Solved: Marketing Ideas to Expand Swimwear Sales

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you've got a really interesting product with a clear, practical benefit. That's a huge advantage right from the start. A lot of brands struggle to stand out, but solving a real problem like where to keep your phone and keys during water activities gives you a massive leg up.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running paid ad campaigns for e-commerce brands. Getting from markets and some social media posts to a scalable growth engine is a big step, but it's totally achievable. The key is to stop thinking about marketing as just 'getting the name out there' and start thinking of it as a systematic process of finding your perfect customer and showing them exactly how you solve their specific problem.

Below are my thoughts on how you can start to build that system. It's not about doing everything at once, but about getting the foundations right first.

Your Customer Isn't a Demographic, They're a Walking Anxiety

Right, let's get one thing straight. The first mistake most new brands make is defining their customer as "women, aged 25-45, who like swimming". That tells you absolutely nothing useful and leads to generic ads that get ignored. You've got to go deeper. Your customer's defining trait isn't their age; it's their pain point.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) is a state of mind. It's the feeling of anxiety that washes over someone as they try to hide their car keys under a towel, hoping for the best. It's the frustration of the paddleboarder who wants to take an amazing photo mid-lake but had to leave her phone on the shore. It's the solo kayaker who feels a bit vulnerable without her phone for safety. This is the 'nightmare' you're selling a solution to. It's a specific, urgent, and emotional problem.

Once you understand this, your entire approach changes. You're not selling swimwear; you're selling peace of mind. You're selling freedom. You're selling the ability to capture a memory without compromise. Every single piece of your markering, from an Instagram post to a paid ad, should speak directly to this anxiety and offer the cure.

Forget demographics for a moment and think about psychographics and behaviour:

• Who are they? They're adventure seekers, solo travellers, active mums, watersport enthusiasts.
• Where do they hang out online? They follow travel bloggers, belong to 'Wild Swimming' Facebook groups, search for 'kayaking routes near me', and follow brands like GoPro, Osprey, and Patagonia.
• What do they value? Practicality, freedom, security, and smart design.

This is your targeting blueprint. These are the interests you'll plug into Facebook, the keywords you'll target on Google, and the mindset you'll appeal to in your ad copy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending another pound on ads.

Your Message: A Solution They Can't Ignore

Now that you know who you're talking to and what their core problem is, your messaging needs to be relentlessly focused on the solution. I'd recomend using a simple but powerful copywriting framework called the Before-After-Bridge.

Before: Paint a picture of their current reality. The anxiety, the inconvenience, the missed moments.
After: Describe the ideal world your product creates. Freedom, security, capturing every memory.
Bridge: Introduce your swimwear as the simple, elegant way to get from 'Before' to 'After'.

This structure works because it connects emotionally with the problem before you even mention the product. People don't buy features (e.g., "a zip pocket"); they buy outcomes (e.g., "never worry about your keys at the beach again"). Your ad copy and website headlines should be full of this.

Here’s how that might look in practice for a Meta ad:

Stop Paying Facebook to Find Non-Customers

Here is a piece of advice that might feel contrarian, but it's vital. Stop any campaigns you're running with "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" as the objective. You are literally paying Meta to find the people in your audience who are *least* likely to ever buy anything. The algorithm is incredibly powerful, but it's also incredibly literal. When you tell it to 'get my ad in front of as many people as possible for the lowest cost,' it does exactly that. It finds the users whose attention is cheap because they don't click, they don't engage, and they certainly don't buy.

As a new brand, awareness is a byproduct of sales, not a prerequisite for them. The best awareness you can get is someone buying your product, loving it, and telling their friends.

From day one, all of your campaigns should be set up with a 'Sales' objective, optimising for 'Purchase' events. This tells the algorithm, "I don't care about cheap impressions. Go find me the people within my target audience who have a history of buying things online and are most likely to buy my product." Yes, your CPMs (cost per thousand impressions) will be higher, but you're paying a premium to get in front of a far better audience. This single change can be the difference between a campaign that burns cash and one that generates a profit.

