Sam Ash is a family-run music retailer with a century of history and declining store sales. We built the digital strategy for the years ahead.
Return on ad spend
Revenue, year over year
Conversion rate
Sam Ash has sold instruments since 1924 and for most of that century the stores were the business. Musicians came in to play a guitar before buying it and to talk with staff who played too. By the time we met, store sales were declining while the largest online music retailers kept growing. Most of the growth Sam Ash had left would have to come from the website.
Deciding what to fix first was the hard part. A century-old retailer carries a century of habits: how products are described, how customers are grouped, what the technology costs, and how the development partners work. Each of those had grown up around the stores. To sell online the way musicians now buy, Sam Ash had to rework those habits one at a time without losing what made the stores worth visiting.
We started with market and competitor research, then an internal review built on staff interviews and store visits. That gave us two lists: the quick wins and the long-term strategy. The quick wins came first. Making the site easier to buy from and sharpening who the marketing spoke to lifted conversion rate 50% almost immediately. The long-term strategy ran through weekly one-on-one sessions with the CMO: what to fix on the site next, where to spend, and how to measure it. Along the way we lowered what the technology and the partners running it cost. The site kept growing and its overhead did not.
The Sam Ash team made every change themselves and understood how each one worked. Over the engagement, revenue grew 47% year over year, return on ad spend rose 77% while customer acquisition cost fell 31%, and purchases per user rose 72%. Those numbers came from a team that ran its own market research, conversion work, and digital marketing. That work carried the company through to a successful acquisition and an exit for the Ash family.
Market researchCROUXDigital marketing
Tell us what is happening in your business and we will tell you what we would look at first.
We researched the market and the largest online music retailers, ran an internal review built on staff interviews and store visits, and then worked with the CMO in weekly one-on-one sessions on the long-term digital strategy. The work covered site experience, digital marketing, measurement, and what the technology and its partners cost.
The internal review surfaced quick wins on the site itself. Making the site easier to buy from and sharpening who the marketing spoke to lifted conversion rate 50% almost immediately. The longer-term work on spend, measurement, and partners followed from there.
Research came first, then a weekly one-on-one session with the CMO covering what to fix next, where to spend, and how to measure it. The Sam Ash team made every change themselves and understood how each one worked, which is how the capability stayed inside the company.
