I Used These 15 Ad Tactics to Help a Service Brand 20x Their ROI

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

• Sometimes sharing some other performance marketers’ lessons with you (this issue)

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

BEST LINKS OF THE WEEK (on popular demand)

My favorite finds

• How most people think about their creative strategy

• 3.5M organic views on TikTok of Bigfoot selling a $100 gadget. 4 shots. 4 prompts.

• 7 NEW 🔥 Meta Ads features & updates:

New Episode Alert: 9 Dumb Ads That Worked (And Why Should You Steal Them)

Here’s why you should watch:

• We brought our dumb ads that converted like crazy

• You can easily steal these formats, it would hardly take a prompt from ChatGPT to copy (yes, feel free to copy)

• Marco lied and he brought a really good dumb ad that I wish I created

• There’s a pattern Marco found out in my ads that is so obvious, that pattern helped me win for the last 2 years.

Check out the episode here.

I scaled a service business from zero to $ 1 million in annual revenue in five months by simply running lead generation ads on Meta. 

I learned many things about lead-gen in the past 6 months. So, I am sharing it with you.

If you're running ads for a lead-gen business (especially service-based ones) this one's for you. Specially, you have an average contract value (AOV) above $2500/month.

I’m talking about real service businesses where a human gets on a call, speaks to the lead, and tries to close them.

The kind where most people say “just set up a form and run ads” and then spend months wondering why it’s not working.

Even if you don’t run lead-gen ads, some insights might be interesting for you.

Here are 15 lessons I learned that made the difference:

1. Qualification is not optional. It's almost mandatory

Most service businesses waste money by trying to talk to everyone.
Don’t do that. Call out your audience and qualify them in the first 3 seconds.

Example: “Looking to buy a new car in the next 30 days?”

Don’t assume people will disqualify themselves. 

They won’t.

You’ll end up paying $20 per lead only to realize they were never serious to begin with.

Here’s an example from an actual winning ad:

2. Your service isn't the USP. Your hook is

Lead gen businesses have zero differentiation on the surface.
Everyone’s saying: “We offer X,” “Book a call.”

That doesn’t cut it anymore.

Come up with hooks that stop people mid-scroll.

Not: “Need legal help?”
Try: “New Nissan car owners, this how you make money on your faulty car.”

You can sell them later. First, earn their attention.

Here’s an example from an actual winning ad:

3. Your job doesn’t end at cost per lead, it starts at cost per client signed

Here’s the trap: Facebook optimizes for cheap leads.

You’ll feel like a genius getting $3 CPLs, until the sales team tells you “none of them picked up.”

Lesson: Cheap leads are not always good leads.

From now on, we only care about:
✅ Cost per qualified, signed client.

4. Your first 60–90 days will feel like nothing’s working

Your first two months might be miserable.

You’ve no pixel history. No signal. No data.

Especially if the client is new to Meta.

Expect higher CPLs, lower quality, and slow results.

It’s going to be frustrating, but that’s totally normal.

Feed the algo clean data. Let it learn.

This phase is painful, but if you survive it, you win long-term.

5. Talk to the sales team. Religiously.

Ads can’t tell you who actually converted. Sales can.

They’ll tell you who ghosted, who asked real questions, who showed intent.

That’s the feedback you build ads from.

When you don’t talk to sales, you write copy for strangers.

When you stay close to the sales team you learn the real behind the scenes story about your buyers.

6. You don’t just need a funnel. You need a healthy ad account.

We tested with two different accounts.

Same funnel. Same creative. Same targeting.

One Meta account gave us bad data. The other one worked.

Lesson: Not all accounts are equal.

If something feels off, clone your campaign into a fresh account and test.

This one shift made a massive difference.

7. Retargeting ads build trust. Don’t skip them

Form fills aren’t the finish line. You still have to close.

We ran retargeting videos that answered:

• Who the expert is

• Why this service works

• What credentials they have

• What clients say about them

It felt obvious… but it worked.

People need reminders. People need trust.

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

8. Bot traffic is a BIG problem, and it will destroy your CPL

You’ll see leads come in. But no one replies. Bad emails. Wrong region.
That’s bot traffic.

We tried some tool to keep them out but that didn’t help much.

What actually worked:

• Use Feed & Reels placements

• Ask smarter questions that bots can’t answer

• Start with a lookalike audience if possible

• Add SMS verification

Yes, it’s friction. But friction filters fake leads.

9. Emotional differentiation > feature list

Most service businesses sell the same thing.

What makes you different isn’t your process, it’s your promise.

Don’t talk about the features. Talk about:

• Outcomes

• Client stories

• Trust triggers

You’re not selling a service. You’re selling confidence. Show that.

10. Give your process a name and a story

Your backend process is boring to you, but it’s magic to the prospect.

For example, we took an undocumented, proven framework and turned it into:

“The Expert Match System” a 4-step method to match clients with ideal services.

For a medical VA business, it could be:

“The VA acquisition Method” a step-by-step system to find, vet, and onboard medical VAs.

When you name your method, you become the only one who offers it.

11. Don’t sell a discovery call. Sell an experience.

Most people are tired of “free consultations.”

So change the offer. 

Instead of “hop on a call,” you can say: “Get 3 custom investment properties that match your criteria. Handpicked and explained in a 1:1 call.”

Or if you’re hiring VAs: “See 3 vetted profiles based on your exact hiring needs.”

Make the call feel like they already own something. Now they’re not just booking a call, they’re claiming.

12. Add urgency, but with substance

We didn’t use fake timers or “limited spots.” We used real market timing. Real stats. Real data.

“This opportunity exists now. And here’s why it won’t last.”

We showed:

• Trends change

• Industry shifts

• What’s changing in behavior

It created urgency without hype.

People didn’t feel pushed. They felt late. And this made them take action.

13. SMS verification filters middle-intent leads

Like I said before, this helps you qualify the leads.

Before: A lot of leads but most went cold.

After SMS verification: Fewer leads but way more qualified.

It adds friction, yes. But it also adds intent.

If they verify their number, they’re actually serious.

14. Use video ads. Period.

Most service businesses use static Canva graphics with text overlays.

We tested videos. Every time we got better engagement and better results.

Video does two things static can’t:

• It builds trust

• It filters viewers by intent

You’ll be surprised how much difference it makes.

15. If  the ad is working, don’t touch it. Scale gently.

Biggest mistake I’ve seen: tinkering with a winning campaign.

If the leads are converting and your CPL is healthy. Please let it run. (Why would you mess it up deliberately😅)

Duplicate and scale with small tweaks. Don’t break the algo. Don’t get fancy.

The goal is:

• Get the right people

• Get them on the call

• Get them to sign

Everything else is noise.

TL;DR – Lead gen isn’t easy. But it’s worth it.

• Call out and qualify hard

• Optimize for client signed, not leads filled

• Partner with the sales team

• Block bot traffic with intent-based filters

• Use retargeting and video to build trust

• Test across ad accounts if needed

• Create urgency based on reality

• Give your process a name and make your call irresistible

• Use SMS Verification

• Don’t tinker with good ad

And most importantly… Don’t just sell services. Sell outcomes.

That’s what people want.

P.S. Next week, I’ll share one of the tools we used that helped us improve lead conversion to show-up rate.

P.P.S. If you like to level up your ads with psychology, I’d highly recommend checking out Sarah’s community Tether. It’s worthy EVERY penny. I have gone through her course inside the community and applied some ads. I’ll share my lessons based on those ad experiments. Stay tuned.

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).

• Promote yourself to 13,000+ highly qualified paid marketers by sponsoring this newsletter. Advertise here.