THE BRIEF

A Great Product Without a Marketing Engine

When I came on board as a Marketing Consultant for Sanctum Brand — a premium everyday carry (EDC) tool company behind the innovative Hard Bar, the world’s first titanium pry tool with a built-in fixed-blade knife — the product was exceptional. The marketing infrastructure was not.

The website had no urgency elements, no active special offers, and no Meta Pixel installed, meaning every visitor who left was lost forever. There was no retargeting, no structured paid media strategy, and no real mechanism to convert interest into sales. The Meta ROAS sat at a struggling 1.48, and the Instagram account barely had 200 followers.

My mandate was clear: build the marketing machine, turn ad spend into meaningful return, grow the brand’s digital presence, and establish channels that would compound over time.

PHASE 1

Diagnosing the Gaps — Foundation First

WEBSITE & CONVERSION AUDIT

The Website Was Losing Ready Buyers

The first thing I did was audit the website through the lens of a buyer. The product was compelling, but the site wasn’t designed to convert. There was no urgency to act, no offers to incentivise purchase, and no mechanism to capture visitors who left without buying.

• Introduced urgency elements — limited-time framing, stock messaging, and offer deadlines — to push hesitant buyers toward action
• Created and embedded special offers that gave new visitors a clear reason to buy now rather than later
• Restructured key landing pages to align with the ad creative and reduce friction in the path to purchase
• Promoted the waitlist as a conversion mechanism for visitors not yet ready to buy — capturing intent and building an owned audience

TRACKING INFRASTRUCTURE

Installing the Pixel — You Can’t Optimise What You Don’t Track

There was no Meta Pixel on the website. This was a critical gap. Without it, Meta’s algorithm had no purchase data to optimise against, no audience to retarget, and no way to measure what was actually working.

• Installed and configured the Meta Pixel across all key pages — product, checkout, and thank-you
• Set up custom conversion events to track add-to-carts, checkout initiations, and purchases
• Established a clean data foundation that allowed every subsequent campaign to be properly measured and optimised

PHASE 2

Building the Paid Media Engine — Meta Ads

With the tracking infrastructure in place and the website improved for conversion, I built a structured, full-funnel paid media strategy across Meta (Facebook and Instagram).

CREATIVE STRATEGY

The Creative Was the Unlock

The most significant performance leap came not from targeting changes, but from creative. I developed a short-form video strategy built specifically for Meta’s mobile environment — a 16-second scroll-stopping video that averaged 10 seconds of watch time. The results spoke for themselves: ROAS jumped from 1.48 to 6.

“Meta has confirmed that 56% of sales lift from Facebook ads comes down to the creative itself. If your ads aren’t converting, the targeting might not be the issue — it’s probably the content.” — From my LinkedIn breakdown of this campaign

I developed a proprietary creative scripting and editing framework — intentional, repeatable, and built to perform in mobile feed environments. Short-form video consistently outperformed static ads across every campaign we ran.

FULL-FUNNEL CAMPAIGN STRUCTURE

Top, Middle, and Bottom of Funnel — Each With a Job to Do

Rather than running isolated campaigns, I built a structured funnel targeting every stage of the buyer journey:

• TOF (Top of Funnel) — broad and interest-based traffic campaigns to build awareness at scale, generating over 472K impressions on the flagship campaign alone
• MOF (Middle of Funnel) — retargeting warm audiences (video viewers, page visitors) with more product-focused content and social proof
• BOF (Bottom of Funnel) — retargeting high-intent visitors (add-to-carts, checkout abandonments) with urgency-led offers designed to close the sale

RETARGETING

Turning Lost Visitors Into Customers

With the Pixel now capturing data, I launched retargeting campaigns aimed at visitors who had shown intent but hadn’t converted. These audiences — people who had viewed the product, added to cart, or initiated checkout — were served tailored offers addressing their specific point of hesitation.

The BOF retargeting campaign achieved a ROAS of 3.12, and the top-performing sales campaigns hit a peak ROAS of 5.82, with cost-per-purchase figures well within profitable range for the product category.

