Sales doubled vs. September 2025
Monthly metrics
Total Ad Spend +32% vs. Sep 2025Total Sales excludes Target / Marketplace Connect and Point of Sale. Meta and Google ROAS as reported by each platform. CTR is the Meta link click-through rate.
Total Sales and Total Ad Spend
thousands of USD% Advertising Cost
Total Ad Spend / Total SalesSeptember is the lowest month since November 2025. The dashed line is the 20% ceiling we propose in section 05.
ROAS (column L)
Total Sales / Total Ad SpendMeta CTR (column F)
link click-through rateA clear offer moves the people who already know us
Sales per $1 of Meta ads
Meta-reportedSep 1–7$7.70
Sep 8–30$2.89
The strongest response came from people who had already visited the store or bought from us. One bar soap ad returned about $26 in sales for every $1 during the sale week.
What this means for Q4
NotionPromos are where Plantlife's audience responds most. The earlier the Plantlife Notion calendar has each Q4 promo, the better we can plan the content and the structure of every offer.
The creatives behind it
Meta · September
People buy what they browsed
Meta purchases in September · 118 total
Cards from the live product ad: each shopper sees the items they browsed.
Ads that show each shopper the product they looked at brought in 57% of Meta purchases. Shoppers come back for the item they already had in mind, which is why the homepage should lead with what people actually buy.
More people search for Plantlife by name
"plantlife essential oils" was the single search that sold the most on Google in September. Social, email and the blog content are turning into people who look for Plantlife by name.
Organic search grew
| Page | Clicks Sep 2025 | Clicks Sep 2026 | Avg. position |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bar Soap collection | 66 | 95 | 19.5 → 11.5 |
| Essential Oils collection | 58 | 72 | 31.9 → 18.2 |
| Pumpkin Spice Essential Oil Blend | 11 | 41 | Top of page 1 |
| Blog · What is a carrier oil? | new | 12 | ~7,000 impressions · #11 |
Google shows fewer results than a year ago, yet Plantlife ranks higher and gets chosen more often. The carrier oil article is one step away from page 1.
Soap opens the door, oils follow
Purchases from Google product ads
by category · 60 totalNew customers on Google start with soap. Essential oils sell mostly to people who already know the brand: they search "plantlife essential oils" by name (21 purchases).
Five products, half the sales
Google product ads
Bulk Bar Soap
Frankincense Myrrh Bar Soap
Arnica Relief Oil
Patchouli Bar Soap
Green Tea Soap Bar
Bundles return more. The Arnica Relieve Bundle brought the best return in the Arnica line.- Travel sizes work best inside sets. On their own they get clicks but sell less than full-size bars.
Who buys on Google
purchases by age · known age only76% of purchases with a known age come from people 45 and older. Shoppers aged 45 to 64 also place the largest orders, $36 to $39 on average, compared with $23 to $29 under 35.
By gender
known gender onlyThe core buyer is a woman between 45 and 64. Men are a third of buyers and convert at a lower cost per purchase ($13.87 vs. $15.12). Worth keeping on the radar for a test with the men's line at some point.
Ads tire faster with people who already know us
The warm audience is small and sees ads often
People who already visited or bought from Plantlife respond very well, but the group is small. When they see the same message again and again, response drops faster than with new audiences.
Two ways forward
Grow the audience
More budget for reaching new people, so the group that knows Plantlife keeps getting bigger.
Rotate creative faster
New ads at least every two weeks. To do this well we need priority products and promos updated early in the Notion.
Where the next growth is
Click-through rate by search
Google AdsShoppers choose Plantlife when the search names one of its signature products. On generic searches like "natural soap" the brand is one of many.
Demand we can capture
Sprays. "essential oil spray" went from 647 to 6,730 impressions in organic search and Plantlife ranks #4, yet it brought only 3 clicks.- Arnica. "arnica gel" has 10,000 to 100,000 searches a month, and searches for "arnica relief oil" grew 39%. In organic search we moved from #1 to #3 for our own product name.
- Order value during discounts. The average Google order went from about $40 in August to about $36 in September, during the sale. Minimums and bundles can protect order value in Q4.
October and Q4
New ads every two weeks
Refresh ads at least every two weeks, built on the priority products of the month.
Blogs in the calendar
Include in the calendar blogs on carrier oils, fall and holiday oils, Arnica, and sprays.
Lead with what sells
Validate that the homepage products are the best sellers or the priority products.
What we need from you
Keep the Notion calendar up to date, as early as possible
Q4 moves fast. Priority products and promos in the Notion weeks ahead let us plan content, offers and new ads in time.
Q4 ad budget
What do you have planned for ad spend for Black Friday / Cyber Monday, and for a VIP list prospecting campaign like the one in 2025?
Our proposal for the % Advertising Cost target
At our last review we agreed to revisit this target. Our proposal: keep % Advertising Cost at or below 20%. September closed at 9.69%, and the last 13 months combined came to 11.6%.
