5 Non-Creative Tactics That Have Improved My CAC

What's up, Marketers! This is Aazar.

This newsletter is about leveling up your paid growth marketing skills by analyzing the best brands' paid strategy, tactics, positioning, and value props.

This newsletter is divided into:

• Sharing what I've learned (this issue)

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you

• And I analyze & compare the best ads on the internet

I realized that I shared news and content previously but not a letter. Harry Dry, my friend, shared a good insight that makes the newsletter more of a letter. So, I thought about adding the letter part to this newsletter:

It’s 8 p.m. here in Germany. I’ve been reflecting on how to think about this newsletter and how to make content better for you. Another thought (a little personal one): My wife is pregnant with the second one. We’re super excited. It feels like the family will be complete after this. Talking about babies and pregnancies, I’ve realized that parents spend a ton on their kids; it’s such a good niche if your product evolves with kids.

May I ask a little favor?

BEST LINKS OF THE WEEK (on popular demand)

My favorite finds

• How to spot when something is off in your Meta Ads

• How to optimize check out page in one step

• A well-crafted carousel ad to steal

• 3 massive Meta ads update

Creatives are indeed the biggest lever you can pull to improve your numbers.

That’s why this newsletter exists: to give you enough inspiration.

But the creative’s job is to get the qualified click.

You can use these seven tactics to improve your CAC or ROAS.

Tactic # 1 – Authentic Ad Engagement 

One of the brands I work with spends about $5 to $10 per day to show their new winner ads to their existing customers who leave positive reviews in the ad.

Here’s an example:

Engagement is the easiest way to increase social proof, letting the user know that your product is legit and worth trying.

Caveat: Don’t fake it because your audience is smarter than you think.

Nobody is talking about this tactic, but silently, marketers are hoarding engagement to lower the CPA.

Tactic #2 – Simpler Ad Account Structure

A Meta rep reached out to us to make our accounts simpler and move to the ASC+ campaign. I don’t believe them but I thought I should give it a try.

I kept everything else the same and wanted to know if just moving to ASC+ campaign would work.

Somehow, the cost of new users has decreased since this campaign started.

This is an app customer, so the cost per new user is an early leading indicator.

Tactic # 3 – Global Campaign 

Since I sell app products too, I created a global campaign where the willingness to pay is higher, and I know that people will eventually convert from the free trial.

I created a global campaign with at least 25+ countries, mainly in the West (English-speaking/Expat focused countries.)

It brought my CAC down.

If your product has a worldwide appeal and individual countries aren’t profitable, Meta acts as a bid multiplier and finds the right audience in those countries.

Give it a try if you sell globally and don’t have delivery constraints. Let me know how it goes.

Tactic # 4 – Improve the design of the page

You have two ways to improve CAC. Send better traffic and convert traffic in a better way.

I did a landing page audit with folks at conversion-wise. They send a loom video about your page and quick improvements in the CRO.

I tried it and how they recommended it. The conversion rate improved by 600%, and so did my CAC.

Caveat: Although the headline copy is different, the sub-headline is too. In the actual experiment, I kept everything else the same except the design. 

Tactic # 5 – Added the personalized founder letter

I am inspired by Jason Fried's approach to creating an enemy. His founder letter really resonates with me.

Check out this founder letter; it is an absolute masterpiece. 

I created a similar letter, which increased our conversion rates by 40%.

Pro tip: Personalize it. Say “Hey (your audience),” and add the key benefit. It did have an impact, too.

Here’s why I think it worked: I saw that most people clicked on “about us” in the footer and wanted to know who is behind this company. By putting the founder's letter first, you remove that objection and increase trust.

Leaving you with one final thought:

Most people think that running ads is just about creatives and messaging. But if you really want to impact the numbers, you need full-funnel growth metrics. This is why doing things outside of the ads worked.

I’m proud of the fact that I don’t just work as a creative strategist and media buying consultant; I work like a founder who owns the entire funnel, including quizzes and landing pages.

If you want to improve your CAC and performance and are spending $50K or more on ads, get in touch. I have two more open slots. 

Shout out to our partners who support this newsletter.

BONUS #1: Get Creative Analytics + Creative Research at 50% of the price

I finally got rid of my looker dashboard and stopped using ads manager to analyze creatives.

Atria AI has introduced All-in-One analytics to get you better insights and ideas.

#1 View your all analytics in dashboard (zoom out to see what’s working and what’s not)

You can adjust the dashboard metrics + send a screenshot for various stakeholders & team members with great ease. Content teams may want more hook rates & video view rates while CMO may want ROAS & CPA targets. 

#2 Set targets to find out if you’re meeting them or not

And track your progress against the targets.

#3 Find out what kind of creatives are working without going on an analysis rabbit hole with creative tags

#4 Figure out where exactly the user drops off so you can iterate on those ads

#5 Say goodbye to manual reports; share a URL with all metrics without making any presentations 

Here’s an example of the snapshot of winners I shared with my client. You can see how easy it is NOT to make those manual reports (redacted some important metrics) 

An insight I learned from this exercise and dashboard: The video with the lowest drop-off rate is the most scalable one. I just checked; I’ve been running it for a long time now. You’ll find more scalable winning ads if you look at more than just CPA (specially if you run ads for iOS apps). 

BONUS #2: Get 70+ New & Proven Ad Templates

Creative OS: Don’t waste your designer’s time in copying swipe files. Get all static ad templates to increase your experiments and ad creatives’ velocity. Check it out here. They just launched 70+ new creatives this week.

Happy Growing with Paid Social,

Aazar Shad

Since this newsletter is free, I do it to follow my curiosity. But I’d love it if you could leave some feedback so I know if I am helping you or not.

Three ways I can help you, whenever you are ready:

• Work with me to get you growth from paid marketing. Book a call here. I’m open to more clients now.

• Level up your paid marketing by joining my community, where we share the latest tactics and get nuanced paid marketing questions answered here (we are now 70+, but there is a waitlist to join).

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