Tom Nwachuku
- US Army veteran
- UCLA MBA
- Mandarin speaker
- Board of Directors,
USA Olympic Taekwondo
Digital campaign strategy for seven major motion picture studios, on an annual portfolio of about $40M in Meta spend.
Sony · MGM · Universal · Fox · Fox Sports · Amazon Prime Studios · Lionsgate
A team of campaign managers covering 350+ businesses across education, non-profits, lead generation, automotive, legal, real estate and insurance.
A roster of 500+ creators and a billion followers. Influencer campaigns for Nike, Alo, Quest Nutrition, Marriott and M&M’s.
Sales vs.
Marketing
Same hitchhiker. Same road.
TO JACKSONVILLE. Honest, correct, and ignored.
TO MOM’S FOR CHRISTMAS. The same trip. Now you want to help.
Marketing creates demand. Sales captures it.
Session breakdown
| Time | Section | Activity |
|---|---|---|
| 3:30 – 4:00 | Learn. Ads basics, start to finish | About the AlgorithmMarketing FunnelsHow Ads Get PricedFundamentals of Building a Social Campaign |
| 4:00 – 4:30 | Build. Map your own campaign | Hands on practice. A real business that is stuck. Diagnose the funnel, fix it, and leave with the full campaign setup |
| 4:30 – 5:00 | Lab. Your questions, your accounts | Ads Manager, LiveReal Campaigns FixedPlanning for Q4 |
You leave with a one page blueprint and everything you need to invest and scale your social media ads.
Let’s talk about
social media ads. True or false?
Boosting a post is the same as running an ad.
Narrow targeting always beats broad.
If it is not working after two days, I should change it.
I need a bigger budget before this can work.
Better targeting will fix a bad ad.
All five are myths. By five o'clock you will know exactly why.
One campaign.
Endless choices.
Hundreds of combinations. Every one of them looks plausible.
Every option. The few that matter.
Placements
In-Feed Ad Spark Ads Video Shopping Ads Top Feed TopView Pulse Branded Mission Branded EffectObjectives
Reach Video Views Traffic Community Interaction Lead Generation App Promotion Web Conversion Product SalesTargeting
Broad Location & Language Demographic Interests & Behavior Device Contextual Custom & Lookalike Smart TargetingOptimization
Clicks Landing Page Views Leads Conversion View Content / Add to Cart Initiate Checkout Value-Based Optimization Mobile App InstallMeasurement
Pixel & Events API Attribution Manager Split Test Conversion Lift Brand Lift Study Post Purchase Survey Media Mix Modeling Store Visit AttributionPlacements
Advantage+ (automatic) Instagram Reels Instagram Feed Facebook Feed Stories Marketplace Audience Network MessengerObjectives
Awareness Traffic Engagement Leads App promotion Sales six, since ODAXTargeting
Broad Location & Age Advantage+ Audience Detailed (interests) Custom Audience Lookalike Exclusions Special Ad CategoryOptimization
Link Clicks Landing Page Views Leads Purchase Add to Cart Initiate Checkout Value App InstallsMeasurement
Pixel + Conversions API Attribution Setting A/B Test Conversion Lift Brand Lift Advantage+ reporting Marketing Mix Modeling Offline ConversionsWhat are your true business goals?
- Not more followers.
- Not getting your name out there.
How do you translate
your business goals into
an advertising campaign?
Everything else in this room is downstream of those two sentences.
Six things you really control
Campaign setup
The objective you pick.
Audience targeting
Who you let it reach.
Creative messaging
The thing people see.
Bidding optimisation
What you pay for.
Measure, test, learn
Tests and reporting.
Sharing signals
The pixel and events.
Your goal picks the objective
One objective for every stage of the funnel. Name the stage and the objective picks itself.Six objectives, and four of them are the same stage. Meta puts almost everything in consideration.
The marketing
funnel
Too many brands try to get married on the first date.
- Awareness. Who are you?
- Consideration. Why you?
- Conversion. How do I buy?
No funnel under $50 a day. One campaign. Run the bottom one.
Marketing goal → creative strategy
Where everything lives
Manager
How a campaign is
actually built
Answer them in that order and you have built a campaign.
