Curly Girl Movement SEO shopping case: +150% return in beauty & cosmetics

Curly Girl Movement wanted to keep growing in a challenging year, despite stock problems and a sharply reduced marketing budget. Through smart use of SEO, we fully replaced Google Shopping and structurally reduced dependence on paid advertising, while the marketing return rose considerably.

+791%

ROAS

+192%

Click-through rate

+150%

Marketing return

ABOUT

Curly Girl Movement

Curly Girl Movement is the go-to brand for curl lovers, built on education, trust and a strong community. But in 2025, the brand was under pressure. With many products sold out and 70% less budget, the question was: how do you still get growth out of your marketing?

THE

CHALLENGE

The bestsellers were out of stock for months. At the same time, the marketing budget was cut by 70%. Even so, they wanted to maintain revenue, retain customers and increase brand visibility.

OUR

RESEARCH & GOALS

We analysed the data per channel and determined where we could make a big impact with limited resources. We looked not only at traditional channels such as SEO and paid ads, but also at emerging AI-driven environments. We saw a clear shift: more and more users do their research via AI tools and get direct answers instead of search results. This called for a different approach to visibility.

The four main goals:

Getting more value from existing customers.
Smarter use of advertising.
Partly replacing paid channels with strong organic visibility.
Building visibility within AI search (GEO), so the brand also appears in AI-generated answers.

“

DGTLbase isn't a big agency, but the team has proven that with a sharp strategy and limited resources, you can still make a big impact.

– Team Curly Girl Movement

THE

SOLUTION & IMPLEMENTATION

Beauty is all about experience, trust and education. Based on those insights, we developed an approach that fits both the brand and the market.

Email flows became more personal, more educational and less discount-driven, which increased both relevance and retention.
Meta Ads got a complete refresh, with creatives tailored to hair types, routines and social proof.
Google Shopping was fully replaced by Organic Shopping via SEO, with the same effect without the costs.
Cross-sell bundles and product combinations were introduced based on hair type and moment of use.
The email list was cleaned up and re-segmented, which also saved on subscription costs.
SEO was used as the foundation for AI-driven visibility (GEO), with FAQ structures and semantic context.
Educational content was woven through the entire funnel, from quiz to blog to product page.

THE

RESULTS

Despite a marketing budget that was 70% lower than the year before, the loss of revenue was limited to just 24%. Performance rose on almost every front:

+21% returning customer rate.
+192.92% higher CTR on Meta Ads.
+12.64% higher ROAS on Meta, despite stock problems.
Google Ads ROAS rose from 563% to 906%.
Meta ROAS grew from 941% to 1389%.
80% of revenue now comes in through organic traffic.

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