To do this right, you'll need to structure your campaigns properly. Here's a simplified flowchart of the customer journey and how your ads should map to it.

For a new brand, you'll spend 80-90% of your budget on the Top of Funnel (TOFU) to constantly bring new people in. Once you have enough traffic and data, you can build out your Middle and Bottom of Funnel (MOFU/BOFU) retargeting campaigns.

You Can't Afford Bad Visuals

Let's be brutally honest. For a fashion/apparel brand, your product could be the best in the world, but if your photos and videos look amateur, you will fail. People buy with their eyes first. Your visuals need to not only look professional but also clearly and instantly communicate your unique selling proposition.

You need to invest in two types of assets:

1. High-Quality Product & Lifestyle Photography: These are for your website and shopping ads. Clear, well-lit shots on a simple background, and lifestyle shots showing the swimwear on different body types in beautiful, aspirational settings (a sunny beach, a serene lake).
2. Action-Oriented Video (especially UGC-style): This is your secret weapon for social media ads. You need short, snappy videos (9-15 seconds) that *show the pocket in use*. A quick clip of someone on a paddleboard, pulling their phone out of the swimsuit pocket, and taking a selfie. This is a thousand times more powerful than text explaining the feature. It’s undeniable proof, and it builds instant trust and understanding. You don't need a huge production; videos shot on a modern smartphone can work perfectly if they're authentic and action-packed.

I've seen campaigns for e-commerce clients where simply switching from static images to a simple UGC-style video showing the product in use has cut the cost per purchase in half. One of our clients selling women's apparel saw a 691% return on ad spend, and a huge part of that was getting their creative right for the platform, which in their case included Pinterest.

The Numbers That Actually Matter

To scale profitably, you have to know your numbers. It's easy to get lost in a sea of metrics, but there are only a few that truly dictate your success. The most important question you need to answer is not "how low can my cost per click be?" but "how much can I afford to pay to acquire a customer?"

The answer lies in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This tells you how much profit a customer is worth to you over their entire relationship with your brand. Once you know this, you can make intelligent decisions about your ad spend.

Here's a simplified way to calculate it:

LTV = (Average Order Value x Purchase Frequency x Gross Margin) / Churn Rate

For a new e-commerce store, some of these numbers are estimates. You might assume purchase frequency is low to start, and churn is high. But it's crucial to have a target. Let's run a scenario:

• Average Order Value (AOV): £80
• Gross Margin %: 60% (after cost of goods)
• Monthly Churn Rate: Let's estimate this differently for a non-subscription product. Let's think about how many customers will buy again within a year. If you think 20% will buy again, your customer lifetime is roughly 1 / (1-0.8) = 5 years. A simpler way is just to estimate the number of purchases per customer lifetime. Let's say it's 1.5 on average.

So, a simpler LTV for a non-subscription e-com business is: (AOV x Gross Margin %) * Average Lifetime Purchases.
In this case: (£80 * 0.60) * 1.5 = £72.

This means, on average, each customer you acquire will generate £72 in gross profit for you. A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £24 (£72 / 3) to acquire a new customer and still have a very healthy, profitable business.

Suddenly, seeing a £15 Cost Per Purchase in your Ads Manager doesn't look so scary. It looks like a profitable machine. Use the calculator below to play with your own numbers.

Your Action Plan: A Phased Approach to Growth

This is a lot to take in, I know. The key is not to try and do it all at once. You need a phased approach, building a solid foundation before you start pouring money into ads. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Following this structured process removes the guesswork. You're not just 'doing some ads'; you're building a predictable system for acquiring customers. It takes patience and a willingness to test and learn, but the payoff is a scalable, profitable business.

Trying to navigate this on your own can be a steep and expensive learning curve. Every pound spent on an ad that's poorly targeted or has the wrong message is a pound wasted that could have been invested in growth. This is where expert help can make a significant difference—not just in executing the plan, but in interpreting the data correctly, identifying opportunities faster, and avoiding common pitfalls.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a look at your current setup, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could walk through your specific goals and figure out what a realistic growth strategy would look like for you.

Hope this helps you get started!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh