Last month we pulled in $817k in sales on $94k in ad spend, which works out to an 8.85 ROAS. That's not a brag, it's a breakdown of the moves that actually moved the needle. Most of this came from doubling down on what was already working and cutting the rest.

1) We finally got serious about knowing our customers.

Thought we knew them before, but June we moved to a new CRM and made the marketing team listen to at least 20 sales calls a week and watch every customer video interview. two weeks in, they started cranking out hyper-targeted ads. we sell garden products, so weather is a huge factor. Ads got state-specific, like only showing New York customers content about the exact problems they're dealing with. ROAS jumped almost immediately. Every e-commerce brand could benefit from this, but almost none actually do it.

2) Tracking everything, then acting on it.

My media buyers run a daily performance sheet with ad spend, CPM, reach, sessions, bounce rate, add to carts, checkouts, purchases, AOV, cost per session, cost per add to cart, blended CPA, blended MER. We dug into that data and found 10 states with a MER of 7 or higher. So we shifted more budget there and made all creative state-specific. Video plays at 95% doubled without increasing spend. that told me we were finally hitting the right people with the right message.

3) Killed our worst category, went all-in on the best.

In the last 10 days of July, we cut the lowest performing product line and poured everything into our top category. that category did $355k in sales on $47k ad spend (7.48 MER) for the month. But in the last 5 days after we doubled down, it did $108k on $6.6k spend, a 16.49 MER. We're going to keep scaling that category this month. i don't expect MER to stay above 10, but if we can hold above 6, we should hit $700k from that one category alone.

This level of detail takes time. My media buyer spent over 9 hours just pulling and analyzing numbers by state, campaign, ad set, and concept. No AI shortcut for that. it's tedious, but it's what separates winners from everyone else.

4) Customer stories are the highest ROI activity we do.

We started driving to customers and filming their experiences in June. then we share those videos internally first, then on socials. the impact on the team is massive. Seeing how our products actually change lives makes everyone work harder. It's hard to measure the direct ad performance, but it's undeniable. We turn one interview into 40+ shorts, 6 longer clips, 50+ ads, 30+ static images, multiple emails, and the sales team uses them in calls. It's also great for onboarding and coaching.

5) The real edge is doing more than everyone else.

Anyone can look at Facebook Ads Manager and make decisions. But most won't spend hours digging into the numbers or actually call customers to ask about their experience. That's why we win by default. Too many people rely on AI for answers, but answers without context are useless. Do the work. That's the whole secret.

hope this helps someone out there. happy to answer questions