Simba Sleep

Simba's Strategic Pivot to Profitability with Highrise

Background

Simba Sleep, a leading UK-based sleep technology company, entered the competitive D2C mattress market with ambitions to revolutionize the industry, develop a strong online presence, and drive significant revenue growth.

Despite growing their annual revenue to over £100 million by 2021, Simba needed to transition from growth to profitability in February 2022. They turned to Highrise for help in refining their marketing strategies to enhance profitability while continuing to gain market share. Our holistic approach enabled Simba to achieve higher ROAS, streamline operations, and support product and market expansions.

Challenge

Simba face several challenges in their bid to stand out in a competitive market:

- Market Headwinds: Despite generating strong topline revenue, Simba was operating at a loss. An issue compounded by tightening access to venture capital and increased consolidation across the industry.

- Internal Hurdles: Following an extended period of growth-focused activity, the team at Simba encountered strategic friction around how best to evolve their marketing approach to support a more sustainable and profitable model.

- Budget challenges: With rising acquisition costs and reduced budgets, Simba needed to refine how they distributed spend across Above The Line (ATL) and digital channels to maintain efficiency while staying competitive.

Active Period

February 2022 - Now

What we did for them

Highrise's holistic approach enabled Simba to achieve higher ROAS, streamline operations, and support product and market expansions.

Services provided:

- Initial focus on Meta advertising
- Development of a comprehensive communications matrix to enhance creative strategies
- Management of Google Ads and expansion to all acquisition channels

Innovations Introduced:

- Sequential media buying combined with audience testing
- Utilization of the communications matrix to effectively market high AOV products with extended consideration phases

Process Improvements:

- Strategic positioning through customer discovery and mapping of emotional drivers, perceived benefits, and product USPs
- Tailored creative briefing and production processes
- Coordinated promotional activations across websites, creatives, channels, and annual calendars

Breakthrough

Results Achieved

- Revenue surge: Helped Simba significantly improve ROAS while operating with a leaner team

- Product range diversification: Launched multiple new products under the "Good, Better, Best" range

- Set up for success: Achieved profitability without additional funding rounds, whilst growing market share

“Highrise's strategic approach transformed our marketing efforts.

Their expertise in digital advertising and creative strategy was instrumental in our journey to profitability and international expansion.

The Highrise Difference: Beyond Platform Features.

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This case study is a testament to Highrise Marketing's core philosophy: Don't only rely on platform features to solve marketing problems.

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Whilst key features of automated bidding are extremely important, especially for Non-Brand & depending on Brand auction dynamics, we always focus on 3 core pillars:

Measuring Incrementality & Causality: We look beyond surface-level metrics to understand true impact.
Utilize Mature Testing Hypotheses: We challenge assumptions and build strategies based on actual auction dynamics.
Defy Conventional Wisdom: We prove that true strategic decisions, often contrarian, unlock superior performance.