How a £800M Fashion Giant Used AI-Driven TikTok Ads to Drive Efficient Sales Growth

1. Meet Brand X: A Gen Z & Millennial Fashion Powerhouse

Brand X is a leading high-street fashion retailer in the UK, boasting an impressive £800 million in market value. Known for its trend-driven, affordable styles, the brand is especially popular with Gen Z and millennial shoppers. However, its influence extends well beyond the UK, maintaining a strong presence throughout Europe.

In the digital space, Brand X invests heavily in paid media to reach and convert its style-savvy audience. 35% of its overall paid media budget is dedicated to paid social, with TikTok accounting for 10% of that allocation. TikTok, as a fast-growing platform among younger audiences, offers Brand X a critical channel for both discovery and performance marketing.

2. The Growth Challenge: Moving from Traffic to TikTok Sales

Despite stable traffic and sales volume, Brand X’s TikTok campaigns needed a clearer path to scalable results. The existing account structure maintained stable sales but did not show uplift that justified further investment in TikTok within the paid social mix.

Key challenges included:

· Overreliance on retargeting: 60% of sales-focused campaigns were retargeting-driven, limiting opportunities for true new customer acquisition.

· Stagnant sales growth from new customers: Traffic was flowing in, but there was no significant evidence of increased conversions from prospecting audiences.

· Inefficient budget allocation: Without a smarter way to distribute spend, TikTok’s role in the brand's performance strategy remained limited.

To unlock TikTok’s full potential, Brand X needed a solution that could dynamically steer spend toward the audiences most likely to convert.

3. The Solution: Activating Smart+ to Power Predictive Performance

We helped Brand X to overhaul its TikTok strategy using Smart+: an AI-powered campaign format designed to optimize audience targeting and conversion outcomes.

The strategic shift involved:

· Launching Smart+ Campaigns: Replacing the legacy catalog sales campaigns with Smart+, for both prospecting and retargeting efforts.

· Excluding Past Purchasers: To avoid cannibalizing existing sales and focus on incremental revenue.

· Phased Budget Reallocation: Gradually shifting more investment from traditional retargeting and conversion campaigns into Smart+, following a day-on-day testing and learning model.

· Maintaining Traffic Spend: Preserving 10% of the overall TikTok budget for traffic campaigns to continue fueling the top of the funnel and retargeting pools.

This AI-led approach gave the algorithm the flexibility to dynamically allocate spend where it would deliver the most sales, while still supporting full-funnel performance.

4. The Results: Sales Surge Without Spending More

After implementing Smart+, Brand X achieved significant improvements in TikTok performance, all at roughly the same total spend level.

Key wins noted in a before-after comparison:

· Revenue uplift: An 88% increase in sales volume, proving TikTok’s value as a revenue-driving channel.

· Efficiency gains: Substantial improvements in ROAS (+82%), CVR (+129%), and CPC (-9%), driven by better audience targeting and smarter budget use.

· Stable investment, stronger return: The Smart+ strategy achieved more impact at the same spend, showcasing the power of AI to optimize what was already in place.

By transitioning from static setups to dynamic Smart+ campaign, Brand X turned TikTok into a sales engine, on top of a traffic generator.

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About Crealytics

Crealytics is an award-winning full-funnel digital marketing agency fueling the profitable growth of over 100 well-known B2C and B2B businesses, including ASOS, The Hut Group, Staples and Urban Outfitters. A global company with an inclusive team of 200+ international employees, we operate from our hubs in Berlin, New York, Chicago, London, and Mumbai.