Operam, Inc.

BACKGROUND

Introduce your business and what you do there.

I manage digital marketing and e-commerce at a premium skincare company. We have a direct-to-consumer (D2C) e-commerce business and a direct selling consultant organization. I handle all of our paid media, marketing, and the e-commerce UX for D2C selling.

OPPORTUNITY / CHALLENGE

What challenge were you trying to address with Operam, Inc.?

We were standing up our D2C portion, and we’d never done any consumer marketing before — we had always relied on our channel. We asked Operam to help us build out paid media capability for our company.

SOLUTION

What was the scope of their involvement?

Operam executed our account management and set up, including all of our paid advertising on all Google properties, from search-oriented to performance media channels. They ran our ads on different platforms including, Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and Bing. 

Their team also established and executed the media strategies for our channels and audiences. Then, they set up the appropriate data and tagged infrastructure for tracking and optimization purposes. They also helped us plan creative strategies. They didn’t actually execute them, but definitely had an active hand in supporting them.

What is the team composition?

I worked directly with Jake (SVP) and another person who’s no longer at Operam. 

How did you come to work with Operam, Inc.?

They were referred to us. 

How much have you invested with them?

We spent around $250,000–$350,000.

What is the status of this engagement?

We worked together from April–December 2020.

RESULTS & FEEDBACK

What evidence can you share that demonstrates the impact of the engagement?

Qualitatively, we went from zero to one on paid advertising, which is really binary. We’ve never done a dollar in advertising before, and by the time they left, we were up and running with an advertising program. A lot of their value was within the setup, strategy, and execution of the infrastructure needed to do that.

Quantitatively, We spent almost $1 million on advertising in November 2020, and now our ROAS (return on ad spend) is well north of 300%. That’s quite strong and way better than breaking even across channels. They just continued the improvement on the ROAS throughout the time they were with us. 

How did Operam, Inc. perform from a project management standpoint?

We had a Slack channel to communicate with Operam. We also used Google Sheets and Google Docs to share and review documents on a weekly basis. 

What did you find most impressive about them?

The best thing about Operam was their willingness to be strategic partners. Even though we paid them for advertising, what we really wanted was their help to grow a new business unit, and they certainly did. 

They were really good partners, and whenever we had frictions, they helped us solve them, whether it was in the scope of what we paid for or not. The challenge with other agencies is that they have their playbook and stay in their lane — Operam was the opposite of that. 

Operam are growth hackers at heart, very entrepreneurial, flexible, oriented around results, and helpful. They are strategic thought partners for our whole business, not just for the scope of what they’re working on.

Are there any areas they could improve?

The only reason we quit working with Operam was their fairly narrow focus on what they can execute. They’re not a one-stop shop, and we didn’t have the resources to put everything else we needed around them. For instance, they weren’t executing the creative, and we wanted to have that in the same shop as the performance media. It was just the limits of comprehensiveness they offered. 

Any advice for potential customers?

Treat them like they’re on your team and they will respond in kind. A lot of people across different fields thought that a couple of Operam’s team members were on my team — that was the best part of our engagement. They leaned into that, and that puts them in the best position to succeed.