Guitar Brothers
Email generated conversions increased by 210%
Sales increase 115% YTD- SEM ROAS achieved 17x
Revenue per Email recipient increased by 105%- Brand campaign ROI reached 29.89%
- Conversion rate increased 67% YTD
- Average Order Value grew 15.3% MoM
Guitar Brothers is an independent guitar store delivering friendly, expert service from a team of passionate musicians. Every staff member plays guitar and knows everything about these instruments. They stock an extensive range of instruments from classic big-name brands to limited collections, amplifiers, effects, and accessories at competitive prices. Their mission is to provide equipment that inspires musicians to play and help people realise that everyone can make music.
Guitar Brothers has a strong community of musicians, and the team often provides advice and guidance to players around the world. However, they faced significant technical challenges in online promotion. The company couldn’t make Google Ads profitable, so they turned to LION Digital for help.
THE CHALLENGE
At the end of 2024, Guitar Brothers experienced a serious issue with Telstra that left them offline for an extended period, severely affecting sales. In addition, their existing website struggled with poor navigation and slow page speeds, creating friction in the customer journey.
The problems were tied together and required coordinated solutions. Without effective SEM campaigns, they missed opportunities to capture high-intent shoppers searching for guitars and accessories. But even when campaigns were running, the website’s technical limitations didn’t allow for converting paid traffic successfully.
Furthermore, the Email channel was underutilised, with little automated flows in place, so Guitar Brothers was losing significant revenue from shoppers who had already shown clear buying intent.
WHAT WE DID
Guitar Brothers needed comprehensive support to rebuild their digital presence, and LION Digital approached this as a complex project.
Market Research & SEM Optimisation
We conducted detailed keyword research to map market demand against Guitar Brothers’ inventory. We analysed how customers searched for guitar equipment and determined branded and non-branded terms for electric guitars, acoustic guitars, amplifiers, and accessories.
A major discovery was a substantial market demand for pre-loved guitars. This insight warranted a dedicated campaign that drove significant high-value sales.
We aligned the SEM account structure to match all discovered market opportunities and launched three core campaigns: brand search, non-brand acquisition, and Performance Max, all optimised for strong ROI performance. We leveraged seasonal promotions to capitalise on peak shopping periods and also protected the Guitar Brothers brand term to prevent competitor ads from appearing above.
Email Marketing & Customer Retention
In parallel, we built the email marketing channel using Klaviyo, creating seven automated flows from scratch to engage customers at every stage of the buying journey:
- A Welcome Flow to engage new subscribers from the first touchpoint;
- An Abandoned Checkout Flow to recover customers who left mid-purchase;
- An Added to Cart Flow to re-engage shoppers who showed strong buying intent;
- A Browse Abandonment Flow to capture interest before it went cold;
- A Post Purchase Flow to nurture customers after their first order;
- A String Replenishment Flow to prompt repeat purchases based on natural reorder cycles;
- A Winback Flow to re-engage lapsed customers and recover dormant revenue.
All these flows created a connected retention system that systematically recovers lost sales and extends customer lifetime value across the entire funnel.
Website Experience & CRO Improvements
Our development team transformed the website experience by:
- Improving site navigation with an enhanced mega menu
- Optimising product and collection page layouts for usability
- Reducing page load times to improve overall user experience
Custom Shopify Inventory Solution
We also built a custom Shopify solution to solve a critical inventory challenge.
- A portal allows Guitar Brothers to upload supplier stock via CSV
- When a product is out of stock on the website, the system checks supplier inventory
- If available from a supplier, the product remains purchasable with clear messaging that it will ship directly from them
- The store team is notified through custom order properties when an order is fulfilled via a supplier
This effectively expanded their sellable inventory without requiring additional stockholding, reducing missed sales and unlocking new revenue opportunities.
RESULTS
LION’s multi-faceted approach delivered exceptional year-to-date performance compared to the previous year:
- Guitar Brothers achieved a 115% sales increase from January to February 2026 versus the same period in 2024.
- SEM campaigns delivered 17x ROAS, with one reaching an impressive 29.89% ROI.
- Conversion rate increased by 67% year-to-date compared with the previous period, proving the efficiency of the combined improvements in targeting and website experience.
- Average Order Value grew 15.3% month-over-month, supporting our strategic market research on the pre-owned guitar campaign.
- Automated email flows now account for 18% of total store revenue — a 400% lift versus the pre-implementation baseline.
- Revenue per recipient reached a 105% increase, while email-generated conversions grew by 210%.
- Email engagement metrics surpassed industry benchmarks, with a 47.7% open rate (vs. 46.3% median) and a 5.84% click rate (vs. 4.35% median).
210%
Increase in
Email generated conversions
115%
Increase in sales
17x
ROAS
LION Digital helped Guitar Brothers recover from major setbacks and achieve outstanding growth through comprehensive digital optimisation. That’s a good example of a multiplier effect, when marketing is treated as a unified system rather than a set of isolated channels. By launching SEM campaigns to capture high-intent demand, fixing technical issues to convert incoming traffic, and activating the Email channel to recover and retain shoppers, LION Digital successfully turned a struggling digital presence into a strong revenue driver. Each element amplified the others, working together to achieve the goal – a record-breaking performance.
Want to unlock your site’s full revenue potential?
Check out our Performance & Conversion Accelerator – a fully implemented system combining technical optimisations, Core Web Vitals improvements, and conversion rate enhancements to turn your traffic into measurable growth.
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