The $27 lead, explained

A disability clinic in Sunbury came to us paying about $90 a lead. Four months later the same offer was landing leads at $27, on a $4.2K spend. Nothing exotic happened. Here’s where the money actually went.

Cost per lead is three numbers, not one

What you pay for a lead is the price of reaching people, times how many click, times how many finish the form. Most accounts are broken at the third number and spend their whole budget trying to fix the first.

The form was the problem

Eleven fields became four. The headline stopped describing the service and started describing the outcome. Completion rate more than doubled in a week — before we touched a single audience setting.

Creative volume beats clever targeting

We ran six pieces of creative a month instead of one. The platform found the buyers; our job was to keep giving it something new to test. When a winner fatigued, there was already a replacement in the queue.

What to check in your own account

Look at cost per landing-page view, form completion rate, and how old your best-performing creative is. If the answer to the last one is “months”, your leads are about to get expensive.