What We Uncovered When a Leading Gifting Brand’s Ads Stopped Converting
Over the past few months, we’ve been working closely with a well-known gifting brand.
A commercially mature business, strong DTC performance, clear product demand - but a familiar frustration:
Meta wasn’t scaling.
Amazon was converting, but plateauing.
CPMs were climbing.
Creative was fatiguing
And the commercial team felt stuck between opportunity and uncertainty.
What became clear, very quickly, is something we see across almost every £10M+ ecommerce business:
They didn’t have an advertising problem.
They had a conversion system problem.
This is a structural problem that erodes performance over time - inconsistent messaging, creative that wasn’t built from insight, platforms operating in silos, and an over-reliance on “what used to work.”
So we rebuilt the system from the only place meaningful growth ever starts: the buyer.
1. Start With the Buyer - Not the Ads
Inside the first session, we gathered every signal available: reviews, search queries, past Meta audiences, gifting motivations, category expectations, objections, pressures, seasonal behaviour.
“Getting a deep understanding of the customer is point number one… that’s basically all you have to do.”
And yet the brand’s creative wasn’t speaking to:
the emotional drivers behind gifting
the reassurance buyers needed
the context in which decisions were being made
the moment of hesitation that was silently killing conversion
We call this the behaviour gap - and it exists in most brands who feel stuck.
2. Build Super-Personas That Actually Drive Creative
Our approach is embedded within our conversion engine process
We combine:
customer insight
reviews and testimonials
keyword and category behaviour
Meta signal data
competitive cues
emotional and situational drivers
…to build what we call super-personas: real, behaviour-rooted patterns that shape what people notice, feel and choose.
For this brand, it revealed distinct motivations we could build creative around - not demographics, but decision-making profiles.
3. Translate Insight Into a Message System
Once the personas were clear, the message hierarchy almost wrote itself.
Instead of one generic story, we needed:
high-emotion hooks for cold audiences
situational angles for mid-funnel
reassurance-led messaging at point of conversion
proof-led content for the hesitant buyer
comparison for the overwhelmed buyer
The insight was clear: the brand was speaking too softly to the people who needed clarity - and too logically to the people who needed emotion.
4. Rebuild Creative for How Meta Now Works
Meta’s algorithm has changed. Great creative alone isn’t enough.
You need volume, variation and behavioural relevance.
“Algorithms now prioritise variety, distinctiveness and relevance… it’s basically SEO for Meta.”
So we built out a full creative system:
platform-native assets
polished on-brand formats
UGC and testimonial-driven creative
emotional storytelling
product-led comparison
situational formats
graphic formats optimised for “crowded feed” moments
5. Engineer the Channel Mix to Compound, Not Compete
Meta creates desire. Amazon converts it. Search and landing pages reassure it.
The brand had been treating each as separate worlds. However, the true interplay:
“Meta feeds search volumes in both Google and Amazon.”
“Paid social can build desire and emotional connection you can’t get from PPC.”
The commercial unlock was simple: stop forcing each channel to do the whole job.
6. Implement Structured Creative Testing
This brand had never run truly controlled creative tests - and most brands at this level haven’t.
Our system is strict:
20 creative variations per month
£100 per variation
isolated spend to avoid Meta favouritism
named variables for learning extraction
structured hook, format and message tests
Frankenstein ads combining winning elements
“Meta will always pick favourites - you need budget separation to get a true read.”
This is where performance breakthroughs happen - not in bid strategies.
7. Create a Behaviour-Led Performance Loop
Every decision we made fed back into the next stage:
Insight → Message → Creative → Channel → Data → Updated Insight
“Every single decision is tagged so we can learn at persona, hook and format level.”
This loop is how the brand now scales with confidence - because spend no longer feels like guesswork.
The Outcome
The shift wasn’t dramatic. It was structural. And structural shifts create sustainable, profitable growth.
In their words: “For the first time, it feels like everything connects.”
clarity on their buyers’ motivations
a message system built from insight
a creative engine that reflects real behaviour
channel roles that compound performance
a testing structure that actually produces learnings
confidence in where to spend and why
Want to learn more about how ZEAL Agency ecommerce brands on Amazon and DTC - book a discovery call for a free 30 minute consultation