What you control at each level
Three levels, and each one owns different settings. Put a setting at the wrong level and you will spend the session wondering why you cannot find it.
Up to 20 ads per ad group. Conversion at the ad set level holds five settings: conversion location, conversion event, performance goal, dataset, attribution. A generalised view. Individual settings are nuanced and move occasionally.
How your ad gets priced
The feed has to stay worth opening. If money alone decided, it would not be.
The auction scores every ad on whether people will respond, not just what you pay. Highest eCPM wins.
Click‑through Rate× estimated
Conversion Rate
Each one explains itself.
Only one of those three terms is money.
The other two are whether your ad works.
What you pay. Your bid.
What you build. Signals, targeting, creative, the optimisation levers. Measure, test, learn.
Second price auction
You are not bidding
against a price.
You are bidding against how likely everyone else's ad is to work.
That is why $20 a day and a good hook can sit in the same feed as a studio.
Budget rules that matter
- Daily budget, not lifetime
- Raise by 20 to 30 percent, never double overnight
- Then a day and fifty conversions before the next change
- Raise once you spend 80 percent of it, consistently
- Campaign budget optimisation from two ad groups up
Every budget change is a bid change, and it can reset learning.
Why ads look
broken at first
A new campaign is exploring, hunting for who converts.
it stabilises
never passes at all
Wild costs on day one are exploring, not failing.
While it learns, do not:
- Lower the bid.
- Move the budget by more than twenty percent.
- Touch the settings. Meta stamps it Learning limited when it never gets there.
Liquidity
The word that explains all five
How much room the system has to work in.
Broad audience, every placement, enough budget. Millions of chances to find your buyer, so it finds the cheap ones.
Narrow audience, one placement, ten dollars a day. It takes what it can get and pays more for it.
Every constraint you add drains liquidity.
Every constraint is a lever
Audience too small
Too few surfaces
Cannot buy fifty events
Set too low to win
An event that rarely fires
Feed · Reels · Stories · Messenger · Search · Audience Network
The lowest fruit
is cheapest
Every constraint sends the system further up the tree for the same person. It still finds them. You pay for the ladder.
Start at the bottom. Climb only when the bottom runs out.
Avoid frequent edits
Do not touch anything until it exits learning. These edits restart it:
| Campaign | Ad set | Ads |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | Targeting | Any change |
| Bid amount | Optimisation event | |
| Placement | Adding new creative | |
| Bid strategy | Bid strategy, bid amount, budget | |
| Pausing for over seven days |
Set it, then leave it alone for a week. Fiddling on day two is the costliest habit.
Three ways to find people
Demographic, interest and behaviour
Age, location, device. Interests like beauty or travel. And behaviour, the one nobody uses:
In the last fifteen days.
Custom audiences and re-engagement
People who already acted:
This is retargeting, the cheapest audience you will ever buy.
Smart targeting
- Automatic Targeting runs the whole thing
- Targeting Expansion widens a group you built
- Lookalikes copy your best customers
All three need a seed worth copying.
Stacking twelve interests is the most common beginner mistake, and it guarantees nothing delivers.
What if I want specific targeting?
Can be narrow.
As broad as possible.
- Test narrow if you have a reason to.
- Widen the moment performance drops. A narrow audience runs out of people before you run out of budget.
At small budgets the creative does the targeting.
Climb the ladder
Every rung is a bigger ask. Fewer people do it, and each one is worth more.
No website and no pixel needed.
No pixel on TikTok. Base pixel on Meta.
Pixel plus about fifty events a week. Then it runs 40 to 50 percent cheaper than Traffic.
Value and currency on every event. Roughly 36 percent higher return.
Stand one rung below where you want to be. Climb when the events start coming back.
Spend it all,
or cap it
Meta calls it Highest volume. Spends it all, for the most results.
Holds the average cost near your bid, or underspends.
Start on maximum delivery. Cap it once you trust the cost.
Hand the budget to the campaign instead of splitting it evenly across ad groups, and it moves money to whatever is working.
| Ad group A | Ad group B | Results | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Split evenly | $10 | $10 | 30 |
| Campaign budget | $15 | $5 | 35 |
Same twenty dollars. Meta calls this Advantage+ campaign budget now.
