Results
What these accounts cost, and what they returned.
Five accounts across education, clothing retail, trading and recruitment. Every figure comes straight off a Meta Ads Manager export, in a named month. No rounding up, and no client names.
Retail, trading and recruitment accounts were run during my time at Arab Media, Kochi. The education and freelance work is my own.
01
Lead generation · Single month
200+ leads in under 20 days, and 70% of them converted
70%
Of leads converted
02
Retail clothing · Meta reach campaigns
23.4 million people reached for ₹1.08 lakh
₹4.62
Per 1,000 people reached
03
Education · Lead generation
The year cost per lead came down 86%
3,430
Form leads at ₹80.48 blended
04
Trading education · Lead generation
A ₹28.31 lead and a ₹221.18 lead, two days apart
₹28.31
Cheapest form lead on record
05
Recruitment · Meta messaging
One job advert rebuilt from ₹52.28 to ₹9.41
₹19.34
Blended cost per conversation
Case study 01 · Lead generation
200 leads is easy. 140 of them converting is not.
A ₹1,000 daily budget and a month that didn't need a bigger one. This is the result I open with, because it tells you what to ask me for.
200+
Leads in a single month
70%
Of those leads converted
₹1,000
Daily budget, nothing more
<20
Days to get there
What the numbers mean
Two hundred enquiries in twenty days on ₹1,000 a day, under ₹100 a lead. Then seven in ten became customers: roughly 140 people from a month's budget of about ₹20,000.
Why the second number is the real one
A conversion rate that high doesn't come from the ad platform. It comes from qualifying hard at the form, matching what the ad promises to what the follow-up says, and a client whose team called people back the same day.
What I took from it
Cost per lead is what clients ask for. Cost per customer is what's worth optimising, and the two often move in opposite directions.
Making a form slightly harder to fill in cuts volume and raises conversion, every time I've tried it since.
Speed of follow-up matters more than almost anything I control. A good lead goes cold within the hour.
Case study 02 · Retail clothing, Kollam
23.4 million people, and the leak that cost a quarter of them.
A fabric and clothing retailer with a large Meta budget going into Onam, the busiest retail window of the Kerala year. 90 campaigns in one month, and a July export that was quietly paying for the wrong country.
₹1.08L
Spent across 90 campaigns in August
23.4M
People reached, summed across campaigns
₹3.76
Blended CPM for the month
₹7.87
Per recruitment conversation, 1,512 of them
Where it started
July looked healthy: ₹58,125 spent, 1.11 crore people reached, ₹5.22 per thousand. But 24.6% of that reach was landing outside India, 21.6% in the United States alone. Roughly 2.6 million impressions went to people who can't walk into a shop in Kollam.
The second leak
13,495 people visited the Instagram profile that month. 123 tapped the bio link. Under one per cent. The account was buying attention brilliantly and asking for the sale badly.
What I changed
Re-targeted every boost to Kerala and the 25 to 44 age band, already 70.8% of the audience.
Excluded international placements, so the same budget bought local impressions.
Led with price in the first two seconds. The ₹69 saree and ₹99 set reel returned a 2.15% engagement rate and 9,900 saves.
Rebuilt the partner mix on cost rather than follower count.
Where it landed
August delivered 23.4 million reached at ₹4.62 per thousand. Recruitment campaigns produced 1,512 conversations at ₹7.87 and 150 form leads at ₹5.76. One creator partnership reached 1.42 million people for ₹2,746: ₹1.93 per thousand, less than half the account average.
Case study 03 · Education
The year cost per lead came down 86%.
An education client running Meta lead generation at scale: 67 campaigns, ₹9.35 lakh, eight million people reached. Over one year an enquiry fell from ₹309 to ₹44.52, and the reason wasn't the creative.
₹9.35L
Managed across 67 campaigns
3,430
Form leads at ₹80.48 blended
₹44.52
Best campaign, across 937 leads
8.02M
Meta accounts reached
January · split by course
One campaign per course. Research and development leads came in at ₹309.45, food and beverage at ₹228.07, culinary arts at ₹187.27, baking at ₹130.98. The courses were competing for the same people.
February · split by geography instead
Same offer, restructured around where people were. Kerala returned 378 leads at ₹59.75, Tamil Nadu 262 at ₹87.78. 640 leads in a month, and Kerala 32% cheaper on identical creative.
