How a smarter Meta ads strategy helped deliver a 500% lead increase in under 3 months
| 509% Lead increase across all channels |
| 1,014% Lead increase across paid social |
| 90% Decrease in cost per lead for paid social |
| Results from September 2025 to November 2025. |
The Client
We created a Meta Ads campaign for a residential development by a leading property group, targeting first home buyers, families and investors.
The project formed part of a broader digital strategy, combining paid social and organic content to drive awareness, engagement and enquiries.
The Challenge
The pre-existing Meta Ads campaign that the client provided to us showed clear financial and resource investments, but the return and impact were unclear.
While traffic volumes were high, our audit revealed most users were leaving within 10 seconds, with limited engagement and very few progressing to enquiry. The campaign was attracting clicks, but not from the right people.
Audience breakdowns told the same story; delivery was not aligning with the intended segments, making it difficult to understand what was working and where investment should be focused.
As we worked through the strategy with the client, it became clear success wasn’t just about converting today. We needed to build familiarity with audiences earlier in their journey, creating a stronger long-term pipeline.
This shifted the challenge from a lead optimisation approach to a full-funnel strategy that could work in tandem with other channels, while also providing tangible return.
The Solution
After completing our account audit and strategy review including a full competitor analysis, we took a three-pronged approach to improvement: Improving Conversion Signals, Smarter Audience Targeting and Greater Creative Variety.
This was brought to life through two campaigns, designed to work together across both short and long-term funnel stages.
Conversion Signals
The original campaign optimised for basic traffic signals.
We replaced this with higher-quality actions, including form submissions and custom engagement events tied to meaningful on-site behaviour.
This allowed us to split the approach. The lead campaign captured current in-market demand, while the traffic campaign expanded reach to future potential candidates.
Crucially, by optimising traffic towards high-quality engagement, we were able to broaden audiences without attracting low-value users.
Smarter Audience Targeting
Audiences were originally segmented across multiple ad sets based on three key customer groups, allowing spend to be weighted based on value.
We retained this structure but changed how targeting was applied.
Rather than relying heavily on platform targeting inputs, which are increasingly limited in accuracy, we shifted to a more modern approach. Targeting inputs were used to guide the system, but the primary driver became the ad creative itself.
Creative and messaging were reworked to speak directly to each audience segment, calling them out early and clearly. This aimed to improve relevance, engagement, and ultimately help the platform better identify and prioritise higher-quality users within each group.
Greater Creative Variety
Creative was a key part of the strategy, and because we were already creating the organic social content, we were in a strong position to expand and diversify the campaign creative.
We retained the client’s existing traditional ad creative but paired it with native, feed-first content.
By integrating organic and paid activity, we were able to get more value from content already being created. This improved creative diversity, strengthened campaign performance and reduced the need for constant new ad production.
The Results
Key Performance Indicators
The impact was immediate. Within the first month, lead volumes increased, engagement improved, and cost per lead decreased.
While the results below covers the September to November period, it’s worth noting that performance has continued to strengthen beyond this period.
As of May 2026, cost per lead remains down 82% compared to launch, with lead volumes trending upward from December and projections continuing into the coming months, reinforcing the long-term strength of the approach.
| In the First Month | After Just 3 Months |
| 25% budget reduction on media spend | 50% budget reduction in planned media spend |
| 700% increase in leads from paid social | 1,014% increase in leads from paid social |
| 37.4% increase in all traffic sessions | 509% increase in leads from all channels |
| 294% increase in engaged traffic sessions | 85% decrease in cost per lead compared to strategy launch |
| 187% improvement in engagement rate | 16% improvement in engagement rate |
| 198% improvement in average engagement time per session | 143% improvement in average engagement time per session |
Secondary Performance Indicators
While the lead and engagement results tell an important part of the story, improvements were also seen across audience quality, channel integration and operational efficiency, in ways not showcased in the above metrics.
Audience Quality: Campaign delivery now aligns more closely with target buyer groups, supported by stronger engagement signals across content such as likes, comments and shares.
Full Funnel Support: Paid social now supports every stage of the customer journey, helping build awareness, generate immediate enquiries as well as nurture warm leads by growing the client’s email database.
Operational Efficiency: Integrating organic and paid social reduced the need for constant new creative production, easing pressure on internal teams and avoiding additional production costs.
From our team:
“We've significantly reduced media spend while maintaining and improving results, which is exactly what you want to see.
The integration of organic content has been a huge driver of success. Our in-house content generated a cost per acquisition that’s 45.5% lower than traditional promotion creative and reduced website visits cost by 41.1%.
Those savings compound month after month, which is why I always recommend combining strategy, paid and content rather than treating them as separate activities.”
-Stella O’Hara, Senior Paid Ads Specialist