Meta Ads Strategist & Growth Operator
Most ad budgets die in the gap between attention and action.
I run a two-campaign system that buys attention cheaply first, then converts only the people it already warmed up. Here is what that produced for a college with no advertising and no pixel installed.
Campaign 1 — cold audience, video-first creative
4.19% clicked through
Warm audience pool, built for $0.47 a click
4.2% became a lead
Campaign 2 — retargeting only what C1 warmed
14.8% applied
The number the admissions office actually counts
Bar length is logarithmic — each stage of paid media drops roughly an order of magnitude, and a linear scale would render the last two invisible. Every figure is exact, pulled from the live Meta Ads account.
Most businesses run ads. Almost none run a system.
Three failures account for nearly every wasted budget I am asked to rescue.
Spray-and-pray budgets
Running cold traffic straight at an offer burns money on people who have never heard of you. The warm-up has to be bought before the conversion is asked for.
Demographic blind spots
Without demographic intelligence you are paying to reach the wrong people. One age-group shift produced 57% better lead efficiency at Saint Joseph’s — and nothing in the account would have surfaced it.
57% efficiency gainNo attribution, no improvement
If you cannot trace which ad produced which lead, you cannot scale the ad that worked. Pixel-level attribution is the line between knowing and guessing.
127 pre-nursing applications at $28.43 each
What I walked into
- No digital advertising presence of any kind
- Declining enrollment in the pre-nursing program
- A marketing team and admissions director who needed results fast
- Zero campaign infrastructure — no pixel installed
What I built
- Two-campaign Meta Ads architecture from scratch
- Meta Pixel with custom application-submit events
- Found the 25–34 group converts 57% better than 35–44, and moved budget
- Video testimonials from current nursing students as C1 creative
- A direct application CTA as the C2 conversion mechanism
| Metric | Campaign 1 — traffic | Campaign 2 — conversion |
|---|---|---|
| Impressions | 487,000 | 89,000 |
| Clicks | 20,434 | 8,720 |
| Click-through rate | 4.19% | 9.8% |
| Cost per click | $0.47 | $1.12 |
| Leads | — | 856 |
| Cost per lead | — | $4.22 |
| Applications | — | 127 |
| Cost per application | — | $28.43 |
The finding that moved the budget: the 25–34 group generated 57% better lead efficiency than 35–44. Spend followed the data within the first month.
Share of lead efficiency by age group. The 45–54 band was reduced, not eliminated — it still converted, just not per dollar.
The two-campaign system
The order matters more than the budget. C1 buys attention at the cheapest available rate; C2 spends only against the audience C1 already built.
Traffic and audience building
Build a warm custom audience cost-effectively.
Targeting: cold interest stacks, 25–34 demographic priority.
Lead conversion
Convert warm traffic into qualified leads.
Targeting: 3-second video viewers and link clickers from C1.
What running your account includes
You run the business. The system handles the growth.
Campaign architecture
Every account is built on the two-phase structure above. No guessing, no spray-and-pray.
Weekly performance reporting
Live metrics each week, so you always know your CPL, your ROAS, and what changed.
Audience intelligence
Demographic and behavioral data drives every targeting decision. The 57% efficiency gain came from following it.
Conversion-engineered creative
Creative is built per funnel stage: awareness content first, hard CTAs second.
Automated lead follow-up
Leads get a response within minutes through sequences that run without anyone remembering to send them.
Fast onboarding
Strategy call to live campaign in days, not weeks.
Full-funnel growth, or just the ads
Fixed scope. You know what you are getting before anything is built.
- Two-campaign Meta Ads build
- Pixel installation and event tracking
- Audience research and creative strategy
- Ad copywriting, 3 variations per ad set
- 30-day launch window
- Everything in Campaign Launch
- Weekly optimization and bid adjustments
- Weekly performance report
- Lookalike audience development
- A/B testing and creative rotation
- Everything in Monthly Management
- Organic content calendar, 4 posts a week
- Content creation and graphic design
- Platform-specific copy for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn
- Paid amplification of top organic posts
Bilingual service available for DFW and Latino-owned businesses. Custom scopes welcome.
Tell me what your account is doing
Send the details and you get a written read on what is happening, plus a flat quote — before anything is built. Sending opens your email app with everything filled in, addressed to rocha@yahwaylove.com.
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