Nine moves that make ads work
Frame vertically
Let creators take the lead
Use the power of sound
Overlay concise and informative text
Get your key message out early
Include a strong call to action
Break the fourth wall
Keep it real and entertaining
Ride the latest trends
Three different hooks beat three edits. The auction ignores near copies.
Run the creator's post, not a copy
It runs from the creator's handle, not yours. Photo, name and taps go to their account.
It keeps the likes, comments and shares it already earned, and walks them into the auction.
The music disc is live, so the sound page is tappable. It reads as a post, because it is one.
The creator generates a code in their account. You pick 7, 30, 60 or 365 days of authorisation.
It runs from the creator's handle, not yours. Meta calls these partnership ads.
It keeps the likes, comments and shares it already earned, and walks them into the auction.
You can run it as a Reel, in Stories, and in feed from the same authorisation.
The creator approves you once in their professional dashboard. No reposting.
If you are already paying creators, you have already bought the ad. SparkA partnership ad just puts budget behind the post they made.
One goal, five settings
Change the objective and all five change underneath it. Pick the wrong one at the top and every screen after it is wrong.
Four things to settle before you open Ads Manager
One platform
- Not five. Five platforms on one budget is five campaigns that all fail.
- Pick the one your buyer already scrolls.
- Put everything there.
A real daily budget
- Roughly ten times your target cost per result, per day.
- Below ten dollars a day it is not a test.
- It is a donation.
A target cost
- What is a customer worth in ninety days?
- Spend about a third of that to get one.
- That number judges every screen after this.
Where they land
- The exact page, not the homepage.
- One product, one offer, one button.
- No website? Use an instant form.
Every broken campaign you will see broke on one of these, before a single setting was touched.
Web data connection
Code on your site that reports when someone did what you wanted.
No signal, and the machine is guessing.
Instant forms collect leads in the app. No pixel.
The pixel sees nothing. You need the SDK.
Browser side. Shares your website visitor events with TikTok and unlocks the advanced features.
Server to server. Catches what the browser misses. Run both at once, that is the recommendation.
Shopify, Squarespace, WooCommerce. The official app wires up both sides for you in about ten minutes.
Browser side. Shares your website visitor events with Meta and unlocks the advanced features.
Server to server. Same idea, different name. Run both at once, that is the recommendation.
Shopify, Squarespace, WooCommerce. The official app installs the pixel and the server side connection for you.
One funnel. Three campaigns.
Maximise views at the lowest possible cost.
Drive people to a landing page at an efficient cost per click.
High quality leads at the lowest possible cost.
Every setting changes depending on which one you picked.
Video Views setup
| Component | Best practice |
|---|---|
| Objective | Video Views, optimised for 6 second views |
| Budget | Daily budget, lowest cost bidding for maximum reach |
| Bid strategy | Cost per view if you need control, otherwise lowest cost |
| Audience | Broad, plus interest and behaviour targeting |
| Creative | High energy, trend based, strong hook in the first 3 seconds |
| Optimisation | Watch completion rate and CPM. Refresh creative every 7 to 10 days |
Retarget anyone who watched 75 percent or more. That is your mid funnel.
Traffic setup
| Component | Best practice |
|---|---|
| Objective | Traffic, optimised for clicks or landing page views |
| Budget | Daily budget with lowest cost bidding to start |
| Bid strategy | Highest volume (Meta) / Maximum delivery (TikTok) first. Switch to cost cap if cost per click climbs |
| Audience | 3 to 5 percent lookalike of past visitors, plus interest targeting |
| Creative | Strong call to action in the first 5 seconds. Clickable elements |
| Optimisation | Watch click through rate. Adjust creative every 10 to 14 days |
A one second delay in page load can drop conversions by twenty percent.
Lead Generation setup
| Component | Best practice |
|---|---|
| Objective | Lead Generation using an instant form |
| Budget | Daily budget high enough to buy fifty leads while it learns |
| Bid strategy | Highest volume (Meta) / Maximum delivery (TikTok) first. Switch to cost cap once the cost per lead is steady |
| Audience | Retarget engaged users, plus high intent interest targeting |
| Creative | Short testimonials, social proof, a clear reason to fill the form |
| Optimisation | Test form length. A/B test the incentive: discount versus free trial |
Keep the form to 3 to 5 fields. Add one qualifying question to filter intent.