CAMPAIGN PERFORMANCE

The Numbers Across Every Campaign

Below is a consolidated view of campaign performance across the full engagement period, covering traffic, prospecting, and conversion campaigns run across Meta platforms.

CAMPAIGN	SPEND (CAD)	IMPRESSIONS	CTR	ROAS / RESULT
Sales Campaign – IG Animation	$1,980	87,786	5.47%	4.93 ROAS
New Sales Campaign (Prospecting)	$1,719	72,685	5.99%	5.82 ROAS
BOF – Retargeting Traffic	$914	137,058	5.29%	3.12 ROAS
TOF – Traffic (Interest Audience)	$1,186	215,593	13.84%	18,944 LPVs
Static Animated Flatlay – Hard Bar	$136	6,142	4.56%	4.19 ROAS
Sales Campaign – 24th June	$354	19,528	9.97%	33 Checkouts
Kickstarter Traffic – Interest	$408	63,664	9.68%	4,085 LPVs

LPVs = Landing Page Views. ROAS figures reflect purchase return on ad spend as tracked via Meta Pixel.

PHASE 3

Growing the Brand — Email & Social

EMAIL MARKETING

Building an Owned Audience That Converts

Paid media rents attention. Email owns it. Alongside the ad campaigns, I developed and executed an email marketing strategy designed to nurture subscribers, drive repeat purchases, and convert the waitlist into paying customers.

Email campaigns generated significant direct revenue contribution, with sequences built around product education, offer windows, and launch moments. The waitlist promotion was a key component — capturing high-intent prospects ahead of product availability and converting them at launch.

INSTAGRAM GROWTH

From 200 to 2,500 Followers in 3 Months

Sanctum Brand’s Instagram account sat at just 200 followers when I began. Through a combination of content strategy aligned with the EDC community, ad-driven profile exposure, and consistent brand storytelling, the account grew to over 2,500 followers within 3 months — a 1,150% increase.

This wasn’t vanity growth. The audience built through Instagram fed directly into Meta’s custom audiences, strengthening retargeting pools and lowering cost per acquisition across campaigns.

RESULTS SUMMARY

Quantifiable Transformation

METRIC	BEFORE	AFTER	CHANGE
Meta ROAS	1.48	Up to 6.0	+305%
Instagram Followers	200	2,500+	+1,150% in 3 months
Meta Pixel	Not installed	Fully configured	New Infrastructure
Total Ad Impressions	—	1.38M+	New Channel
Retargeting Campaigns	None	Full TOF/MOF/BOF funnel	Built from Scratch
Waitlist	Not promoted	Successfully filled	New Channel
Email Marketing	None	Active revenue channel	New Channel
Website CRO	No urgency, no offers	Urgency + offers + optimised	Fully Rebuilt

REFLECTIONS

What Made This Work

The transformation at Sanctum Brand wasn’t the result of a single campaign or a lucky audience. It was the product of building the right foundations, then scaling what worked.

Creative is the Variable The biggest ROAS jump came from a 16-second video — not a targeting change. Creative is the lever most brands underestimate.		Track Everything First Without the Pixel, there is no data, no retargeting, no optimisation. Infrastructure before spend.
Funnels Beat Campaigns TOF/MOF/BOF structure meant every visitor had a follow-up path. One-off campaigns leave money on the table.		Own Your Audience Email and waitlist gave us channels that didn’t depend on ad spend. Rented attention has diminishing returns.

SKILLS & TOOLS

What Was Used to Get Here

Core Skills

 Paid Media Strategy    Meta Ads Management    Creative Direction & Scripting    Conversion Rate Optimisation    Retargeting & Audience Building    Email Marketing    Full-Funnel Campaign Architecture    Pixel Setup & Tracking    Performance Analytics    Social Media Growth    Ecommerce Marketing    Waitlist & Launch Strategy

Tool Stack

CATEGORY	TOOLS USED
Paid Advertising	Meta Ads Manager (Facebook & Instagram)
Tracking & Analytics	Meta Pixel, Meta Events Manager
Email Marketing	Email Campaign Platform
Creative Production	Short-Form Video, Static Ad Design
CRO & Website	Landing Page Optimisation, Offer Design
Reporting	Meta Ads Reporting, Excel