Sporelust! is for mushroom lovers.


Client:
Sporelust!

Services:
Marketing Strategy
Fractional CMO
GTM
Instagram Advertising
TikTok Advertising
Google Ads
Kickstarter Campaign
Live Event Coverage
Photography
Influencer Marketing
Partner Marketing
Social Media Management
eCommerce (Shopify)
Data Analytics & Reporting

The Challenge
Sporelust! had what they thought was a great new product on their hands—highly designed and crafted Tarot cards. The cards were getting great feedback from customers, but initial sales had been limited. To achieve the kind of profitability they wanted, they needed to scale. Sporelust! hoped to increase their sales through online advertising—but they weren’t sure where to begin.

The Approach
Based on our industry research, we hypothesized that the product would benefit a far larger audience than originally suspected. We believed that enhanced messaging and detailed targeting on social media would direct us to additional audiences. CROWN pitched a scalable advertising model to ascertain demand across various keywords and audiences, benchmark our acquisition cost, then increase the budget to match the demand.

What We Did
We started with a small pilot budget, and our hypothesis paid off. The product design coupled with the $30 price point (and free shipping) made it an attractive product that sold easily using many of the keywords and audiences that we tested. After a week-long pilot social and search advertising campaign, sales were growing, cost per acquisition was low, and we knew it could be scaled for even more profitability.

Scalable Digital Advertising Campaign
After a thorough analysis of our pilot social media program to identify the best performing and most scalable audiences, CROWN created a follow-up paid media campaign aimed at finding the limits of our tactics. The success of our efforts drove the client to add multiple zeros to the company’s daily paid budget, as well as fresh, new ad units for continued optimization — we’re never done testing!

Results
Total online revenue jumped more than 9,800%, we garnered 3x return on ad spend, and statistically proved the potential audience segments for the product are far bigger than our client previously suspected. The best part? Average weekly profits jumped by 4,700%, meaning our client is left with more business and more money.



Kickstarter
With the success of the social media advertising campaign, we were asked to support Sporelust!’s Kickstarter campaign to launch an expanded deck. We utilized many of the effective audiences from our previous iteration, while A/B testing key messages to determine the most influential CTAs. The Kickstarter was a sensation, meeting every last stretch goal of the campaign, was fully funded at 611%, and our social ads saw a 6.83x return on spend.

Brick-and-mortar launches/Interim CMO
Given CROWN’s previous successes and the impending recovery of retail footfall post-Covid-19, our CEO Zach Huntting was brought on to rapidly grow the new brand alongside Founder Chris Adams through collaborations and partnerships with Desert Daze, Telluride Mushroom Festival, Fungal Diversity Survey (FUNDIS), Mycological Society of San Francisco, Capitol Hill Pride Festival, and Seattle Department of Design, launch of two new brick and mortar locations in Washington and Oregon, execution of a wide range of marketing initiatives incl. a new website, new GTM motions including seasonal communications and sales processes, and various successful advertising campaigns, and building of a new supplier and distribution network.



Client: Sporelust!
Agency: Crown Social®