Given the nature of the product and the market situation, the advertising campaigns were immediately targeted at a military audience, in order to engage with the most relevant segment of potential customers and avoid wasting the budget on a broad audience.

The specific nature of the advertising category and Meta’s restrictions presented a particular challenge. Therefore, the adverts utilised content from the brand’s Instagram account — posts, videos and carousels — which were adapted to meet the advertising platform’s requirements. The advertising materials were constantly updated: whenever the cost per lead began to rise, we changed the creatives and tested new posts to maintain a steady flow of enquiries via Direct.

At the same time, we focused not only on the volume of messages received but also tracked the subsequent handling of each lead. We regularly analysed which enquiries had real potential, which users had already shown interest in the products, and who was worth following up with. This ensured we did not lose potential customers, even in cases where they did not make a decision straight away.

The value of this approach lay in the fact that the effectiveness of the advertising was assessed not only by the number of enquiries via Direct, but also by their potential value to the business. Constant monitoring of lead quality, following up with users and tracking the customer journey enabled us to transform advertising from a simple source of enquiries into the first stage of a fully-fledged sales funnel.