MoneyGold (gold buyout): 14,338 leads at $18.32, $664,780 revenue, 153% ROMI

The task

money-gold.ru is a startup service for selling gold in Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Kazan. What sets it apart from pawnshops is a high level of service and a different target audience.

The project’s problems:

• The “pawnshop” stereotype. In people’s minds, selling gold = a shabby pawnshop where the appraiser treats the customer “like trash”. MoneyGold is not a pawnshop but a service: request → money on your card within 2 hours, without leaving home, legal and transparent. Most people did not believe this — and that was the main problem.
• A non-standard audience. The service’s customer is not a pawnshop customer. They do not go to pawnshops and show no sign of interest anywhere online. This is a well-off person with a lot of unneeded gold at home (broken, out of fashion) who does not even suspect it could be worth ₽50,000, ₽100,000 or even ₽200,000.

The main task — break the “pawnshop” stereotype and find precisely “our audience”.

What we did

Realized that targeting settings would not help, so the main job became work on creatives.

Tested many different variants; the best combo turned out to be the least obvious:

A deliberate misspelling in the word “догадываешься” (“suspect”) doubled the performance of these banners. Creative testing continues — we are looking for even more effective approaches.

Results

• Ad budget — $262,683
• Leads — 14,338
• Cost per lead — $18.32
• Deals — 3,463
• Cost per deal — $75.85
• Revenue — $664,780
• ROMI — 153% ($664,780 ÷ $262,683)

Starting in March we began with standard startup budgets and ramped up spend — $262,683 in total over the period. Grew without losing the business’s margin and expanded to three cities: Moscow, Saint Petersburg and Kazan.

Insights

• In a niche with a strong stereotype, targeting is secondary — creative decides. The combo was built on working with perception, not audience settings.
• The most effective combo is the least obvious one: a deliberate spelling mistake in a banner doubled its performance.
• An audience that cannot be “targeted” by interests (the person is unaware of the need) is reached through creative that provokes recognition and a reaction.

The project is run in partnership with the digital agency Digital Bands.