New Skincare Brand Hits ₹30L in First Month
Launching a skincare brand into a cold Meta audience with zero reviews, zero brand awareness, and a ₹30L month-1 target sounds unreasonable. It is, unless you solve the trust problem before you spend a single rupee on ads. That's what we did. And it worked.
The Brand and the Challenge
A new skincare brand with a range of 6 products: a face wash, a Vitamin C serum, a moisturizer, a sunscreen, an under-eye cream, and a night repair cream. Clean ingredients, minimal packaging, competitive pricing at ₹499-₹1,199 per product.
The founder had strong conviction in the formulations she had spent 14 months working with a cosmetic chemist to develop the range. But she had zero DTC experience and no idea how to introduce an unknown brand to cold audiences on Meta.
The challenge with skincare on paid ads is specific. Skincare is not an impulse purchase. People worry about putting an unknown brand's products on their face. They need to believe it works before they'll buy. You can't solve that with a product photo and a discount code.
Skincare buyers need three things before they buy from an unknown brand: proof it works, proof it's safe, and proof someone real has used it. UGC delivers all three.
The Pre-Launch UGC Strategy
We made a decision that defined the entire campaign: we would not run a single rupee of ads until we had 18 UGC videos ready. This delayed the launch by 12 days but it was the right call.
Here is how we thought about the18 videos:
- 6 videos: Before and after transformation real skin, real results, no filters
- 4 videos: Daily skincare routine featuring the products in real bathroom settings
- 4 videos: Ingredient-focused 'why I switched to this serum' style, explaining the formula simply
- 3 videos: Honest first impression reviews unboxing, smell, texture, first application
- 1 video: Dermatologist-style walkthrough explaining what each product does and why it works together
Creators were briefed to be honest, not promotional. If the texture felt weird, say it. If the scent was subtle, describe it accurately. Authenticity was the brief. Promotion wouldcome from the ad copy, not the video.
Campaign Launch Structure
We launched on day 1 with the before/after UGC videos as the primary creative. These drove the strongest ROAS in our testing hypothesis because they answered the question every cold skincare buyer has: 'Does it actually work?'
- Campaign 1 (Cold acquisition): Before/after and routine videos. Audiences: skincare, K-beauty, natural beauty, women 22-40metro India. Budget: ₹10,000/day
- Campaign 2 (Education + trust): Ingredient and review videos. Retargeting anyone who watched 50%+ of a cold ad video. Budget:₹3,000/day launched day 5
- Campaign 3 (Conversion): Product page visitors, add-to-cart abandoners. Offer-based creatives with urgency. Budget:₹4,000/day launched day 8
Total starting budget: ₹17,000/day. We scaled this aggressively once the ROAS signal was clear.
What the First 10 Days Looked Like
Day 1-3: CPP was high at ₹380.Expected new pixel, learning mode. ROAS was 2.1.
Day 4-7: Pixel started learning.CPP dropped to ₹260. The before/after video was driving 4.9% CTR. We doubled the budget on that specific ad set.
Day 8-10: Retargeting campaign launched. Cart abandonment campaign launched. Combined ROAS across all campaigns hit 3.5x. We scaled total daily budget from ₹17,000 to ₹28,000.
By day 10 the brand had done ₹7.8Lin revenue. That pace pointed clearly at a ₹20L+ month. We pushed harder.
Scaling in the Second Half of Month 1
Day 11-20: We introduced 4 new creative variants ingredient-focused videos to keep the cold audience from fatiguing. We also launched a hero combo offer: buy any 3 products, get free shipping and a mini kit. This pushed AOV from ₹720 to ₹1,140 on buyers who saw the combo ad.
Day 21-30: Daily budget scaled to ₹30,000/day. The before/after creative was still performing frequency on it was only 2.1, so we had room to keep spending. Month 1 closed at ₹30.1L.
The Final Numbers
Month 1. ₹30.1L. 3,750 orders. ₹803 average order value. ₹8L in ad spend. 3.75x ROAS. CPP of ₹213.
For a brand that didn't exist 30 days before this, those are extraordinary numbers. The product is strong. The creatives were trusted. The structure was clean.
The brand is now in month 4 with us. Monthly revenue crossed ₹62L in month 3.