Scaling is an art when it comes to Facebook, some people can do it well and others struggle. Today we are bringing you a case study from Cem Verghese, a Facebook ads expert who was able to scale his client’s campaigns from $29 000/ month in revenue to $221 000/ month while also increasing the ROAS from 1.8 to 2.02.
The client was promoting a low-ticket digital product in the coaching/consulting space and was spending around $500/ day at 1.8 ROAS before hiring Cem and his team to take charge of the marketing of his project.
In this case study, we are going to see what exactly Cem and his team did to scale to over $200 000/ month revenue at 2.02 ROAS.
Setting Clear ROAS Targets
After crunching numbers and analyzing the previous attribution lift on the account, Cem’s team and the client agreed to work towards the following targets.
- Target ROAS: 2.0
- Breakeven ROAS: 1.21
- Minimum acceptable ROAS: 1.5
- Budget split: 85% prospecting, 15% remarketing
Cem also worked out the historical attribution lift on the account. The concept was, “If they hit 1.77 ROAS across the account today, it’s very likely if they look back at the same day in a month, they’ll hit 2 ROAS account-wide”. Facebook was their primary driver of sales, so they could report off a 28-day click 1-day window.
Getting clear on the ROAS targets allowed Cem to scale faster as he had reverse-engineered the numbers to know exactly when to scale and when not to, rather than just waiting around to hit the account-wide ROAS before scaling.
The screenshot below shows how Cem worked out the targets based on different campaigns and time frames. He just placed these numbers into the automated rules.
Since they were promoting an info product with just one offer plus upsells, they used a single account ROAS target to base decisions off. They had different targets, so they knew when not to pause ads prematurely, and also when to scale hard and bank on sales coming in beyond day 1.
According to Cem, it's important to know your day 1 ROAS. When working with smaller bootstrapped companies, he ensures that he’s profitable on day 1. This helps him when it comes to regulating the cash flow and ensuring that he isn’t wasting too much time and ad spend before knowing if something works or not.
Account Structure
Previously this account was just running prospecting ads. When Cem and his team took over, they implemented a full-funnel account structure. This means that they ran ads to convert engagers and site visitors and also added creative testing campaigns.
Creative Testing
They tested 131 individual creatives in the course of 4 months. That was around 8 per week. The creatives varied from:
- Images with clear value propositions on them
- Videos showing inside the course, and what customers will get
- Review videos and screenshots from customers
Despite testing lots of different creative concepts, Cem found out that image creatives with clear value propositions and modules of the entire course performed best.
After testing many creatives and finding a bunch of winners, they started scaling aggressively immediately after hitting their account-wide target ROAS. They were able to maintain the target ROAS with up to $5 800/ day ad spend.
Lifetime Value Adjusted and Broad Audiences
Their best audience was an adjusted lifetime value audience. It was a bit hacky, but it worked wonders for them. They took the customer list from the client and blew out the LTV values.
For the top 10% of customers, they increased their LTV by a factor of 10. For the bottom 10%, they decreased it by a factor of 10. For example, if a high-value customer spent $100 in its lifetime, they edited the list to show their value is $1 000. If a low-value customer spent only $49, they marked their value at $4,9.
Cem wasn’t sure about this hack but he decided to give it a shot. It turned out to be the best-performing audience on the account. The theory behind it was that Facebook would prioritize delivering ads to audiences similar to the best customers who buy upsells or buy more than once.
Their second-best audience was broad, 18-65+ Middle of Funnel with no lookalike or interest targeting. They just let the creative/angle and Facebook's algorithm pick out the conversions.
Being Proactive in Comments
The client was very proactive at answering questions in detail on the ads and handling objections in the ads’ comment section. This enabled them to convert customers who were on the fence/ had a couple of specific queries that needed addressing.
They also noticed that a lot of previous happy customers started to leave positive reviews on the ads. So, they relaxed the purchase exclusions from lifetime to customers in the last 60 days. That way, happy customers would continue to leave positive feedback to keep building more trust.
The Ad Copies
The best-performing ad copies were the ones that included common customer reviews and objections that customers had before buying the coaching product. The major aim of the copy was to hook readers in, eliminate objections, paint a picture of what could happen to their business if they bought the product, and then anchor the low price to the value. The product value was elaborated within the actual ads but not in the copy as people don’t like reading long boring details.
Conclusion
Cem was able to scale his client’s monthly revenue by almost 10x — from $29 000 to $220 000 in a short period of time. The one thing that helped him to turn the account around, was having a systematic plan of action before starting the project. Systemizing all the campaign steps and activities that they would do helped Cem and his team to go through the testing phase creatively and scale the winning ads fast. It sounds simple, but it works.
