Snug Nest Designs: Meta ads with a 25% lower cost per website lead

Snug Nest Designs cut its cost per website lead from Meta ads by 25% over the full run of the campaign we rebuilt, about four and a half months, against the earlier website lead campaigns. In its first 60 days, cost per lead was 38% below the 60 days before the rebuild. By the second half it had drifted back to slightly above the earlier campaigns' level as the films wore out. The films did the work: more people clicked, while about 1 in 25 clicks became a lead, as before. So the next version sends every ad to one landing page, book.snugnestdesigns.com, and is judged on booked calls.

The studio

Snug Nest Designs is a Melbourne interior design studio for custom and boutique homes. The work runs from the first floor plan to the final piece of furniture: layouts, finishes, joinery and lighting, with materials and custom pieces sourced from international makers. Its clients are people planning or building a home, and the first step is a conversation with the design team.

That makes Facebook and Instagram a natural place to advertise. The homes photograph and film well, and a custom home is a long decision, so the ads have to earn attention well before anyone is ready to talk.

Where the account started

The ad account had run lead campaigns before. The earliest collected details on Meta's own in-app lead forms. Two later campaigns offered a design consultation, sent people to the studio's pages and counted a website lead there. Those two are the fair comparison for the rebuilt campaign, because they were told to find the same website lead.

They brought in leads. The question for the rebuild was whether better films, organised better and aimed at the right part of Melbourne, could win more of the clicks. Video was already doing nearly all the work: across their whole run, ads built on video brought in 91% of their website leads from 89% of the impressions.

What we built

We rebuilt the campaign around video. It opened with the films that had already brought in leads, then grouped the rest by theme: designing a new build, client stories and transformations, pieces on show, and sourcing trips through the building materials markets. Every ad was a film.

The audience is people who live in, or have recently been in, the area within about 44 kilometres of Melbourne, where the studio works. New films and new sets were added during the run, including first-look sets for people new to the studio and sets that bring back people who had already watched the films or visited the studio's pages.

What happened

Over its full run, the rebuilt campaign brought in website leads at a cost 25% below the earlier website lead campaigns. The start was stronger still: in its first 60 days, cost per lead was 38% below those campaigns' last 60 days before the rebuild.

The link click-through rate was 26% higher than before. The share of link clicks that turned into a lead did not move: about 1 in 25, the same as the earlier campaigns. Almost every lead came from a mobile device: 99% of website leads, as Meta reports them, the same as in the earlier campaigns. That is why the page after the click has to work on a phone.

What the numbers taught us

The films did the persuading

The saving came from the ads earning the click, not from the page converting better. That is useful to know. It suggests the films were working, and that the next gain sits after the click: in what the visitor sees, and in what the campaign is asked to find.

Films wear out in a fixed audience

A studio that works in one city shows its ads to the same people again and again. Over the run, the average person reached saw the ads about five times. Link click-through in the last 30 days was 36% below the first 30, and cost per lead in the second half of the run was nearly double the first half, even with new films added along the way. That took it back to slightly above the earlier campaigns' level, so the full-run saving was won in the first months. A campaign like this needs fresh films on a schedule, and a clear view of when the old ones have run their course.

Facebook turned clicks into leads

Instagram carried about a third of the impressions but under a quarter of the website leads. Facebook brought in close to three in four of them, and turned link clicks into leads 1.5 times as often as Instagram. The earlier campaigns leaned the same way. Both placements stay on, but each is judged on what it brings in.

The next version: booked calls

A website lead is a step toward a project, not a project. What the studio wants is a conversation with a homeowner who is ready to talk. So the booked-call version keeps the films and the Melbourne audience, and changes three things.

First, every active ad now sends people to one landing page, book.snugnestdesigns.com. The page walks visitors through the studio's homes, offers advice for each stage of a build and ends in a booking window for a complimentary 30-minute call. Second, the campaign is judged on a completed booking on that page, tracked as its own result, rather than on a website lead.

Third, the sets now follow people through the booking page itself. First-look films reach people who have not yet engaged with the studio. Follow-up films reach people who have visited the booking page or watched at least half of a build film. Final-step films reach people who started a booking in the last two weeks and did not finish it. Anyone who has already booked a call is left out for six months, so the films go to people who still need them.

When these figures were taken, the booked-call campaign had run for under two weeks, with too few bookings yet to publish a rate. We will add it here once it rests on enough bookings to mean something. The page itself is covered in the Snug Nest Designs landing page case study.

How we measured it

Every figure is a ratio or a change, taken from the ad account's own reporting. Cost per lead compares ad cost per website lead between campaigns that were told to find the same website lead; no amounts are published. Link click-through rate is link clicks divided by impressions. The earlier campaigns are measured over the seven or so months before the rebuild began, and the rebuilt campaign over its full run of about four and a half months. Each change is rounded toward the smaller figure. Lead-form campaigns are left out of the comparison because a form filled inside the app is a different step from a visit and an enquiry on the studio's own page, and so is a short furniture-package test with a different offer.

For an interior or custom-home business that wants the same approach, see how we run Facebook ads and Instagram ads.