Hawkers: the E-commerce beast of Facebook Ads

Having a successful online shop is a great deed that depends on several difficult to separate factors. Hawkers is made up of four friends from Alicante in their twenties. In just a couple years and thanks to Facebook Ads , they have been able to have a turnover of 40 million euros per year and to sponsor the Los Angeles Lakers in the NBA. That is the reason why it is necessary to study their particular case. Are you ready to learn the keys to their success?

1. They acted

The Hawkers team began their e-commerce shop in 2013 after realizing that those who they were working for were making more money from their shop in one month than what the team had charged them for setting it up. They didn’t think it twice. They spent just €300 on buying 27 pairs of sunglasses from Knockaround and they invested the money they made in making bigger and bigger orders.

2. They chose the right product

You already know how important it can be to choose a profitable product . In this case, polarized sunglasses offered obvious advantages:

• Recognizable : everyone knows both the Wayfarer or the aviator models of sunglasses.
• Different : at the same time, the new style of lenses started to come into fashion.
• Easy to ship : it is a small, light and not so fragile product.
• Cheap : some brands such as Oakley and Ray-Ban had complete control of the market, but Hawkers offered €100 in comparable savings for the clients.

3. They segmented their ads

Without any doubts, what made Hawkers become a millionaire e-commerce was its Facebook Ads strategy . They reached a point in which they were investing €10,000 per day and were invited by the social network to visit their offices in California. They started looking for the youth target with a $50 coupon on ads and they started to grow from there. Facebook Ads let them reach exactly their target audience by showing different styles and attributes depending on the potential buyer’s characteristics. On the one hand, they used the so-called retargeting technique, based on the insertion of a code in the website that generates a cookie for the user that visits the website. After visiting the website, whenever the user is surfing the net, a Hawkers ad would appear showing the pair of glasses that interested them with a discount. This was possible thanks to the cookie called a conversion pixel . Furthermore, they attracted similar audiences . That is to say, they looked for users who shared the same characteristics as their purchasing clients. In order to do so, one just needs to go to Facebook Ads and use the “Audiences” tab, select “Create Similar Audience” and choose the website whose followers you want to analyse.

4. They allied themselves with influencers

Having a lot of nerve, the got the cooperation of football players such as Luís Suárez and Dani Alves, and actresses such as Paula Echevarría. And even more, the motorcycle road racer, Jorge Lorenzo, who was a shareholder and whose raffle (to meet him in exchange for becoming a fan and sharing the Facebook page) generated 6,000 participants. They knew how to surround themselves well and now they are signing deals with companies like PayPal, Mercedes, Pachá, and the LA Lakers. With 3 million Facebook followers, they are considered Hype Experts . Nowadays, we all have a Twitter mention to famous people, bloggers or youtubers who are ready to promote our products in exchange for a cheaper price or some freebies.

5. Monitor every step

All the traffic and income data was measured. They used some links called click-commands, which allowed them to find out their users’ behaviors almost perfectly . This fact allowed them to strengthen the profitable actions and to modify those that didn’t generate money . For example, they set aside Facebook for English speakers since they noticed that they didn’t have a lot of Hispanic fans. It is said that they even studied the sunrise and the rain probability to publish their ads, which makes sense when you are selling sunglasses, of course. If you want to know more about measuring data for your e-commerce, do not forget to read the super tutorial about Google Analytics for e-commerce .

6. They kept it simple

They have being reinvesting their profits since the very beginning, but just on publicity. Nowadays, they are still working from the same industrial area where they began, without big posters or logos. In addition, their shop is still using Shopify , an unusual platform for such a big company. However, keeping that externalized system has allowed them to focus on the important thing: sales, sales, and sales.

If some kids were able to do it, why can’t you?

This is Hawkers’ story, the e-commerce that blew up in the sunglasses market niche thanks to mastering Facebook Ads. It is an extraordinary and very difficult case to imitate, but it can serve as a reference and inspirational example in those not so good moments. And you, do you already use Facebook Ads for your e-commerce?

We recommend that you read the following article on social commerce for more info 😉