@FlorisAds Nice turnaround. ~€93K at 3.1 ROAS is ~€30K spend, clearing the 2.5 target by 24%. That headroom is useful: you can keep ~15-20% of budget on tests without the blended number dropping below target and making the client nervous again.
@Akshay_Growth9 No. Split those queries into their own campaign and judge them on delayed conversion: what share of those visitors buy within 60-90 days. If 4% of $3 clicks convert later, that's a $75 CPA. Often in line with bottom-funnel, just slower to show up.
@trackiancom First thing worth checking there: secondary actions (page views, add-to-cart) still set as Primary. That alone can inflate reported conversions 2-3x and push Smart Bidding toward cheap micro-events instead of real leads or sales.
@wetracked The experienced one checks break-even first. At a 30% margin, break-even ROAS is 3.33x. If that 4x in Ads Manager is really ~2.8x in Shopify, every dollar loses money, and doubling the budget just doubles the loss.
@Jessie_HealyDTC Quick check that catches this early: incremental MER = change in store revenue / change in ad spend. Here the extra $7,500/mo bought roughly $0, so incremental MER is ~0 despite 11x in-platform. At that jump Meta often claims buyers who'd have converted anyway.
Your ad platforms all claim the same sale.
Meta: $18K
Google: $15K
TikTok: $6K
Sum: $39K attributed
The store actually booked $28K on $10K spend.
Platform ROAS 3.9x vs real MER 2.8x.
Set budgets on MER. Use platform data only to compare inside a channel.
@JessicaCre62465 The numbers make the case. At a $1.20 CPC, a 2% conversion rate = $60 CPA. Lift the page to 3% and CPA drops to $40 with zero extra spend.
A third off every customer, right when CPMs are at their yearly peak.
@lukasenECOM Good call cutting back. $30 across 120 ads is ~25¢ each, so none of them gets enough data to judge.
Rough rule: 3-5 creatives per ad set, and let each ad spend ~1x your target CPA before deciding. At a $25 CPA that's ~$100 for 4 ads, i.e. 3-4 days at $30.
@echelonnio #5 is the one to test first. Pause branded search in a few regions for 2-3 weeks, keep it on in comparable ones.
If revenue in the paused regions drops by less than ~30% of what brand was credited with, most of that ROAS was demand you'd have captured anyway.
@holmisthename The way to prove it to yourself: judge ads on cost per engaged subscriber, not CPL.
$1.50 CPL, 20% still opening after 30 days = $7.50 per real reader
$2.50 CPL, 50% still opening = $5.00
The "expensive" ad ends up 33% cheaper.
@the_ecom_g The math holds even after the conversion drop. At a $10 CPA, offer 1 nets $4 per order. Offer 2 still beats it if it converts 3x worse: $30 CPA → $7 net.
So the bundle has a lot of room before it loses, which is rarely true of a deeper discount.
Work backwards from the revenue target, not forward from the budget.
Goal: $60K new revenue
Avg deal $6K → 10 deals
Close rate 20% → 50 opportunities
Lead→opp 25% → 200 leads
CPL $45 → $9,000 budget
If finance offers $5K, you know the gap before launch.
@Junglr_LLC A simple way to prove it first: run auto at modest bids for ~2 weeks, move search terms with 2+ orders into exact, and negate terms with 15+ clicks and 0 orders.
Then add broad around the proven terms instead of guessing.
@Chisom_cha Warm-up can't fix DNS. Check these first:
- SPF, DKIM and DMARC set up on a separate sending domain (not your main one)
- Plain text, no links or images in the first email
- Start at ~20-30 sends/day per inbox and ramp slowly
Then warm-up actually helps.
@mrfeldmanSEM To make the branded search read cleaner: log 4 weeks of branded search impressions before launch as a baseline, and if you can, hold out one region with no Demand Gen spend.
Lift vs. the holdout is much harder to argue with than platform ROAS.
@Fatimazehra967 Teardowns beat a portfolio of mockups.
Pick 3 brands, pull their ads from the Meta Ad Library, flag the ones running 30+ days (a decent proxy for winners) and explain why they work. Then write 3 iterations for each.
That shows the judgment they're hiring for, with $0 spent.
@TogarBeckol Worth setting the MER floor before opening any dashboard:
Break-even MER = 1 ÷ contribution margin before ads.
40% margin → 2.5 MER just to break even. Everything above that is what actually pays salaries and rent.
@ecommilan The other lever is supplier terms.
Days of cash tied up = days of inventory − days you have to pay the supplier.
45 days of stock on net-30 means you only fund ~15 days yourself. Getting to net-60 can free more cash than a bulk discount ever saves.
@blvckledge The BFCM version of this in numbers: 40% margin, run 20% off, and margin drops to 25%.
Break-even ROAS goes from 2.5x to 4x.
The same 3x ROAS that made money in October loses money on every Black Friday order.
Set your max CPA before launch, not after.
Max CPA = AOV × gross margin × (1 + expected repeat orders)
AOV $80, margin 45%, 0.5 repeat orders → $54 max CPA.
Paying $60 per customer? You lose $6 on every one.
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