How to Systematically Lower Your CAC on Meta (in 10 Steps)

How to Systematically Lower Your CAC on Meta (in 10 Steps)

I’m not a magician, but somehow, I have figured out how to lower my clients' CAC.

I understand that for some of us, it might be harder if you’ve reached scale.

However, I reduced CAC for brands that have been promoting their brands on Meta for more than 10 years.

How? I have one framework that helps a lot.

Here are some screenshots to show the effectiveness of this framework:

1. HelloFresh’s sub-brand (DTC):

2. Kinedu (App)

3. English speaking class (Education)

Our campaign with this client was 50% cheaper than with their actual campaigns.

You get the point.

So, what’s the framework? It’s “What/Why? - How? - How Else?” framework.

I’ll explain it to you shortly. 

But before that, you need to understand how I DIG deeper to develop a strategy.

Caveat: I am sharing these insights for free because my mission is to help paid ads marketers to win and make f**k you money without growth hacks or selling our souls while helping our clients make even more money. There’s room for everyone to grow and be successful.

Secondly, this entire process takes 90 days. Don’t expect magic pills here. 

Lastly, if you’ve tried all of the below steps and the CAC is still high, then you need to become even more empathetic to your customers, increase conversion rates on your website, or increase lifetime value (upsell or cross-sell). 

Step # 1 — Dig deeper with Customer Research

I have someone who talks to anywhere from 7 to 15 customers. She talks to them virtually and gets 1:1 insights. 

My criteria for talking to these customers:

• Using the product for longer than 6 months

• Recently converted customers

• Given great reviews or NPS or product-market fit survey score

I have a list of about 30 questions and I pick a few of them. I try to understand their journey.

And the result? I get this messaging cheat sheet:

This whole thing sounds easy, but it takes 2-3 weeks to wrap up.

Step # 2 — Review Mining

I look for positive, negative, and golden nugget reviews to find out what customers love. I also try to find benefits, audience/persona, interesting words and other insights to understand what customers are really saying about the brand. Then, I use these insights for copywriting.

Step # 3 — Secondary Research

I then look for further insights on Reddit, Quora, Search, Facebook Groups, Slack/Dark channels, YouTube & TikTok reviews.

Most marketers mostly overlook this. I don’t.

Here, I get UX familiarity ideas that I can use as they are. Like this ad (still winning):

Step # 4 — Consolidation & My POV

I don’t work with clients whom I can’t imagine using or trying their product. I mostly try the product to gain deeper empathy and understanding, which gives me multiple insights. 

Jim Edwards wrote a famous book called Copywriting Secrets. From that book, I learned that you will always have an unfair advantage if you are also a customer of that product. I exploit this principle with my customers.

Step # 5 — Follow & Track Competitors 

I believe most of us already do this step because it is the easiest step. I check the ads of competitors that have stayed longer than 30 days, and I try to find out the following:

• Positioning, benefits and value props

• Copywriting and messaging

• Formats that work

I don’t try to copy the competitors but I closely follow and track their approach

Atria has this feature that allows me to spy on and track my top 10 competitors just to see how the market is approaching these ads for the entire category.  

Step # 6 — Account Audit & Comments Mining

This step teaches me what to do & what NOT to do. Marin Istvanic has a really good template I follow to understand the account more deeply.

I use Atria’s analytics (they’ve recently released this, the Motion App alternative) to figure out deeper insights like:

• Hook rates

• Hold rates

• Drop off rate

• Sustain rate

• First frame retention

• Outbound CTR

• CAC

But to be honest, more than analytics, it helps me create custom reporting for clients that I never have to do manually. I save 2 hours/week per client on because of their features + I can collaborate with their team.

This step helps me understand the following things:

• What are the gaps I can identify to move the needle?

• What are the low-hanging opportunities?

• How fast can we achieve results?

Here’s a good example of comment mining that helped me lower CAC:

Step #7 — Talking to the team

I have written about this step in detail but basically, I hack my way to figure out things I still have open questions about and get further insights to approach the account.

You can see it here: My 8-step framework for researching & launching new client ads in 120 minutes or less.

Step # 8 – Figuring out the WHAT (Part 1 of the Framework)

So this is where I lean into messaging, which is something I initially ignore. But I think it is the most important thing when you look at all the parts of an ad. This is how my framework looks:

So, what happens in the messaging exactly? I try to understand the concepts:

• Audience profile-based (what kind of people are buying those products)

• Outcomes (what outcomes or results do they expect?)

• Benefits/Features (what benefits do they value?)

• Jobs To Be Done (JTBD) (what are their use cases?)

• Pain points (what are their problems?)

• Selfish unspoken desires (what desires they have but don’t tell us?)

• More concepts - if any

If you can’t remember any of these, meet FRED (mnemonic): Fear, Results, Expectations, Desires.

This covers mostly everything. I then use these messages and test with simple text-heavy ads like below:

They are deliberately ugly and simple. I am trying to understand the message, not the creative. Based on what I find out, I keep the winners. I consolidate them and move to the next step.

This usually takes 2-3 weeks to figure this out. 

Step # 9 – Figuring the HOW (Part 2 of the Framework)

After messaging, you simply need to say the same thing in a thousand different ways. For that, we have ad formats/ad creative styles.

You can use my swipe file to come up with ad ideas like these below: 

You can find all these image ad templates in CreativeOS. I share these templates with them regularly. You don’t need to recreate them. You simply copy and start iterating on them. They release 10+ new formats like these every day. 

Step # 10 — How Else? (Part 3 of the Framework)

After messaging and ad formats, I double down on videos aka UGCs (mostly). I try to figure out the hooks, messages, UGC formats and another part of the scripts to further lean into this video format.

Videos further support the same message with more emotions and resonance.

I have the following formats I use for videos to make it work:

1. Problem-Solution

2. Extreme Hook

3. Sound-on

4. Memetic

5. Skit

6. 15-30-60 seconds

7. Sizzle Reels

8. Gif ads

9. Funny ads

10. Exaggeration

11. Obvious ads

12. Different shots

13. Ugly notes video ads

14. Trends

15. Founder ads

16. Enemy ads (Us vs Them)

17. Street view 

18. Storytelling

19. Greenscreen

20. Comment response

21. Unboxing

22. Negative Marketing

23. Listicles

24. ASMR

25. POV

26. Tutorials

27. Myths

28. Podcast style

29. Mashup 

And many more. 

I use my newsletter ads swipe file to come up with ad ideas, tbh. This is why I started this newsletter, for me (and for people like me, you). 

Lastly, I use The Performers community to know what’s working so we’re closer to sharing internal secrets privately:

Bringing it home

So, focus on the message first, then the formats, and finally, the videos to bring your CAC down. But as you can see, it takes a lot of effort, energy, time, intelligence and experience. Even with this framework, picking the right messages, formats, words/verbiage and insights are the hardest parts.

Hopefully this brings you closer to winning, like I do. I want all of us to win  🙌 

If you’re a founder or head of growth/marketing looking to apply this process with performance creative and media buying insights, you can book a call with me. I have two slots available for additional clients. 

Thanks to our partners who support this newsletter.

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 11,900+ highly qualified paid marketers by sponsoring this newsletter. Advertise here.

And if this was forwarded to you, subscribe below with 1-click:

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 12,900+ highly qualified paid marketers by sponsoring this newsletter. Advertise here.

P.S. This insight from my community 🔥🔥🔥