A fashion brand five months old, unable to sell much, working with one of those monthly-retainer marketing agencies.
Three months later: a 31% profit margin and a 75% delivery rate, with sales up many times over. It could comfortably have been three times that, because ads were paused more than four times when stock ran out.
The order of the work matters more than the numbers.
The first move was entirely outside the dashboard: the website, and serious CRO. Conversion rate went from 0.9% to 2%, meaning the same traffic on the same budget sold twice as much, all before anyone touched the ads.
Second, a proper creative testing cycle. Every 7 to 10 days the brand owner sent new creatives, following directions we sent him rather than what he personally liked, and winners moved into the audience ad sets.
Third, audience structure, all inside a single campaign: an interest stack close to the buyer persona, a 10% lookalike, a 5% lookalike, and retargeting with recommended angles and messaging. Winners went through pump and punish, except the retargeting ad set.
Fourth, daily optimisation to protect ROAS and spend as far as possible.
The result was one campaign holding more than twenty ad sets overall, and that was enough for these numbers, while we were constrained by stock and by the account's own spending limits.
Note this: the brand didn't need fifteen campaigns. It needed a page that sells and creative that refreshes.
If your page converts at 0.9%, every extra unit of ad spend is being paid twice. And the question before any scale isn't how much to add, it's whether stock can carry it.
The lesson
Fix the page before raising budget
