Besque is a high growth, DTC beauty brand offering a curated lineup of haircare, skincare, and bath products, made 100% in the UK. The brand was founded on the belief that skincare products don’t need to rely on harsh chemicals to deliver results. Instead, Besque draws from age-old remedies to create formulas that are as natural as they are effective, each crafted with organic, vegan, and ethically sourced ingredients. Hair oiling has seen a surge in popularity, but Besque has also gained strong traction with its distinctive body oil—rooted in ancient rituals and known to improve skin firmness. This rapid success has resulted in over 8 figures in annual sales for the brand.
Beyond product development, Besque is intentional about how it interacts with customers. Its approach to marketing is data-driven and takes into account the neuroscience and psychology of marketing, with the aim of aligning with shoppers’ mindsets in each context in which they encounter the brand—from seeing an ad to completing checkout.
Besque has historically focused on Meta to drive purchases of its skincare products. Its team takes a rigorous approach to creative, tailoring ads to how customers think and feel at that moment. They wanted to explore mobile games as a new way to reach customers and were interested in the insights the channel could reveal about their customers.
AppLovin has enabled us to tap into a demographic and audience cheaper than Meta and at a larger scale, we've seen great results from day 1. Understanding the users and turning them into buyers is a process we are learning more about every day. Much like the difference between Google and Meta, there is a difference between Meta and AppLovin. The team at AppLovin has been great in providing support daily and actually creating finished assets to deploy.
Users most commonly are in a reward mindset, this is an extremely powerful position to leverage as a marketer. Understanding how your potential customer is thinking creates resonance before the ad is even displayed to the user. Leveraging knowledge of AppLovin's ad placements and user behavior has yielded excellent results so far. We are constantly hypothesizing and testing to confirm our logical presumptions.
- Ash Jones, Head of Growth
Besque partnered with AppLovin to launch a cost per purchase (CPP) campaign and a ROAS campaign. The CPP campaign focused on converting the largest number of shoppers at Besque’s target cost. The ROAS campaign focused on converting shoppers who purchase either more or higher value products.
On the creative side, Besque maintained a healthy testing cadence, launching 3-5 new video ads and 2-3 end cards each week. The team tested a range of CTAs, from promotional offers like “Buy 2 bottles, get 1 free” and “Try risk-free with free shipping” to product-led prompts like “Try the Besque Magic Body Oil today.” They also built landing pages specifically for AppLovin traffic, testing elements like exit intent popups, FAQs, and review videos to improve conversion.
Within one week of launch, , while maintaining a ROAS in line with their prior largest social digital ads platform. Continued creative iteration and discovery has been instrumental to that success.