Upper Funnel Tests on Meta and TikTok Reveal New, Incremental Audiences for Lalo

Baby brand Lalo suspected that platform algorithms optimizing for conversions were targeting the same low-hanging fruit rather than new, incremental prospects. They sought to understand if optimizing for a conversion event higher in the funnel could help reach new audiences for Lalo. To check this hypothesis, they put Meta and TikTok to the test with Haus.

Lalo set up a 3-cell Meta experiment designed to test the upper funnel: conversion campaigns optimized to purchase vs conversion campaigns optimized to add-to-cart vs a holdout. 

Then, by recommendation from agency partner Sharma Brands, they fast-followed with a 2-cell TikTok upper funnel experiment testing the incrementality of a traffic campaign optimized to landing page views.

As the initial Meta test launched, platform-reported performance began to decline. Nerves aside, Lalo remained committed to the test as designed — and the results told a story otherwise invisible through out-of-the-box reporting. 

The Meta 3-cell test revealed that conversion campaigns optimized for a purchase event were only 2% more incremental than those optimized for an add-to-cart event. The purchase-optimized campaign drove a 27.1% lift in new customer revenue, while the add-to-cart campaign achieved a 26.5% lift.

Even more interestingly, when analyzing the impact on returning customer sales, the purchase-optimized campaign resulted in a 16% lift, whereas the add-to-cart campaign saw only a 9% lift. This suggests that conversion-optimized campaigns continue to reach existing customers despite audience exclusions, whereas add-to-cart campaigns do not engage existing customers to the same extent.

Finally, when assessing overall revenue impact, the incremental ROAS (iROAS) for the add-to-cart campaign was just $0.01 higher than that of the purchase campaign — essentially identical. These results validated Lalo’s hypothesis that running an upper-funnel campaign to reach new prospects was not only effective but also delivered efficient sales for the business.

Building on these insights and following Sharma Brands’ recommendation, the team shifted their focus to TikTok. The results of the 2-cell test were equally promising: This campaign was even further up the funnel, as it was designed as a traffic campaign optimized for landing page views rather than conversions. Due to this setup, TikTok's platform did not attribute any purchases to the campaign — it only tracked landing page views.

However, Haus test results found that the campaign drove a 12.4% lift in new customer revenue and a 3.65% lift in returning customer revenue. Additionally, the iROAS exceeded the target by 64%, further validating the effectiveness of upper-funnel strategies for driving incremental growth.

The team has now confidently layered in upper funnel tactics to their evergreen Meta and TikTok strategies as a unique way of reaching new audiences effectively.