We made £77,993 selling male apparel to women

Let me tell you an interesting insight we spotted in a partner’s account that led to an extra £77,993 in revenue for them.

A while ago, we onboarded a menswear brand selling fitness and lifestyle apparel.

Men are their target demographic. So they built their entire Google Ads strategy around them.

Everything from the product pages to ad creatives was designed to attract male buyers.

But when we looked into the customer data, we discovered a weird pattern…

In many orders, the billing address didn’t match the shipping address.

As it turns out, not all of their customers were men.

There was a whole segment the brand had overlooked.

Women were buying their products as gifts for the men in their lives.

At first, we thought it might just be a few isolated cases.

Maybe some birthday presents or last-minute holiday shopping.

But as we kept digging into the data, these weren’t one-off purchases.

It was happening consistently, across months and seasons

And what made it even more interesting was that this wasn’t a segment they had ever tried to attract.

No specific messaging. No tailored creative. Nothing about their site or their ads spoke directly to this kind of buyer.

Which meant there was a real opportunity here.

An audience with clear intent, despite not being the target demographic.

Once we saw it, the next step was obvious.

We needed to build a strategy around this audience and see just how far we could take it.

Here’s a list of what we did

1. New campaigns for female audiences

We set up separate pMax and Demand Gen campaigns for women.

That way, we could test targeting, creative, and messaging without skewing performance data from the men's campaigns.

2. Custom conversion tracking

We tracked subtle signals like “shipped to a different name” or billing/shipping mismatches—signs indicating gift purchases.

It gave us insights into how this audience moved through the funnel.

Now, we can optimize based on data instead of assumptions.

3. Messaging and creative

We moved away from the usual gym-heavy, male-focused content.

Instead, we leaned into the emotional side of gifting. Our ads featured packaged products, product flat lays, and scenarios where men received gifts from their partners.

To date, we’ve spent £25,000 targeting female audiences.

That investment turned into £77,993.13 in revenue.

A 3.2X return from an audience the brand hadn't thought to target

What stands out to me is how obvious it seems in hindsight.

The opportunity was right there in the data all along.

And honestly, I think a lot of brands have blind spots like this…

They think they know exactly who their customers are, but reality is often more complex.

When you’re seeing good results with a core audience, it’s easy to stop questioning what else might be possible.

But at the same time…

I believe it’s worth taking a step back every now and then and asking yourself this question:

“Are there other groups of buyers you could target that you’re not targeting?

There might be some “invisible” revenue sitting in your account right now.

But it’ll take a bit of digging to “see through” it.

Jackson

Founder and CEO of Echelon

How we can help:

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