You asked. Here's the first one.
A few weeks back I asked what you wanted from me first.
Plenty of you said strategies. The stuff before everyone else catches on.
So here's one:
We cut the budget and revenue went up 170%
In December a client switched our ads off
Their rule was simple:
Operating cost under 25% of gross.
That's a 4 ROI minimum. We were running 3.4.
The email was one line:
"General Management is not satisfied with the ROI results from last month."
Looking at their data…. it made sense:
Every agency instinct says the same thing here. Ask for more budget. Ask for more time. Blame the learning phase.
We did the opposite.
We cut the budget and raised the ROI target from 3 to 10.
Two weeks later the account was at 11x.
Six months on
Same products. Same team. Same shop.
Ad spend: up 11.86%
Revenue: up 170.62%
ROI: up 142%
Cost per order: down 64%
$106,615 in. $1,130,648 out. 10.60 ROI.
💡 Never solve a ROI problem with budget. Never solve a volume problem by dropping the target.
A high target with a high budget is a contradiction.
You're telling the algorithm to find 10x inventory and spend four hundred quid a day doing it. It can't. So it underspends, or it drifts down-quality to hit the number you asked for.
A high target with a low budget is a solvable problem.
Now it only has to find a little bit of very good inventory. That it can do.
Raise the floor. Cut the budget. Then ratchet the budget back up slowly, only while ROI holds.
Do those in the wrong order and you'll swear this doesn't work.
Not all of this went our way.
Six months in we went wide on affiliates. 22,000 creators in one push. Around 990 samples out the door. Felt like progress:
Week 28: 534 videos posted. Affiliate revenue down 18.1%
Week 29: 478 videos. Revenue up 15.2%
Week 30: 397 videos, 26% fewer. Revenue up 36.5%.
Less content sold more.
The client spotted it before we did……
⚠️ WARNING ⚠️
The part nobody puts in a case study
That account ran a 26% refund rate.
And roughly 45% of its revenue came through LIVE streams the brand ran itself. Six days a week, own hosts, own facility. We did not build that. We built the ad layer behind it.
Both are in the write-up, in their own section, with the numbers.
Because a case study that only shows you the win can't tell you which parts would actually work on your shop.
Twelve months. Nine sections. Nothing left out.
Every change we made and why we made it.
The budget ladder, month by month. The separate LIVE campaign that ran 17x to 37x. The 55 videos out of 2,843 that drove 45% of the affiliate revenue.
Plus seven questions you can run on your own shop tonight.
Free. No pitch.
- Paul 👊
PS. If you like this deep dives please reply and let me know….. have a few more planned 🚀