For me, the biggest cost of running Meta ads often comes down to two things: the high cost of producing ad creatives, and the money wasted on creatives that don't convert. To increase my chances of success, I always start by researching what works for competitors using tools like the Meta Ad Library. If certain angles or formats are performing well for them, there's a good chance we can either learn from it or create something even better. To avoid wasting budget on low-performing ads, I set up dedicated test campaigns with around 10 percent of the total budget. I use those to test different hooks and creatives. Only the best-performing ones get promoted to the main campaign. That way, I reduce guesswork, improve creative performance, and spend more of the budget on what actually works.
Instead of just running ads like everyone else, I take care of comments. I ask my friends, customers to leave comments under ads with the most spend. We've cut ad costs by 30-50% overnight on multiple campaigns by increasing quality social proof under ads.
Don't just increase Meta ad budgets. Watch first-time impression share like a hawk. If it drops below 30%, your audience is fatigued. No amount of spend will fix that. Fresh creative and broader reach win scale, not bigger budgets alone.
We also saved on our Meta advertising by abandoning broad targeting altogether and only placing local testimonial videos in zip codes within 10 miles of our clinic. We do not promote any general benefits, but instead, real patients chat about how much money they saved or how quickly they got a visit. That specificity increased the relevance score and cost per lead decreased to $4 as compared to the previous cost per lead which was at $18. The majority of businesses incinerate budget in the quest to win on volume. The shrinking of the audience and the narrowing of the message so as to feel personal gave us better results. Home town credibility always trumps slick copy.
One of the effective ways to reduce ad cost on Meta (Facebook/Instagram) and Google Ads is audience targeting by optimizing audiences on the basis of value through lookalike audiences on the basis of value (on Meta) or customer match with smart bidding (on Google). Meta Solution: Value-Based Lookalike Audiences Instead of using broad interest targeting or typical lookalikes, we uploaded a list of high-LTV customers (e.g., top 5% payers) and created 1% value-based lookalike audiences. Why it works: - Meta targets most likely to deliver comparable value. - Additional quality traffic means additional conversion, which increases relevance score and lowers CPM/CAC. Result: Reduced cost per purchase by 30-40%, and improved ROAS to more than 2.0 for some campaigns. Google Ads Strategy: Customer Match + Smart Bidding We imported first-party emails for our highest-value users to create a Customer Match audience, overlaid it onto Search campaigns with Target ROAS or Max Conversion Value bids. Why it works: - Google prefers known user signals. - Smart Bidding uses the data imported to make real-time bids. Result: 20% lower CPA and improved impression share on high-intent keywords.