Everything shifts by stage
| Upper | Mid | Lower | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audience | Broad, for exposure | Lookalikes and interests | Retargeting, high intent only |
| Bidding | Highest volume (Meta) / Maximum delivery (TikTok) | Same, then cost cap | Cost cap, then value based |
| Creative | Trendy, fast, entertaining | Interactive, click friendly | Trust building, low friction |
| Watch | Cost to reach a thousand, and how many watched | Taps, and what each tap cost | Cost per lead, and what came back |
A one size fits all approach does not work.
Fix My Funnel
________ a month,
at no more than $______ each
Awareness · Consideration
Conversion
so we are buying ____________
A stranger says yes to ____________
and lands on ____________
One person.
One sentence.
Format ____________
First line ____________
$____ a day × ____ days
It worked if ____________
Fill the board and you have the campaign. Next block you open Ads Manager and build exactly this.
Why it stops working
Creative fatigue
Same people, same ad. Performance decays with nothing broken.
Tell: the same people seeing it over and over, cost rising, taps falling, and nothing changed.
Fix: new creative, not a new audience. Refresh every 7 to 14 days.
Audience overlap
Two ad groups chasing the same person. You are bidding against yourself.
Tell: several small ad groups, all underdelivering, all learning limited.
Fix: consolidate and exclude.
Both are why more ad groups is almost never the answer.
They break in the same order
Work down the list in that order. Most of it is settings you can fix tonight.
Nobody's problem
was targeting.
Every one of them thought it was.
It was the creative, the offer, and what the page did next.
Two ways to scale
Vertical · more money
Raise the budget on the winner. Plus 20 to 30 percent every 48 to 72 hours. Fastest, and it risks resetting learning.
Horizontal · more surfaces
New creative, new audience, new placement, new platform. Slower, and it compounds. Where lookalikes finally earn their place.
Only scale a winner: seven days at target with cost moving under ten percent.
How to not break it
| Area | Correct | Incorrect |
|---|---|---|
| Budget | Gradual 20 to 30 percent every 48 to 72 hours | Doubling overnight |
| Audience | Widen lookalikes to 3 to 5 percent, extend retargeting windows, add engagers | Jumping to fully broad too fast |
| Creative | Introduce one or two fresh assets at a time, keep proven performers running | Swapping everything at once, or never refreshing |
| Bidding | Adjust cost cap in small increments | Sudden bid jumps, switching strategy repeatedly |
One change at a time, then wait. Everything in the right hand column is a way of sending the ad set back to learning.
Change one thing
A split test changes one variable.
14 with learning
fund the winner
Vary four things at once and you learn nothing.
Your four green lights
1 · A proven offer
One stranger has already bought. If not, your problem is the offer.
2 · Somewhere measurable
A page with a pixel, or a form.
3 · Creative supply
Three videos this week. Three more next week.
4 · A learning budget
Twenty to thirty dollars a day for thirty days. Information first, customers second.
Have all four and you are ready to spend. Missing one? That is this week's job, and then you are.
Two Q4 strategies
Gifts and year end decisions
Ecommerce, products, anything bought for the holidays.
Be live and out of learning by mid October. Launch inside two weeks.
The mistake is launching on 15 November into the year's most expensive auction with a cold pixel.
Services, coaching, apps
Q4 is the wrong time to learn. You would pay holiday rates to teach the algorithm about a buyer who is not shopping.
Build now, launch the first week of January. Cheapest, highest intent month you get.
Holiday costs commonly run 30 to 50 percent above baseline.
Three things
The platform charges you less when people respond. So creative is the primary lever.
Optimise for the deepest thing you can measure and afford fifty of in a week. If you cannot, step up a rung.
Decide the kill rule before you spend a dollar. Then do not touch it for seven days.
A test without a kill rule is a gamble.
One next
action.
Write it on your blueprint. Put a date on it.
If you do one thing this week, launch the test you just designed.