How GrowthSpin Cut CAC by 30% for a Leading Beauty Marketing Brand

The Client

Scandinavian Biolabs is a Copenhagen-based innovator in the science-backed haircare industry, founded in 2020 after co-founder Niels Konradi faced early-stage hair loss in his twenties and was disappointed with the existing options. Teaming up with experts in chemistry, dermatology, and hair science, the brand developed its flagship product — the Bio-Pilixin® Activation Serum — a clinically tested, non-invasive, plant-based solution targeting early hair loss.

In just four years, Scandinavian Biolabs grew from a startup to a market leader, generating over €20M in annual revenue and earning more than 140,000 customers and a Trustpilot score of 4.5/5. The brand is primarily direct-to-consumer, with over 80% of sales through its online platform, and has expanded into pharmacies and retailers across Europe including John Bell & Croyden in the UK.

In September 2024, the company closed a €4 million Series A investment round led by Auréa Group — the Paris-based investment platform focused on digitally native beauty, wellness, and longevity brands — with participation from SevenVentures (the investment arm of ProSiebenSat.1 Group) and existing investor Blazar Capital. With this backing, Scandinavian Biolabs is targeting leadership positions in the UK, Germany, and the Nordics, while entering the US market and pursuing an ambitious push toward €30M in annual revenue.

The Challenge

Spending approximately EUR 800k per month across Google and Meta, Scandinavian Biolabs was generating significant revenue — but their paid media infrastructure had not scaled with their ambition.

Three interconnected problems needed solving:

• Fragmented campaign structure. Ads for different funnel stages (top-of-funnel awareness, mid-funnel consideration, and retargeting) were mixed together, making it impossible to optimise budgets for each stage of the customer journey. Product categories — from hair fall to eyelash treatments — were also bundled into single campaigns.

• Rising and untracked acquisition costs. Without clear segmentation by geography, product, or funnel stage, the team had limited visibility into which ads were generating high CAC and which were performing efficiently. Underperforming ads were continuing to drain budget.

• Underutilised creative and targeting. Female UGC creative was running without gender targeting. The 150-day money-back guarantee — one of the brand's most compelling conversion levers — was not being systematically used as a top-of-funnel message. Customer segmentation was unclear, with no survey data on what drove conversions.

Our Approach

GrowthSpin embedded as the fractional performance marketing lead, working directly alongside Scandinavian Biolabs' internal creative strategist and performance marketing team. Rather than overhauling everything at once, we executed in three focused phases designed to build structure, reduce waste, and unlock scale.

Phase 1: Campaign Architecture Rebuild

We rebuilt the Meta campaign structure from the ground up, separating top-of-funnel (TOF), mid-funnel and bottom-of-funnel (MOF/BOF), and repeat customer retargeting into distinct campaigns. We further segmented by product category — isolating hair fall, eyelash, and other product lines — and by geography, enabling the team to understand what messaging resonated in each market. On Google, we applied the same principles: tighter campaign segmentation by intent stage, product type, and geography. Ads delivering high CAC were identified and switched off, immediately improving budget efficiency.

Phase 2: Creative Strategy & Messaging Alignment

Working alongside the brand's creative strategist, we overhauled the creative testing framework. Female UGC campaigns were activated with proper gender targeting on Meta, improving relevance scores and reducing wasted impressions. The 150-day money-back guarantee was repositioned as a core supplementary message for all TOF ads — a powerful trust signal that directly supports conversion for a product requiring long-term consistent use. We also mapped the customer journey from ad to landing page, ensuring campaign objectives aligned correctly: conversion-focused campaigns drove to product pages, while awareness-objective campaigns directed to educational content such as the brand's customer journey stories.

Phase 3: Data Infrastructure & Audience Intelligence

To build a more intelligent targeting layer, we initiated a customer segmentation survey programme to capture why customers converted — their motivations, demographics, and behaviours. This data was to inform both media buying decisions and new product launch strategies going forward. We also advised on the ideal campaign structure — leaning into fewer, higher-quality ad variants per campaign rather than proliferating ad sets — and helped shape a 360-degree marketing strategy framework for new product launches, ensuring paid media was integrated with post-purchase flows and customer care feedback loops.

The Results

By rebuilding campaign architecture and aligning creative strategy with the customer journey, GrowthSpin delivered meaningful, measurable performance improvements across both paid channels.

• 30% reduction in Meta CAC through full-funnel campaign separation, product-category segmentation, smarter creative targeting, and elimination of high-CAC ad spend.

• 20% reduction in Google CAC achieved by restructuring campaigns by intent, product, and geography, and redirecting budget away from underperforming ad sets.

• Improved creative performance via gender-targeted UGC campaigns on Meta and a streamlined ad volume approach, enabling faster creative learning cycles.

• Stronger conversion messaging by repositioning the 150-day money-back guarantee as a standard TOF message, reinforcing trust at the top of the funnel for a high-consideration product.

Key Takeaways

1. Structure before scale. High ad spend does not guarantee efficiency. For DTC health and beauty brands, separating campaigns by funnel stage, product, and geography is a prerequisite for meaningful performance optimisation — not an afterthought.

2. Your best conversion tool may already exist. Scandinavian Biolabs already had a 150-day money-back guarantee — one of the most powerful trust signals in DTC. Systematically deploying it across TOF creative unlocked conversion value that was already there, waiting to be used.

3. Creative targeting is as important as creative quality. Great UGC content underperforms when it reaches the wrong audience. Applying gender targeting to female-focused creative was a simple fix with an outsized impact on relevance, engagement, and cost efficiency.

About GrowthSpin

GrowthSpin is a London-based growth marketing studio led by Neha Divanji. We work as outsourced in-house growth marketers for funded startups and scale-ups, offering fractional growth leadership, performance marketing (Google Ads, Meta, LinkedIn, TikTok), and product strategy with UI/UX design.

Looking for a performance marketing partner to scale your DTC brand? Book a call at growthspin.co.uk/calendar