From $120 CAC to $95: A Practical Paid Social Reset

Context (what was happening)

Paid social was still the top acquisition channel, but CAC climbed above the acceptable target as competition intensified. The account relied heavily on broad prospecting and evergreen creative, and frequency was creeping up.

Constraints (budget, timeline, what couldn’t change)

Budget held flat at $120k/month, with no room to shift spend to other channels. The team had a four-week window and could not change the pricing model, landing page, or core offer.

Hypothesis (what you believed + why)

We believed CAC could drop by re-segmenting audiences and resetting creative relevance. The hypothesis was that reducing fatigue and tightening intent signals would lift CTR and CVR without sacrificing volume.

What We Changed (bulleted list)

• Split prospecting into intent tiers with separate budgets.
• Swapped evergreen creatives for three new angle-based variants.
• Added a 7-day engaged-site retargeting layer.
• Introduced a creative rotation cadence every 10 days.
• Aligned copy to top-performing pain points from recent win-loss calls.

The Experiment Plan (5–7 steps)

1. Baseline CAC, CTR, CVR, and spend for the prior 14 days.
2. Launch three new creative angles into existing ad sets.
3. Duplicate prospecting and split into high, mid, and broad intent tiers.
4. Allocate 20% of spend to engaged-site retargeting.
5. Review performance at day 7 and pause underperforming angles.
6. Rotate in one fresh creative per tier on day 10.

Results (table with before/after; use reasonable placeholder metrics)

What Worked / What Didn’t

The highest lift came from the mid-intent tier paired with the new problem-led creative angle. Broad prospecting improved CTR but required tighter frequency caps to avoid early fatigue.

The lowest-performing angle was a feature-heavy variant that had previously worked; it failed to re-engage saturated audiences and was paused by day 7.

Repeatable Takeaways (bullets)

• Reset creative before touching budgets or bid strategies.
• Segment intent tiers so winners can scale without dragging averages.
• Use short rotation windows to manage fatigue in competitive markets.
• Retargeting works best when tied to recent, high-intent behaviors.