In 2015, Roberto Francisco was working full time in the Algarve when he spotted an opportunity in the men’s grooming market. Unable to find products that matched his expectations, Roberto took matters into his own hands and launched Barbudos, an online E-commerce store selling high quality, natural products for beard and moustache care.

After developing a range of products and setting up an E-commerce website, Roberto was looking for an advertising solution to help him achieve two key goals: driving immediate sales of his products, and building a recognisable brand within an increasingly competitive market.

As a bootstrapped start-up, the pressure was on for Barbudos and Roberto knew he needed a solution that would drive results. “Barbudos started as a side project, so an early problem was making sure the limited ad budget was spent well and would drive sales”.

To achieve his two key goals, Roberto turned to Google Ads. Knowing that he needed to increase revenue to fuel Barbudos’ brand development, Roberto focused on Google Search ads to drive traffic to his product pages.

“I used Google Ads Search and intent-based campaigns to begin with,” Roberto explains. “It was the main source of growth for Barbudos, and something I still use to this day.”

Being visible when potential customers are shopping was key to Barbudos’ success, and worked well for Roberto. “With Google Ads I can get straight to the point by selecting my audiences and keywords. I needed my ads to be visible to people who have a problem they are trying to solve. Google Search ads are a great way to be visible to those who are searching for a solution”.

As part of his brand-building strategy, Roberto created a series of blog articles and video content to educate potential customers on his product’s benefits. Knowing how well this content was performing organically, Roberto began testing video ads to expand his reach on new platforms, like YouTube.

“I had some existing how-to videos on the Barbudos YouTube channel,” says Roberto. “I had feedback to say that these were really helpful, so I decided to run them as paid YouTube ads to show on videos related to beard care.”

With a winning combination of conversion-focused Search ads and brand-focused YouTube campaigns, Barbudos’ revenue has grown by over 1100% in just 3 years since 2018.

Looking to the future, Roberto is set on continuing to improve his results, and to do that he’s been working with his Google Ads Account Manager. “I’ve learnt a lot about Google Ads over the years I’ve been working with it, but my Google Account Manager had expert knowledge of the tool which I didn’t have,” explains Roberto. “They recommended some adjustments to optimise my campaigns, such as adding negative keywords to prevent my ads from showing to people who want something I don’t sell. The results have been really good – our return on advertising spend has more than doubled since making these changes!” In fact, Barbudos’ ROAS increased from 161% in 2019 to 395% in 2020 since working with their Google Ads specialist.

As Barbudos grows and sales continue to rise, Roberto has been increasingly looking to the future. “Now the goal is to grow further than Portugal,” Roberto explains. “To Spain first, and then other countries in Europe.” Roberto is no longer working on his own, as Barbudos now employs 3 people, and will soon be adding a fourth.

For every chapter of the Barbudos story, Google Ads has been there to help it grow. “Today Google Ads is the main source of sales for Barbudos. It’s converting more than the organic traffic!” Roberto concludes. The go-to advertising platform for the goatee specialist.