What this business does: a UK-based online car-buying service — sellers get a 60-second quote for their car or van in any condition, damaged, scrapped, or just old, with free UK-wide collection and payment within minutes.
I planned, launched, and ran this three-campaign funnel end to end — top-of-funnel awareness, remarketing, and page growth. Here's what I ran into along the way, and what I built to fix it.
Problem faced: the awareness campaign was optimised for Quote Accepts, so every cold impression competed for an expensive direct conversion.
Change I brought in: built the campaign around Maximum Reach instead, letting remarketing handle conversion downstream.
Result: reach up 74%, spend down 67%.
Problem faced: ad creative shown to warm, returning visitors no longer matched current branding and messaging.
Change I brought in: planned and shipped a full creative refresh for the remarketing audience.
Result: cost per quote accept fell to £8.33, its lowest point all year.
Problem faced: daily spend was split across three campaigns with no clear read on which ones deserved more weight.
Change I brought in: rebuilt the budget allocation from £180/day to £115/day based on what was actually converting.
Result: 36% less spend, with output held or improved.
Problem faced: follower-growth ads leaned on commissioned creative, pushing cost per follower up.
Change I brought in: rebuilt the campaign around existing team-reel footage instead.
Result: cost per follower down 75%, from £1.13 to £0.28.
In April 2026, the TOF objective was switched from Quote Accepts to Maximum Reach — showing the advert to as many unique UK car sellers as possible each day, rather than paying a premium to chase direct conversions cold.
Tracked three Pixel events end-to-end: Page View, Initiate Checkout (Get a Quote click), and Lead (Quote Accept). Anyone who entered the journey but didn't accept a quote fed the remarketing audience — alongside video viewers and organic page engagers.
Creative was refreshed in April 2026 to match current branding and tone of voice, pushing Cost/Quote Accept to its lowest point of the year before auction pressure pushed CPMs back up through Q2.
Switching the TOF objective from Quote Accepts to Reach lifted reach 74% (438K vs. 252K) while cutting spend 67% (£2,435 vs. £7,442) over the same four-month window — proof that TOF shouldn't be judged on conversion cost.
At £11.98 per quote accept, remarketing consistently outperforms cold TOF spend on direct conversions — because it draws on users who already showed intent via the Pixel.
Updating remarketing creative to current branding in April 2026 dropped Cost/Quote Accept to its yearly low of £8.33, before rising media costs pushed it back up through Q2.
Cost per follow/profile visit fell steadily from £1.13 to £0.28 across 12 months — even as the daily budget was cut in half — by rotating in existing team-reel content instead of paid production.
Rebalancing the daily budget from £180 to £115 across TOF, remarketing and page growth preserved — and in TOF's case, improved — output, freeing budget for further testing.
Page View, Initiate Checkout, and Lead events were verified live across every landing page — the remarketing audience simply doesn't exist without that instrumentation being correct first.
Figures are rounded from monthly ad-account reporting, Aug 2025 – Jul 2026. Presented for portfolio purposes as part of my role managing paid social for this brand.