Helpp: launching paid acquisition for an on-demand services platform

Starting with nothing

There was no ad account, no pixel, no retargeting list and no follow-up process. That is a harder brief than fixing an account that already spends, because the first few weeks produce no results at all, only infrastructure.

The founders knew the operation, not the acquisition side, and the honest framing at the start was that we did not yet know whether the business could be advertised profitably at all. That is what the first phase was for.

What I built, in order

• Campaign structure and audiences on Facebook and Instagram, drawn around the service areas the operation could actually cover.
• Google Ads on the service terms people already search for, with a small budget and tight geography.
• One YouTube test, kept deliberately small.
• Pixel, conversion tracking and retargeting across the accounts.
• WhatsApp follow-up on every enquiry, which for a local service is where a quote turns into a slot.
• A short monthly report to the founders on cost per booking and where bookings came from.

What happened

Bookings moved from about 3 to 4 a month to 8 to 10, and the cost per booking came down between the first month and the last two. The counts are approximate: they come from the team's own records, kept by hand, in a period when the service list itself was changing.

What this case study does not prove

A booking is not a customer. Whether those bookings turned into repeat customers depends on cleaning quality, punctuality and staffing, none of which I had any control over and none of which I measured. Anyone reading this should treat it as evidence that a start-up with no acquisition channel can be given one, and not as evidence that the business was profitable at that cost.

Handover

The accounts were handed to the team, with the structure documented so it could be run without me. I have not had access since.