From Disconnected Marketing Tactics to a Data-Driven Growth Strategy for Excel Supplements

An Established Brand Ready for Its Next Stage of Growth

EXCEL SUPPLEMENTS

Excel Supplements was not a startup looking to establish its first marketing presence. It was an established equine and canine supplement company with nearly 17 years in business, an existing customer base, ecommerce infrastructure, email marketing and approximately 25,000 social media followers.

But growth had begun to plateau.

When Miller Marketing Group first evaluated the business in late 2024, Excel consistently generated strong annual gross sales. Website traffic existed, but customer acquisition through Google search, direct and social had declined since 2022. Direct traffic remained the company’s leading acquisition channel, while approximately 25,000 social followers had generated only 40 attributed orders.

The Pieces Were There. The Strategy Needed to Connect Them.

Excel already had many valuable marketing assets: Shopify, social media, email, educational content, sponsored athletes, an established customer base, product knowledge and brand recognition.

The opportunity was to connect those assets around a common growth strategy.

From the beginning, Miller Marketing Group approached the engagement as a Marketing Director – working alongside Excel’s existing team while directing the larger strategy across brand voice, content, advertising, promotional planning, customer data and ecommerce.

The original strategy identified opportunities across brand consistency, channel-specific content, coordinated product promotions, website conversion, retargeting, sponsored athletes, email marketing, Meta advertising and industry-specific advertising.

The goal wasn’t to do more marketing. It was to make the marketing work together.

Moving From Marketing Activity to a Marketing System

Miller Marketing Group began connecting Excel’s individual marketing channels around the customer journey.

Strategic Marketing Direction: Establishing priorities, directing campaigns, evaluating opportunities and coordinating marketing activity across the business.

Customer & Sales Data: Using ecommerce behavior and customer data to understand acquisition, retention, purchasing patterns and product performance.

Customer Segmentation: Building different strategies for different types of customers rather than marketing to the entire database the same way.

Content Strategy: Developing educational, lifestyle, customer, athlete, UGC and product content designed to build both brand awareness and demand.

Social & Short-Form Video: Increasing the emphasis on authentic Reels and content capable of reaching horse and dog owners beyond Excel’s existing followers.

Email Marketing: Connecting educational content, promotional campaigns, customer journeys and ecommerce automations to revenue.

Ecommerce Strategy: Evaluating the path from discovery to product view, cart, checkout and purchase.

Retention & Lifetime Value: Developing strategies around Autoship, repeat purchases, bundles, customer reactivation and average order value.

Customer Data Became Part of the Marketing Strategy

One important evolution was moving beyond basic demographic audiences and looking at how customers actually behaved.

Miller Marketing Group developed an RFM customer strategy separating Excel customers into different customer segments based on purchase history and frequency.

The marketing objective changed by customer segment.

The question shifted from: ‘What promotion should we send?’ to: ‘Who are we talking to, what do we want them to do next, and what message gives them a reason to do it?’

Turning an Owned Audience Into a Revenue Channel

Email became part of the larger sales and retention system rather than functioning simply as a newsletter.

MMG incorporated educational content, promotional campaigns, product launches, customer communication, and e-commerce automations into the strategy.

Shopify reporting also showed a 27.93% conversion rate and 50 orders through a handful of broadcast and automation emails.

Email wasn’t treated as a newsletter. It became part of the customer journey.

CONTENT + BRAND DISCOVERY

Creating Content That Reaches Beyond the Existing

Audience: Excel already had a sizable social audience. The bigger opportunity was reaching horse and dog owners who weren’t following the brand yet.

The content strategy expanded beyond product-focused posts to include education, customers, sponsored athletes, UGC, equestrian lifestyle content, humor, brand personality and short-form video.

DISCOVERY -> FAMILIARITY -> TRUST -> PURCHASE

During the Facebook period shown, total views increased 64%, 3-second video views increased 203%, watch time increased 207%, and Reels accounted for 76.6% of content views.

Across both platforms, the content was increasingly reaching people who weren’t already part of the Excel audience.

ECOMMERCE

Following the Customer Beyond the Social Post

The strategy didn’t stop when someone clicked. Google Analytics purchase-journey reporting for January 1-September 28, 2026 showed the progression from:

Session Starts -> Product Views ->Add to Carts -> Checkouts -> Purchases

The data also revealed an important behavioral pattern: desktop represented approximately 64% of session starts, but mobile generated roughly 70% of product views, add-to-carts, checkouts and purchases.

That insight reinforced the need to think about content, advertising and ecommerce as one connected customer experience.

MEASURABLE GROWTH

When the Strategy Works Together, the Numbers Begin to Move.

Data Doesn’t Just Prove What’s Working. It Shows Us What to Do Next.

Part of functioning as a Marketing Director means looking at the entire picture – including the numbers that aren’t moving in the desired direction.

The longer-range Shopify comparison showed ExcelEQ up approximately 43% and ExcelK9 up approximately 563%.

Those numbers aren’t simply results to report. They help determine where demand is growing, where positioning may need refinement, which audiences deserve additional investment, what offers should be tested and where the next growth opportunity may exist.

Marketing Became a Connected Growth System.

What began in 2024 as an effort to better coordinate Excel Supplements’ existing marketing assets evolved into a much broader growth strategy.

Customer Data -> Content -> Social Discovery -> Paid Media -> Email -> Ecommerce -> Retention -> Measurement

Each piece informs the next. And the results can now be seen across multiple parts of the business: more new customers, higher average order value, growing product lines, revenue attributed to email, greater reach beyond existing followers and a clearer understanding of customer behavior. Most importantly, Excel’s marketing is no longer viewed as a collection of individual tactics. It’s being managed as a system.

MILLER MARKETING GROUP’S ROLE

More Than Marketing Execution.

Miller Marketing Group wasn’t brought into Excel Supplements simply to create social media posts.

MMG stepped into a Marketing Director-level role – looking across the business, studying customer behavior, directing strategy, coordinating marketing channels, identifying opportunities, measuring performance and helping turn individual marketing activities into a cohesive growth engine.