Paid social advertising
Ad Creative Built To
Be Tested, Not Admired
Meta, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn. Creative and media buying handled together, because handing finished ads to someone else to run is how good creative dies inside the account.
Proof
Results by campaign, each figure named
55.03x
Escape Velocity
Average ROAS on Copy Chief Escape Velocity, peaking at 130.05x. Meta Ads plus a mobile-first funnel.
31x
Membership Funnel
ROAS on the Copy Chief membership funnel, alongside 215 paid subscriptions between August and October 2023.
12.6x
Chai Ghai
ROAS on paid social with budget, audiences and product all held constant.
The method
Research the buyer before designing a single ad
On Copy Chief the audience was working copywriters, people who write direct response for a living and reject generic creative on sight. Guessing at their pain points was never going to work.
So the work started with jobs-to-be-done research: what were they actually hiring the product to do, and what were they afraid of. Pain-point creative then beat benefit-led creative in testing, because the research named the pain in the audience own words.
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Jobs-to-be-done research with real buyers before creative direction
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Pain-point versus benefit-message A/B testing, not opinion
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Budget moved toward the winning ads rather than spread evenly
The numbers behind it
What the Escape Velocity campaign actually did
The Escape Velocity campaign combined Meta retargeting, a mobile-first landing page, a ThriveCart checkout and Zapier automation. Every part was measured separately so it was clear which one was doing the work.
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55.03x average ROAS, peaking at 130.05x on the strongest creative
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Landing page converted at 10.1% across 532 landing page views
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Click-through rate moved from 0.9% to 3.0% on the same audience
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Cost per acquisition fell from $42 to $22, roughly a 48% reduction
Channels
Where the creative runs
Creative and media buying together. Scoped and priced up front.
Meta
Meta and Instagram Ads
Retargeting, custom and lookalike audiences, and creative built specifically for the placement.
TikTok
TikTok Ads
Short-form native creative rather than repurposed landscape video that gets scrolled past.
LinkedIn
LinkedIn Ads
B2B creative for higher-consideration offers where the buying committee is more than one person.
How engagements run
Scoped and priced before anything starts
Every engagement is quoted against a written scope, so the number does not move once work begins. Projects run $5,000 to $50,000 depending on page count, integrations and how much of the content already exists. Most land in 6 to 12 weeks.
The first two weeks are usually the least glamorous and the most valuable: working out what is actually being sold, to whom, and what the current numbers say. Skipping that is how agencies end up delivering something beautiful that does not move revenue.
You work with me directly. There is no account manager relaying briefs to a production team, which is the main reason smaller engagements can move quickly without losing detail.
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Fixed scope and fixed price agreed before the first design
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Weekly written updates, not status meetings
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Analytics and tracking wired in so results are measurable afterwards
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Handover documentation so your team can maintain what ships
Why it works
Evidence first, opinion second
Most agency proposals are built on taste. Someone senior looks at your site, says what they would change, and the invoice follows. That is fine when the taste is good and expensive when it is not, and either way there is no way to tell in advance which one you bought.
The work here starts from what can be measured: what the analytics already say, what the buyers say when asked directly, and what happened the last time a similar change shipped. On the Copy Chief Escape Velocity campaign that meant interviewing working copywriters before designing a single ad, because that audience writes direct response for a living and rejects generic creative on sight. Pain-point creative then beat benefit-led creative in testing, and the campaign averaged 55.03x ROAS with a 130.05x peak.
That is also why the numbers on this site name their campaign. A figure without its context is not evidence, it is decoration. Escape Velocity did 55.03x. The membership funnel did 31x across 215 paid subscriptions. Those are different campaigns with different offers, and quoting either one as a general result would be misleading.
The practical effect is fewer surprises. You see the reasoning before the design, the design before the build, and the numbers after launch rather than a report describing how well it went.
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Analytics and heatmap review before design decisions
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Direct buyer research where the audience is specialised
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A/B testing on message, not just button colour
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Every claim traceable to a named campaign
FAQ
Questions, answered
Do you handle both creative and media buying?
Yes, together. Splitting them is where most performance is lost, because whoever runs the account cannot tell you which creative decision caused which result.
What budget do I need?
Enough for the account to exit learning and produce a readable signal. That varies by offer price, so it is worth a conversation rather than a fixed number on a page.
Can you guarantee a ROAS?
No, and anyone who does is guessing. The figures on this page are named to their campaigns because results are specific to an offer, an audience and a price point.
How fast do you know if it is working?
Usually inside two to three weeks there is enough data to tell whether the creative direction is right, separately from whether the offer is right.
How do we start?
A twenty-minute call looking at what you have now. If it is a fit I send a written scope with a fixed price. If it is not, I will say so and usually point you at what would actually help.
Who owns the work?
You do, outright, on final payment. Files, source, accounts and documentation all transfer. Nothing is held hostage on a platform only I can access.
Do you work with clients outside Vancouver?
Most of the work is remote across Canada and the United States. Vancouver and BC clients can meet in person where that helps.
Bring your account and your offer
Twenty minutes on what is running now, what the numbers say, and whether the problem is the creative or the offer.
