National Numbers offers customers two routes to purchase: either buy directly, or enquire and speak to the sales team.
The challenge was that most customers took longer than Meta’s 7-day attribution window to decide on direct sales, and once the lead went to the sales team, we lost visibility in Meta.
For this account, our Paid Meta team had to grow and show the true revenue impact, even when many sales happened offline and couldn’t be tracked through the platform.
We implemented a performance-driven Meta ads lead generation strategy built around a pivot towards leads.
By optimising for leads instead of purchases, we gave Meta ads a conversion event it could reliably track and use to improve campaign performance.
The existing lead campaign was already producing a few direct sales without being set up for them, so we knew there was room to grow both.
The way we did this included:
- We paused the purchase ad set and built a new lead-optimised Meta ad-set with max volume optimisation goals.
- We replaced a mixed audience of lookalikes, engagement, and retargeting audiences with cleaner top-of-funnel targeting, refined the lookalikes, and added interests to guide the Meta Ads ADV+ system.
- We kept what was working and migrated the top-performing ads into the new ad set.
- We gradually transitioned the budget, moving spend slowly to allow the new ad set to learn and build conversion data without disrupting results.
- We implemented ongoing creative testing, including both through graphics and formats introducing new creatives and catalogues into the new ad set once it was established.
- We worked with the client to improve Meta Ads lead value reporting by confirming the lead to sale conversion rate and average order value, allowing us to estimate the offline revenue generated from Meta leads.
This gave us a much clearer view of the campaign’s commercial contribution, rather than judging performance solely on the sales Meta Ads could attribute within its reporting window.
By pivoting to lead generation, cleaning up targeting and testing consistently, we not only grew leads but also significantly increased direct sales, with just a 9% increase in spend.*
In the first two months of optimising the campaign, we achieved the following results compared to the previous period:
- 43% increase in lead generation
- 24% decrease in cost per leads
- 58% increase in direct sales
- 31% decrease in cost per direct sale
- 81% increase in direct sales value
- 55% increase in combined estimated ROAS, combining tracked direct sales value with estimated revenue from enquiry-led sales
The results showed that shifting the optimisation goal toward lead generation didn’t mean sacrificing direct revenue. Instead, it gave Meta Ads a stronger signal to optimise against while letting us capture the additional value generated through the longer offline sales journey.
Key takeaways
If Meta isn’t generating enough data, use an optimisation that you can see. When the buying cycle outruns the attribution window, optimising for enquiries gives the algorithm enough data to learn from.
Offline sales still count. An enquiry-to-sale rate and an average order value are all you need to put a realistic figure on revenue Meta Ads can’t track.
Change things gradually. Moving budget and top ads across slowly protected performance while the new ad set bedded in.
*7 July to 7 September vs the previous period
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