout.
- Internal bandwidth was spent on execution inside Shopify, leaving no room for strategy, measurement or the 60 days sprint the numbers actually needed.
The 5-phase ads system we ran for UK cosmetics brand
Every BeingEcom ads engagement follows the same five phases so accountability, measurement and handover stay clean. Below is how each phase mapped to UK cosmetics brand's 60 days sprint.
1. Discover
Two-week diagnostic of UK cosmetics brand's Shopify storefront, beauty category dynamics, and the exact pain: too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation. We shadowed the operator, pulled 60 days of baseline data and mapped every gap between the current state and the -38% outcome.
2. Diagnose
Root-cause analysis across account structure, creative library, audience overlap and pixel hygiene. Findings were prioritised by revenue impact so the sprint budget landed on the creative velocity and profit-based pacing that would move cac fastest.
3. Design
We shipped the plan as an execution brief: Killed all LALs, went broad with creative variants; Used creative as targeting; Reduced 14 ad sets to 3. Every line item was tied to a hypothesis, a target metric and an owner. The brief was reviewed with UK cosmetics brand before a single change went live.
4. Deploy
Build phase covered campaign restructure, CAPI hardening and a rolling creative pipeline. Ship cadence was weekly, with a Loom walkthrough every Friday so UK cosmetics brand always knew what changed and why. Rollbacks were pre-scripted for any change that touched revenue-critical surfaces.
5. Measure
A single ads scorecard reconciled Shopify revenue, Meta and Google spend, and email revenue side-by-side. The -38% cac figure is measured against the trailing 60 days pre-engagement, reported in the same units UK cosmetics brand uses for board meetings.
Week-by-week plan across 60 days
Tools, platforms and ownership
The stack was designed so UK cosmetics brand's internal team could keep operating it post-handover. No proprietary black boxes.
Shopify (optimised in place)
GA4 with Meta CAPI and server-side events
Klaviyo flows and segmented broadcasts
Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, TikTok Ads Manager
TripleWhale for blended ROAS, GA4 for cohort validation
Motion for creative reporting, Foreplay for research, Frame.io for review
Measurement framework
Every uplift is measured against the trailing 60 days before kickoff - not the same month last year. Revenue reconciled in Shopify; spend reconciled in Meta and Google Ads; the two joined in a single weekly scorecard we shared with UK cosmetics brand's founder on Fridays.
Methodology: figures reported from client-owned Shopify, GA4 and Klaviyo dashboards across the full 60 days engagement. Baseline is the 60-day period immediately prior to kickoff. Individual results vary by category, margin and starting position - anonymised source data available on request under NDA.
What each number actually means
Customer acquisition cost moved to -38%. On beauty margins, that is the difference between paid media being a growth engine and being a tax.
Blended return on ad spend at +52% means every £1 into paid media returned +52% in trackable beauty revenue - measured across Meta and Google, not siloed by platform.
+71% on Reach - a category-specific lift that fed the headline -38% cac outcome.
Headline lift: -38% on CAC
Result after 60 days, measured against the trailing 60-day baseline pre-engagement.
A repeatable ads operating model
UK cosmetics brand now runs the same ads scorecard weekly, ships the same execution cadence, and forecasts revenue from a system that behaves the same way whether the founder is in the office or not. The -38% cac number is the headline; the durable advantage is the operating model behind it.
"Broad + a stack of creatives is doing what layered audiences used to do."
Questions about the UK cosmetics brand engagement
How did BeingEcom lift UK cosmetics brand's paid-media performance?
The Meta and Google account was restructured around killed all lals, went broad with creative variants, then paired with used creative as targeting. Reporting moved from last-click ROAS to profit-based pacing so UK cosmetics brand could compare cohorts weekly rather than reacting to daily noise.
What was the timeline from kickoff to the -38% cac outcome?
The engagement ran 60 days. Discovery and diagnosis took the first 1-2 weeks, build and deploy dominated the middle, and the last third was measurement, iteration and handover. UK cosmetics brand saw early signal inside the first 30-45 days, with compounding gains through the full window.
How was the cac number of -38% measured?
We used Shopify native reporting for revenue, GA4 for session and cohort behaviour, and Meta / Google Ads managers for spend attribution - reconciled monthly in a single scorecard. All uplift is measured against the trailing 60-day baseline before we started, not the same period last year, to strip out seasonality.
What was actually broken at UK cosmetics brand before we started?
Too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation. The knock-on effects were unpredictable weekly numbers and marketing spend that couldn't be tied to profit - the classic pattern for beauty brands stuck between £30k and £150k/month.
Which tools and platforms did BeingEcom use on this project?
Core stack: Shopify for the storefront, GA4 with Meta CAPI for tracking, Klaviyo for email flows, and category-specific tooling for Ads - Meta Ads Manager, Google Ads, Motion for creative reporting, TripleWhale for attribution and Foreplay for creative research. Everything was configured so the UK cosmetics brand team could keep operating it post-engagement.
Can a similar beauty brand expect the same -38% lift?
Uplift depends on starting baseline, margin and category maturity. UK cosmetics brand started from a specific pain point (Too many overlapping lookalikes, audience cannibalisation), so the delta looks large. A brand already running a clean ads programme would expect smaller absolute gains but the same directional wins. We share honest range estimates during the audit.
Were the wins durable after the engagement ended?
Yes. Every playbook was documented, every dashboard was owned by UK cosmetics brand's internal team, and standard operating procedures were left in place for creative production, ads reporting and iteration. The compounding side of Ads - learning-phase efficiency - continued after handover.
What is the biggest lesson from the UK cosmetics brand project?
"Broad + a stack of creatives is doing what layered audiences used to do." That principle now shapes how we scope every new beauty engagement.
How do I get a similar plan for my beauty store?
Book a free ecommerce growth audit at /audit. We benchmark your funnel against the UK cosmetics brand case and 30+ other UK Shopify and WooCommerce engagements, then send back a written 30/60/90 plan - no pitch deck, no lock-in.