Background
Truefitt & Hill, the world’s oldest barbershop brand, is synonymous with premium grooming and luxury personal care. In India, the brand offers a curated selection of high-end grooming products alongside its heritage barbershop services, targeting discerning customers who value craftsmanship and tradition.
Challenge Faced
Despite investing steadily in Google’s Performance Max campaigns, the brand faced an ongoing efficiency challenge. Campaigns relying solely on Google’s native targeting were bringing in traffic, but much of it lacked strong purchase intent. Over the three months prior to June, ROAS and conversion rates were underwhelming, indicating that ads were often reaching audiences who appreciated the brand’s aesthetics but weren’t ready to buy. In June, this trend worsened, with ROAS falling by 39% and conversion rates declining by 33% compared to the previous three-month average. Without sharper targeting, the cost of acquisition risked outpacing returns, threatening the sustainability of the campaign.
Audience Strategy Undertaken
To address this, Truefitt & Hill partnered with Xpert to refine their targeting strategy. Instead of casting a wide net, the campaign leveraged Xpert’s High-Intent Audiences — built from real purchase data of consumers who had bought premium grooming, personal care, and luxury lifestyle products across India. This allowed the campaign to focus on individuals with a proven history of buying in adjacent categories, ensuring that ads reached audiences most likely to convert. While this meant entering a more exclusive and competitive bidding pool, the relevance of each impression and click increased significantly, improving both efficiency and sales potential.
Results Achieved
The impact was immediate. In June, after running Performance Max campaigns with Xpert Audiences, ROAS increased by 7x compared to campaigns without them — reversing the earlier decline and driving highly profitable returns. Conversion rates, which were nearly zero before, rose to almost 4% after using Xpert Audiences. This remarkable uplift proved that even with the same ad budget, directing spend toward verified high-intent buyers can completely transform outcomes.
Inferences & Insights
Truefitt & Hill’s experience reinforces that in luxury e-commerce, audience quality matters far more than audience size. By moving away from broad, interest-based targeting and focusing on purchase-behaviour-driven audiences, the brand not only recovered lost performance but exceeded its historical benchmarks by a wide margin.