Las Velas de Mariano breaks its all-time sales record

The client

Las Velas de Mariano is a brand of artisan candles with a presence in Spain, Italy and France. Its business model is 100% e-commerce: low average order value, high repurchase frequency and volume as the main growth lever.

The brand operates in three markets simultaneously, each with different buying behaviours, different seasonality and platforms with their own logic. Scaling in that context demands a paid media architecture that coordinates channels rather than stacking them.

The challenge

The goal for May was clear: maximise sales during a high-demand month without driving up the CPA. The constraint: three markets with different behaviours, three platforms with different logic and a budget that had to perform at its best on each one.

The most common mistake in paid media for e-commerce is using all three channels to do the same thing: prospecting on all three, conversion on all three, with no coordination. The result is duplicated spend and contradictory signals for the algorithms.

The answer was a full-funnel architecture where each channel had a defined role and none overlapped with another.

How we did it

We designed the structure so that each platform deliberately targeted one stage of the funnel:

• TikTok Ads: top of funnel — mass awareness at minimal cost.
• Meta Ads: middle and bottom of funnel — consideration and conversion of warm audiences.
• Google Ads: active demand capture — intercepting the purchase intent generated by the other two channels.

TikTok Ads: top of funnel at scale and minimal cost

TikTok was the awareness channel. Its function was singular: generate massive impact at an unbeatable CPM of 0.85 EUR, seeding brand recognition among cold audiences that did not yet know Las Velas de Mariano.

TikTok’s Smart+ campaigns, optimised with the platform’s own artificial intelligence, were the main distribution engine. The Smart+ Italy campaign reached more than 372,000 unique users. The France campaign generated 1,868 conversions with less than 300 EUR of investment.

That low-cost reach was the foundation on which the other channels could convert with greater efficiency.

Meta Ads: middle and bottom of funnel with an algorithmic edge

Meta was the consideration and conversion channel for audiences that had already had contact with the brand or were showing purchase intent signals. The strategy was structured in two layers:

• Prospecting (ES and IT): campaigns aimed at cold audiences with a profile aligned to the Las Velas de Mariano buyer, using Advantage+ algorithms to optimise delivery.
• Shopping Advantage+: a dynamic catalogue format that shows the exact product to the right user at the right moment. Activated in Spain, Italy and France.

A CTR of 4.16% on Meta is significantly above the e-commerce sector average (1.5–2%), which indicates that the creatives were well aligned with the audiences. The average CPC of 0.12 EUR reflects a healthy account with high ad relevance.

Google Ads: demand capture across all three markets

Google was the active demand capture channel. Its function was to intercept users who were already searching for Las Velas de Mariano or similar products at the exact moment of purchase intent.

The structure combined Performance Max for e-commerce expansion and brand Search to capture the demand that the other channels had generated.

The most telling figure of the channel: the brand search campaign generated a 164x ROAS with just 70 EUR of investment. Every user who specifically searched for Las Velas de Mariano landed on the site and converted at an extremely high rate.

This is the side effect of the awareness work on TikTok and Meta: when users arrive at Google with brand intent, the cost of conversion is practically zero. The cost of that click was 0.02 EUR.

Results

With an investment of 10,449 EUR distributed strategically across three channels and three markets, the brand generated more than 41,000 EUR in tracked sales and reached more than a million people.

Why it worked: the three keys

01. Channel coordination, not a sum of channels

Each platform had a different role. TikTok generated audience volume at minimal cost. Meta converted those warm audiences with catalogue formats. Google captured the brand demand that the previous two channels had created. The effect was multiplicative, not additive.

02. International expansion from day one

The three markets (ES, IT, FR) were activated with differentiated logic. Spain as the main, conversion-focused market. Italy and France as growth markets with catalogue and Smart+ campaigns. This diversification reduced dependence on a single market and multiplied the total addressable volume.

03. The brand as a conversion asset

A 164x ROAS on the brand search campaign is not a stroke of luck. It is the consequence of having built consistent brand recognition over time. Users who arrive at Google searching specifically for Las Velas de Mariano have already decided. You just need to be there.