How We Turned a Small Ad Budget Into 83 Customers Using Meta Ads

1. Background & Market Context

About the Client

Our client is a new bakery workshop brand focused on empowering people to learn professional cake-making skills from home. They were launching a new Live Bento Cake Workshop priced at ₹99, a low-ticket product requiring volume-driven marketing.

Market Context

The Indian online learning and workshop market in the baking niche is highly competitive, with low-cost workshops often being used as entry points to build communities and upsell premium courses. With no prior online presence, the challenge was to stand out and drive quick registrations in a crowded space.

2. Campaign Objectives

• Primary Goal: Drive paid registrations for the Bento Cake workshop priced at ₹99.
  
• Secondary Goals:
  
  • Build brand awareness across India.
    
  • Lay the foundation for a community-driven growth strategy to nurture future sales at a lower CAC.
    

Key Success Metric: Registrations at or below Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) = Workshop Price (₹99)

3. Challenges Identified

1. Short campaign duration: Only 17 days to build traction and validate the offer.
   
2. Zero brand recall: The client had no existing online community or audience.
   
3. Low-ticket product: Required high conversion efficiency to stay profitable.
   
4. Competitive niche: Established bakers were already running similar campaigns on Meta platforms.
   

4. Strategy: A Dual-Funnel Approach

We designed the campaign around two parallel objectives:

1. Direct Conversions: Drive registrations through highly targeted conversion campaigns.
   
2. Brand Visibility: Build audience trust and awareness via engagement and traffic campaigns to warm up potential customers.
   

Platform: Meta (Facebook & Instagram)

Audience Targeting:

• Demographics: Women aged 18–45 interested in baking, cooking, culinary arts, and home entrepreneurship.
  
• Geography: Segmentation between metro (Tier-1) and non-metro (Tier-2 and Tier-3) cities to understand price and interest sensitivity differences.
  
• Behavioural Filters: Audiences engaging with cooking/baking content and exhibiting purchase behaviours on Meta.
  

Creative Strategy:

• 3 Creatives tested:
  
  1. Video ad: Emotional storytelling with an empowerment angle and focus on creating beautiful cakes at home.
     
  2. Static image #1: Showcased cake aesthetics and aspects of creating memories .
     
  3. Static image #2: Strong value-driven message with workshop details
     

Funnel Optimization:

• Used Razorpay checkout page directly as the landing page, eliminating unnecessary steps to leverage impulse buying psychology.
  
• Created a WhatsApp group community post-purchase for customer nurturing and engagement.
  

5. Execution Details

1. Ad Set Segmentation:
   
   • Metro audience (Tier-1) vs Non-metro audience (Tier-2 and Tier-3)
     
   • Tested all 3 creatives in both audience sets to identify cost-effective combinations.
     
2. A/B Testing:
   
   • Messaging: Emotional empowerment vs direct value propositions.
     
   • Audience: Metro vs non-metro conversion efficiency.
     
   • Creative type: Video vs static images.
     
3. Optimization:
   
   • Early phase yielded zero registrations, triggering rapid review of ad performance.
     
   • Reallocated 40% of the budget to high-performing audience segments after day 3.
     
   • Retargeted engaged users with similar creatives in a separate ad set.

6. Results: Performance Analytics

Key Metrics:

Metric	Value
Budget	₹7,482.77
Impressions	73,279
Reach	38,130
CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions)	₹102.11
CPC (Link Click)	₹5.48
Link CTR (Click-Through Rate)	1.86% (33% higher than industry benchmarks of 1.2–1.4%)
Landing Page Views	749 (Cost Per LPV: ₹9.99)
Registrations	83
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)	₹90.15
Revenue	₹8,217
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)	1.09

7. Funnel Breakdown & Analysis

Step 1: Awareness → Clicks

• CTR at 1.86% outperformed industry benchmarks, indicating strong messaging resonance.
  
• Metro cities delivered a 15% higher CTR, while non-metro cities drove lower cost per click, balancing performance.
  

Step 2: Clicks → Landing Page Views

• Razorpay’s frictionless checkout page kept Cost Per LPV at ₹9.99, with minimal drop-off.
  

Step 3: Landing Page Views → Conversions

• Conversion rate from landing page views: 11% (749 LPV → 83 registrations).
  
• Image ad drove 90% of all registrations, proving superior aesthetics and impulsiveness increases conversion ability despite a higher CPC.
  

8. Insights & Learnings

1. Demographics:
   
   • While the campaign targeted women, 5% of registrations came from men, highlighting untapped market potential.
     
   • Age group 25–44 contributed the majority of conversions, reinforcing our audience assumptions.
     
2. Creative Performance:
   
   • Aesthetic Statics converted better and brought more than 90% of the registrations.
     
   • Value-driven static creatives Emotional storytelling in video format generated clicks but underperformed at the final purchase stage.
     
3. Early Campaign Challenges:
   
   • Zero registrations in the first 3 days tested patience but reinforced the need for real-time optimizations.
     
4. Industry Insight:
   
   • Low-ticket workshops benefit greatly from direct checkout integrations vs traditional multi-step landing pages.
     
   • Building a community layer (WhatsApp groups) post-purchase helps reduce future CAC and improve LTV.
     

9. Business Impact

• Successfully drove 83 paid registrations for a brand with no online presence.
  
• Built a WhatsApp-based community of 83+ customers that can now be nurtured for higher-ticket product upsells.
  
• Validated product-market fit for the brand, providing a scalable campaign blueprint for future launches.
  

10. Recommendations & Future Roadmap

1. Community Building: Leverage WhatsApp to nurture participants through value content and offers to increase LTV.
   
2. Upsell Strategy: Introduce bundle offers and advanced courses to drive repeat purchases.
   
3. UGC & Testimonials: Encourage workshop participants to share experiences for future retargeting creatives.
   
4. Retargeting Enhancements: Build structured abandoned cart recovery flows to lift conversion rates.
   

Conclusion

This campaign proved that data-driven audience segmentation, creative experimentation, and funnel optimization can drive results even for brands starting from scratch. Achieving a CAC of ₹90.15 and 83 paid registrations in just 17 days, the campaign created both immediate ROI and a community foundation for long-term growth.