Meta Performance Spotlight series: How KiwiCo is leveraging Reels ads to reach and support parents looking to inspire creativity in their kids

Performance Spotlight is a series that takes an in-depth look at brands successfully driving better performance and efficiency, with the support of Meta tools, to help grow their business.

KiwiCo delivers kids' subscription boxes and STEM, STEAM, science and art kits that provide fun and hands-on learning. With back-to-school season in full effect, we spoke to the team at KiwiCo to learn how they’re drawing attention to their brand and acquiring new customers in the form of parents looking for activities to keep their kids active while also helping them build a stronger bond.

What was the inspiration behind starting KiwiCo?

KiwiCo was launched in 2011 and born from our founder’s desire to inspire kids' creative confidence and encourage problem-solving skills through fun, hands-on STEAM learning (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, Math). Fast forward to today, and we have shipped over 45 million of our signature KiwiCo crates to kids across the globe.

How do you define performance for your brand?

As we continue to grow as both a subscription and e-commerce company, we’re really focused on striking a fine balance between awareness and acquisition. We want to engage new and existing customers in a relevant way to drive conversions and ultimately grow our KiwiCo customer base, and Meta’s platforms have supported our goal by helping us reach new people while helping us measure our ROAS easily.

What steps are you taking to drive performance and achieve your business goals?

We leverage several of Meta’s ad products to support our marketing efforts, and last year, we started testing Reels ads as part of our advertising mix. With constant testing and iteration over the past couple of quarters, we’ve seen a significant uptick in engagement. Recently, we ran a campaign with native Reels creative and saw a 17% improvement in our cost per purchase, 40% lower cost per customer, 56% higher click through rate and 63% higher reach.

Based on the success we’ve seen with Reels, we've optimized our ad creative to mirror Reels style content featuring catchy sounds and text overlays, and we plan on investing more in the format as part of our holiday efforts.

Where do you get your inspiration for your ad creative - and what types of creative have you seen work best?

We're all about putting kids and parents front and center – they're our main sources of inspiration. We dig deep into what motivates them and the challenges they face, so we can serve up our value in a way that really resonates. And when it comes to crafting ads, we have a stellar creative team that takes cues from our own organic Reels content, what's trending in the space, while also coming up with our own original ideas.

We’ve seen Reels creative with strong intro hooks perform really well. The first few seconds of a Reel are the most important, so we ensure that we’re testing different organic hooks to catch and hold our customers' attention. We’ve also seen short, entertaining UGC or listicle style content featuring strategically placed text overlays and/or voiceovers perform well because it makes it easier for people to watch and engage with an ad more organically.