
How a Utah-based sporting goods supplier effectively navigated the uncertainty and challenges of the 2022 eCommerce market.
OVERVIEW
Level Nine Sports is committed to providing quality goods and top-notch customer service at the lowest prices anywhere. With the most knowledgeable team of avid skiers, snowboarders, and bikers, they are confident that L9 Sports is the absolute best place to outfit your family with high-quality ski, snowboard, and bike equipment.
In the face of a looming recession and extreme market uncertainty, Level Nine maintained revenue with a 6.6 MER in 2022.
Channels | Google Advertising, Microsoft Advertising, Amazon Advertising, Facebook, The Trade Desk |
Vertical | Outdoor Sports Goods |
HQ | Utah, USA |
Website | levelninesports.com |





THE CHALLENGES
How to determine the RIGHT marketing strategy for profit.
2022 was a challenging year in eCommerce as consumers began to conserve money in preparation for an oncoming recession. Our challenge was to steady the revenue ship for our clients in this uncertain environment.
With a distrust of campaign data, Level9 needed a higher fidelity picture of both business and performance metrics to make better profit decisions. A shift to Media Efficiency Ratio (MER) started to become a more accurate barometer of success.
THE GOALS
- Maintain performance efficiency
- Prove marketing impact on business health
- Align media spend to sales pacing
- Maintain YoY sales after robust 2021


THE FINCH SOLUTION
Finch merged business-level data and marketing data to create a more accurate picture - across both MER and Net CPV.
The plan involved a deep dive into L9's business-level profitability:The name of the game in 2022 was looking at the business itself to determine what the marketing strategy should be. We aligned our marketing with the unique needs and constraints of the individual client.
- Rebuilt the L9 product feed, including hundreds of thousands of SKUs
- Surfaced the most profitable in-stock SKUs to focus spend
- Calibrated media spend based on Net CPV to pace with actual sales
"Finch improved our existing Google and Bing search campaigns greatly and helped us expand into Amazon advertising. With the addition of Facebook in the past year, we have also seen growth in that realm and hope to lean more into social going forward.”
Peter Ruppert - Director of Ecommerce, L9 Sports
Finch and Level Nine managed to maintain YoY sales from 2021 to 2022 despite tougher economic market circumstances. By understanding the key business-level metrics, we were able to determine how aggressive we could get. MER was higher in 2021 than 2022 (7.6 vs. 6.6), but because we were tracking it, we knew how much of it could be sacrificed in order to maximize sales in the new environment of 2022.

Maintained stable YoY sales in a year of recession fears

Achieved 6.6 MER while pacing spend with sales

Tied business growth to marketing spend
