Fathom Watches – Rebuilding Trust in Paid Media and Driving Six-Figure Growth
Fathom Watches is a London-based watch vintage specialist, stocking some of the world's most renowned watches.
From Omega and Rolex to Audemars Piguet and Patek Philippe, the company sources, authenticates, and retails investment-quality and rare watches to collectors and connoisseurs in the UK and around the world.
With a showroom in London and an expertly curated online store, Fathom Watches has built up a solid reputation for genuineness, expertise, and excellent customer service.
As a luxury resale brand, their client is highly educated and discerning - so trust, visibility, and accuracy when marketing online simply cannot be an afterthought.
The Challenge
When Fathom Watches approached ExecuteConsult, they were prepared to leave paid media behind. They had tried scaling digitally in the past at a high cost and with disappointing results, most notably via Google Paid Search and Meta Paid Social. Although their former agency, performance had been sporadic, weakly measured, and sometimes absent altogether.
Google Shopping ads were either attracting irrelevant traffic or simply not appearing at all. Meta ads were getting clicks but poor-quality engagement and low rates of conversion.
Our challenge was twofold: one, to demonstrate that paid media could drive sound ROI in resale luxury; and two, to restore faith in a data-driven, strategy-fueled growth model.
The Solution
We knew early on that this wasn't a media buying assignment. We had to return to the fundamentals: who purchased these watches, how they were acting online, and where Google and Meta came into play in their journey.
Defining Audience & Intent
Our initial job was to get inside the head of Fathom's audience- psychographically, but also demographically. Luxury watch customers aren't impulse-buying shoppers for mass eCommerce. They are methodical, brand-loyal, and frequently very highly educated collectors.
We segmented audiences into distinct groups: first-time luxury buyers, collectors of individual brands or periods, international customers, and showroom-driven customers for the London market. They each had unique needs, urgency levels, and digital touchpoints.
Google Shopping Makeover
Fathom's Google Shopping feed was miserably under-optimised and off-brand from what serious buyers were looking for. We started fresh from scratch, with highest priority given to:
Comprehensive product information: including brand, reference numbers, model names, case sizes, and materials to attract buyers looking for a particular piece.
Price segmentation and custom labels: enabling more nuanced value- and margin-driven bidding approaches.
Landing page alignment: making sure each click ended up on a page that aligned with the buyer's intention and provided trust signals (certification, authenticity, guarantee, etc.).
We also added a highly limited Search campaign template to capture high-intent searches, e.g., "buy vintage Rolex Submariner London" or "Omega Seamaster full set UK."
Meta Ads Strategy – Designed to Drive Bookings and Sales
Meta was underperforming prior to when we took over because it did not have specific goals and points of conversion. We transitioned the platform from general awareness to two definitive goals:
Direct onsite conversions by extremely targeted, high-value product ads
Calendly showroom bookings for in-person viewings of specific items
By aligning Meta's visual storytelling strengths with the ease of instant appointment booking, we closed the digital-offline gap.
We also executed dynamic product ads for retargeting - appearances by watches the user had previously considered - to reconnect high-intent buyers and push the purchase, either online or offline via a showroom visit.
Transparent Reporting, Clear Results
As a counter to past frustration with unclear reporting, we created tailored dashboards revealing:
Sales from Google and Meta, discretely and in combination
Calendly bookings that align with Meta campaign interactions
ROAS and CPA breakdowns by campaign
This enabled Fathom's team not only to observe what was succeeding - but why.
The Outcome
The outcomes were excellent - and in a category where outcomes take some time to materialize, they came quickly:
Google Shopping and Search ads consistently generate six-figure monthly revenue, with great return on ad spend.
Meta ads now generate both direct sales and showroom traffic, producing a consistent stream of high-intent Calendly bookings each month.
Showroom appointments were being converted at a very, very high level - evidence that online marketing indeed generates foot traffic sales in the luxury segment.
We were shortlisted for a UK Search Award 2024 for our campaign—a source of pride and definite indication of the strategic prowess that went into this effort.