May · the best month
937 form leads at ₹44.52 each, from 408,589 people reached. The highest volume and lowest cost the account has recorded, on roughly the same monthly budget.
June and July · where it didn't hold
Frequency climbed to 2.56 and 3.77 and costs rose to ₹76.60 and ₹109.31. In July two campaigns on near-identical budgets returned leads at ₹165 and ₹651. Gains in an ad account are rented, not owned. That's what weekly attention is for.
Case study 04 · Trading education
A ₹28.31 lead and a ₹221.18 lead, two days apart.
Forty-nine campaigns selling stock market, forex and dropshipping courses. Same account, same fortnight, an eightfold spread in what an enquiry cost. This account taught me to move budget weekly, not monthly.
₹28.31
Cheapest form lead, across 131 of them
817,480
Meta accounts reached across 49 campaigns
7.8×
Spread between best and worst cost per lead
54%
Of impressions from one ad converting almost nobody
What worked
A forex campaign launched on 14 August returned 131 form leads at ₹28.31 each. A dropshipping campaign brought 123 in at ₹60.22. On messaging, a stock mentor campaign converted at ₹5.81.
What didn't, the same week
A stock market campaign launched the same day returned 15 leads at ₹183.04, six times the cost.
Another, three days later, returned 8 leads at ₹221.18.
Budget explained none of it: ₹1,250 a day on the winner, ₹1,000 on the ₹183.04 campaign.
What the audit found
19 of the account's 34 live ads were spending nothing at all.
The four cheapest converting ads had stopped delivering, three while still the best performers.
July's best theme, converting at ₹9.43 across 212 results, had been switched off and never restarted.
What I'd tell you
An account with this much variance can't be reviewed monthly. The export also had no revenue values, so I couldn't calculate return on ad spend, and I said so in the report instead of inventing a number that looked better.
Case study 05 · Recruitment
Rebuilding a job advert that cost five times too much.
If you're hiring, this is the cheapest thing Meta does. Twenty-four campaigns filling roles in business development, digital marketing, content, video and counselling, alongside client lead campaigns.
₹33,687
Spent across 24 campaigns
638
Conversations at ₹19.34 blended
237
Form leads at ₹59.99 blended
82%
Cheaper after the rebuild, same role
The rebuild
The original business development advert spent ₹1,986.71 for 38 conversations at ₹52.28 each. I rebuilt it with a new angle, new copy and tighter targeting. Version two returned 25 conversations at ₹9.41.
Where the money worked
Content strategist advert: 93 conversations for ₹221.28, ₹2.38 each, the cheapest in the account.
Videographer advert: 53 conversations at ₹3.82.
Eleven of the fourteen messaging campaigns converted under ₹21.
The rebuild that didn't work
I redid the digital marketer advert too. The original converted at ₹10.63, the new one at ₹13.17. I kept the original. One clear win and one clear loss is the hit rate to expect, and it's why I test rather than replace.
The client lead campaigns
An education client in Kerala: 133 leads for ₹6,902, at ₹51.90 each. The same offer in Tamil Nadu on an identical ₹1,000 daily budget returned 80 leads at ₹76.58, 48% more per lead.
Receipts
Straight out of Ads Manager.
Real campaign screens with every number left as it was. Campaign names are hidden to protect my clients. I'll walk you through any account on a call.
Recruitment account, campaign view. ₹33,687.48 spent, and the ₹52.28 and ₹9.41 rows from case study 05.
Same account: 133 leads at ₹51.90 against 80 at ₹76.58 on the same daily budget.
Education account, lifetime view: 67 campaigns, ₹9,34,695.46 spent, 8,017,708 accounts reached.
Education account: 937 leads at ₹44.52 in May, against January's tests at ₹130.98 to ₹309.45.
Same account: 599 leads at ₹82.94, and messaging campaigns from ₹42.87.
Trading account: 131 leads at ₹28.31 on 14 August, against 8 at ₹221.18 three days later.
Instagram Insights · June 2026. 209,677 views and 164,959 accounts reached, up 201%.
Instagram Insights · June 2026. 24,675 followers, with growth peaking in the final week.
And the organic side
When ads send people to a profile, the profile has to hold them.
These two screens are from a page I ran alongside its ad account.
Full monthly reports for each account are available on request, with the client's permission.
Your account next
Want me to look at yours?
I'll walk you through any of these: the structure, what the exports showed, and what I changed because of it.
Accounts
Education, retail, trading, recruitment
Proof
Exports available on a call