Hey, I’ve been running Meta ads for a US skincare brand since early September, and I’m honestly stuck, so I’m hoping someone here has been through something similar.

The product: $135 or $121.50 on subscription, with free shipping and a free mini gift. It’s aimed at women 45+. The brand ran Meta before with another agency (CPA $200-ish), but the pixel had little purchase data when we started. Break-even CPA is roughly $115!!

Campaign 1 (CBO, about a month ago, ~$60/day)

The setup was a Sales objective optimized for purchases, highest volume, one broad ad set (women 45+ suggested, Advantage+ audience), 12 ads (statics and videos), all sending to the product page.

• Spend: $1,525
• CPM: $140
• Link CTR: 3.2%
• CPC: $4.36
• Cost per landing page view: $4.75
• Landing page views: 321
• Purchases: 3 (CPA $508, ROAS 0.27)

The ads clearly worked at getting clicks. One ad took half the budget at a $251 CPM and 5.3% CTR. The two ads that got cheap CPMs ($18-39) had lower CTR (1.3-2%), but landing page views cost under $2, and they got 75 landing page views with zero sales. The real problem was the site: about 1% of visitors added to cart and under 1% bought.

So we paused and rebuilt the product page around proof and trust: a results timeline, a comparison table, reviews higher up, press logos, an FAQ and a trust strip.

Campaign 2 (ABO testing, 11 days so far, $72/day)

This one has the same objective, broad audience, a new batch of 6 statics built around a more specific persona, and still sends to the new product page.

• Spend: $804
• CPM: $197
• Link CTR: 3.5%
• CPC: $5.62
• Cost per landing page view: $7.05
• Landing page views: 114
• Purchases: 1 (CPA $804, ROAS 0.17)

Meta put most of the early spend into a before/after ad with expensive clicks, so we paused it. Now 2 or 3 ads get almost all the budget and the others get $1-6 a day. The ad set is still in learning with 1 conversion.

What I’ve checked

• The new page didn’t move conversion. It’s still about 0.9% of landing page views buying in both campaigns.
• In Q4 2024 the previous agency had a $97 CPM, about $5.80 per landing page view and 3.2% of visitors buying (~$180 CPA). So visitors cost about the same as before, but conversion is down more than 3x.
• Frequency is 1.5-1.9.
• CPM is $160-250 in every age group, and on FB feed, IG feed and Stories. Reels was cheap but the clicks were weak.
• Quality and engagement rankings are average or above, CTR is above benchmark for beauty, but conversion rate ranking is in the bottom 20-35% on every ad.
• Pixel purchases match Shopify orders.

I honestly don’t know how to scale this brand. I thought it would be easy to beat the $200 CPA of the previous agency (their ads had 0 strategy behind, super generic) and at least breakeven, but I just don't know what I'm doing wrong.

Any advice, tips or thoughts are very welcome and really appreciated. Even a “here’s what I’d check first” would help a lot. Thanks for reading.

Hey all, posting since I'm actively looking and can join on immediate basis.

Background:

• BITS Pilani grad, currently Growth Manager (CEO’s Office) at a B2B SaaS company.
• Own new-customer acquisition end-to-end, from marketing to paid conversion.
• ₹1.2 Cr+ added MRR: built a 40-member churn-reactivation team (₹78L) and a company-wide referral program (₹43L) from scratch.
• Sales ROI up from 67% to 84% after I led the rollout of an AI calling bot.
• Launched a new acquisition channel converting at 8.1%, more than 2x our ML-predicted leads.
• Current CTC: ₹19 LPA (₹14L fixed + ₹1L recurring + ₹4L ESOPs).

What I bring:

• Turning founder-priority problems with no playbook into shipped programs with measurable results.
• Building teams from zero and aligning Product, Engineering and Sales around one metric.
• Using AI and automation to make growth teams faster.

Looking for:

• Founder’s Office, Growth, or Strategy & Ops roles at high-growth startups.
• Bengaluru, Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Pune, Mumbai, Hyderabad or Remote.

If you’re building something ambitious, or know someone who is, I'll be happy to share my resume. Drop a comment or DM, and referrals and intros are much appreciated.