The GelBottle
The GelBottle – Performance Marketing Rebuild for Scalable Ecommerce Growth in the UK & US
See how Strike Digital partnered with The GelBottle to restructure paid media across key markets, shifting from reactive demand capture to a scalable, acquisition led growth engine.
Project Overview
The GelBottle is a highly recognisable global brand within the professional nail industry, best known for its BIAB and gel products. With strong brand equity and consistent organic demand, the business already had meaningful scale. However, paid media performance was not reflecting the brand’s true growth potential.
Despite healthy demand, paid media was constrained by structural and strategic limitations. Accounts were not built with full funnel growth in mind, activity leaned heavily toward mid and bottom funnel campaigns, and early stage product promotion was restricted. As a result, paid channels were largely capturing existing demand rather than actively driving new customer acquisition.
For a brand of this size, this created a clear ceiling on growth. Without the ability to consistently reach and educate new audiences, scaling spend became increasingly inefficient and heavily dependent on existing brand awareness.
The objective was to rebuild performance marketing from the ground up. The focus was on introducing clear structure, full funnel coverage, and a scalable acquisition framework that could support long term growth while maintaining efficiency. This work sat at the intersection of Strike Digital’s Paid Media services.
Project Execution
Google Ads
Period covered: January 2025 to Dec 2025
Google Ads became a core growth lever once the account was restructured around a full funnel strategy. Prior to the rebuild, the account was heavily weighted toward high intent, bottom funnel activity. This created an over reliance on brand search and existing demand, limiting reach into new audiences and restricting sustainable scale.
Category First Account Structure
We began by rebuilding the Google Ads account around The GelBottle’s core product category. This created cleaner signals, clearer performance insights, and a stable foundation for scaling. Only once efficiency was established were additional categories gradually introduced.
This type of structured foundation reflects Strike Digital’s broader philosophy around sustainable performance systems, discussed in our insights on building long term digital growth rather than chasing short term wins.
Full Funnel Implementation
A clearly defined funnel was implemented to reduce dependency on bottom funnel traffic and support long term acquisition.
Top funnel campaigns focused on prospecting and discovery, introducing the brand to new audiences and testing creative and messaging angles.
Mid funnel activity built consideration through engagement based audiences, reinforcing familiarity and product value.
Bottom funnel campaigns captured demand efficiently through high intent and remarketing activity.
This full journey coverage aligns with Strike Digital’s view that paid media should act as a demand creation engine, not just a conversion tool, a concept explored further across our strategic content for scaling ecommerce brands.
Creative-Led Prospecting and Holistic Coverage
Upper funnel campaigns prioritised creative testing and value communication. As users progressed, lower funnel activity reinforced trust, product credibility, and purchase intent.
Search, Shopping, Performance Max, and YouTube were deployed together to ensure consistent visibility across the entire customer journey, supporting a more integrated approach to performance media rather than siloed channel execution.
Meta
Meta was initially the most constrained platform, both structurally and strategically. Activity was limited to BIAB only promotion, mid funnel campaigns, and a fragmented account setup. This restricted reach, limited creative testing, and significantly capped new customer acquisition.
Rebuilding Meta From First Principles
We rebuilt the Meta account entirely, introducing a clear top funnel to mid funnel to bottom funnel structure. This allowed Meta to evolve from a supporting remarketing channel into an active acquisition engine.
Once performance allowed, product promotion expanded beyond BIAB into broader category coverage, unlocking additional scale. Account structure was simplified to improve signal quality and optimisation, supporting more efficient learning and delivery.
Creative testing and audience expansion became central to Meta’s role, reflecting the acquisition mindset Strike Digital applies when helping brands move beyond reliance on remarketing and brand demand capture.
Results
Google Ads Performance
Following the restructure and full funnel rollout:
Spend increased by 248% YoY
Purchases grew by 665%
Revenue increased by 571%
Efficiency improved alongside scale, despite the significant increase in investment
Google Ads transitioned from a demand capture channel into a scalable acquisition platform capable of supporting sustained growth.
Meta Performance
Following the Meta rebuild:
Spend increased by 2,472% YoY
Purchases grew by 4,114%
Revenue increased by 3,602%
Meta evolved into a primary driver of new customer acquisition rather than a supplementary remarketing channel.
New Customer Growth
2025 vs 2024
The most important outcome of the restructure was the shift in customer mix and acquisition performance.
Total customers increased by 16.7% YoY
New customers increased by 66.4%
New customer rate increased from 22.83% to 32.54%
Rather than relying disproportionately on existing demand, paid media was repositioned to actively grow the customer base. This outcome mirrors the results seen across multiple Strike Digital engagements where structural change enables sustainable acquisition, not just short term efficiency.
The Bottom Line
By rebuilding account structure, introducing a full funnel execution framework, and removing growth constraints, Strike Digital transformed The GelBottle’s paid media from a reactive setup into a scalable, acquisition focused growth system.
The result was not simply higher spend or more conversions, but a stronger and more sustainable growth trajectory anchored in new customer acquisition and long-term performance.
Strike Digital was originally engaged to manage performance marketing for The GelBottle’s UK market in 2024. Following sustained growth and performance improvements, the partnership expanded to include the US in 2025, demonstrating a high level of trust in Strike Digital as a long-term growth partner. The GelBottle has also provided a five-star review on our Clutch profile, available via the link below.
For brands facing similar scale limitations, this case study demonstrates the type of structural transformation discussed across Strike Digital’s thinking and illustrated throughout our Case Studies. For teams exploring a similar approach, the next step is often a strategic conversation, following by a full performance marketing audit executed by our team, which you can initiate via our Contact page.
