D2C pet nutrition · United States · Meta ads · 3 months
From losing money on every order to profitable at ten times the spend.
- Daily ad spend, over 3 months
- $100 → $1,000
- ROAS, against a 1.0 break-even
- 0.8 → 1.4
- Of spend was reaching past buyers
- ~50%
- New creatives tested
- 6 a week
The situation
A six-month-old pet treat kit brand, spending about $120 a day and losing money on every order: $45 to win a customer on a $40 product. Repeat buyers made the model work, with 45% coming back, so a 1.0 ROAS on the first order was enough. They were at 0.8.
What we found
No audience exclusions anywhere. About half the budget was reaching people who had already engaged or bought, at cold-traffic prices, and those easy repeat orders were being counted as new sales. The real cold number was worse than 0.8.
What we did
- Rebuilt the structure: one clean cold campaign excluding 30-day engagers and 90-day buyers, with retargeting on its own budget, so each could be judged on its own numbers.
- Built the audience research it never had: five buyer types, each with its own message. Gut health led, then picky eaters and clean ingredients.
- Installed a testing rhythm: six UGC videos a week across three angles. Losers cut fast, winners given new hooks instead of a rebuild.
- Flagged what was next: the website had no upsells, no order bumps and no landing pages for the buyers the ads were already bringing in.
Account run by Sourabh Nagar, co-founder. The brand is not named.