Performance ads, SEO and checkout work that returned 4–5x on ad spend and brought more than a quarter of online buyers back for another order at Singapore’s best-known soya chain.

Mr Bean’s strength has always been impulse. Soya milk, beancurd and pancakes are bought on the way past a kiosk, by someone who did not leave home intending to buy them. That is an enviable position in physical retail and an awkward one online: a purchase nobody has to plan is also a purchase nobody thinks to plan. The basket a customer builds in thirty seconds at a counter is small, and small baskets sit uncomfortably against the economics of delivery and fulfilment. The online store was not really competing with other soya brands either — it was competing with the convenience of the outlet the customer already walks past. On top of that, food and beverage is one of the most crowded auctions in Singapore paid media, priced by the same bidding that every delivery platform in the market is taking part in. The channel needed to earn back more than it cost, in revenue rather than impressions, on a category whose natural buying habit is frequent and small rather than occasional and large.

Turn online ordering into a channel that pays for its own media and then compounds, instead of an add-on that quietly runs at a loss beside the retail network. Three measures defined success: a return on ad spend high enough to justify re-investing in the channel, a larger share of the people who reached the store actually completing an order rather than stalling at the cart, and — the measure that matters most for a product people consume habitually — a meaningful share of first-time buyers coming back to order again. The scoreboard was a sales one: revenue return, order conversion rate and repeat purchase rate.

We built performance campaigns across Meta and Google Shopping and Search, structured around how the range is genuinely bought rather than how it is catalogued — everyday drinks and beancurd, multi-packs and bundles sized for a household, and the larger orders that get placed for offices, parties and gatherings. A retargeting layer ran constantly against browsers and cart abandoners, because in a low-consideration category the gap between interest and order is measured in minutes and is easily lost. The product feed and campaign structure were maintained so spend concentrated on the lines that actually converted instead of being spread evenly across a menu.

Around the paid work we developed SEO for the branded and category searches the brand should own outright, so a steady share of demand arrived with no media cost attached to it. On the store itself we reworked the ordering and checkout experience, tightening product pages, cart and the steps to payment where orders were leaking, and merchandising bundles and multi-packs so building a larger, better-value basket was the obvious path rather than an upsell prompt at the end. Email capture was built into both the site and the campaign journeys, so visitors who were not ready to order still entered the database, and lifecycle email and retargeting flows carried them back afterwards. That last piece is the mechanism behind repeat purchase: for something people drink regularly, the job is not persuading them once, it is being the brand they return to without being asked.

Over five to six months the campaigns returned 4–5x on ad spend, order conversion settled between 3% and 4%, and the repeat purchase rate held above 25% — an online channel that earns back several times what it costs and, just as importantly, keeps a quarter of the customers it wins rather than buying each order once.

See the rest of our client work on the case studies page.