Separating brand from non-brand to grow new-customer acquisition at a DTC brand

Situation

ChicknLegs is a fast-growing DTC running-apparel brand that sells online, through specialty run shops and through national retail. As the brand scaled, leadership wanted a sharper answer to a growth question: how much of paid media is bringing in new customers?

Insight

Brand search captures people who already know you, and it always posts a strong ROAS. Reporting it on its own, apart from prospecting, shows clearly what the money aimed at new customers is doing and where the next dollar should go.

Search-term reporting showed that Performance Max had room to do more prospecting if brand demand had a dedicated home.

Action

• Moved brand demand into a dedicated brand campaign and focused Performance Max on non-brand prospecting.
• Tested how organic search and the brand campaign shared branded clicks, then funded the brand campaign to the level that kept branded sales steady.
• Reported revenue on Shopify orders and showed brand and non-brand ROAS separately every week, with a toggle to compare platform-reported numbers.
• Built unit economics into the reporting: break-even ROAS on the first order, 12-month LTV by first-order channel, LTV:CAC and target ROAS by campaign type.
• Designed a geo-holdout test (pause brand and retargeting in ~20% of states for three weeks) to measure incrementality directly.
• Added Google Shopping feed rules that brought hundreds more products live in Shopping overnight.

Result

• Performance Max now optimizes toward non-brand prospecting, with cost per new customer steady and sales holding.
• Non-brand ROAS rose 14% over the prior 28 days, and email revenue, which I also own, ran 852% ahead of the same period last year.
• Leadership adopted a target channel mix that puts more of every dollar into creating new demand.
• ROAS questions now get one answer, built on Shopify orders and a break-even line, inside the marketing performance dashboard I built.