79% More Purchases, 88% Higher ROAS, 37% Lower CPA
US Health Diagnostics Brand (Epigenetic Testing)
“We'd hit a wall where every extra dollar of ad spend was making our numbers worse, not better — which is a scary place to be right before your biggest sales period of the year. Foreignerds didn't just turn up the budget. They found that our best-performing audiences and our best-performing creative weren't the ones we assumed, and rebuilt the campaign structure around what the data actually showed. We hit Black Friday with room to spend aggressively and the ROAS held above where we needed it the whole way through.”
— ***REDACTED***
The Background
The client operates in the health diagnostics and wellness space, specializing in epigenetic testing that gives consumers insight into biological aging and systemic health through analysis of a broad range of biomarkers. Because the product sits at the intersection of health, science, and consumer wellness, paid acquisition needed to balance education, trust, direct-response messaging, and conversion efficiency simultaneously. The business was preparing to push advertising investment around a new product launch and its biggest annual sales event: Black Friday.
| Team Size | In-house marketing team + Foreignerds paid media team |
|---|---|
| Volume | Advertising investment scaled significantly during the campaign window |
| Engagement | Paid media management retainer |
| Platform Access | Live campaign — reporting available on request |
The Challenge
The client wanted to increase ad spend and generate more revenue while maintaining a ROAS above 2.0 — a constraint that shaped every decision in the campaign.
- Increase volume — the business wanted substantially more purchases and revenue, not just maintained performance.
- Protect acquisition efficiency — increasing budget without controlling campaign efficiency could quickly push acquisition costs upward.
- Find the right audiences — identify where additional spend could generate meaningful purchase activity rather than simply increasing reach.
- Identify winning creative — different creative formats were producing different outcomes, making systematic testing essential.
- Expand channel opportunities — Google and Meta were the core platforms, with TikTok and X explored as additional growth opportunities.
- Perform during a critical sales period — the strategy had to support a new product launch and maximize performance during Black Friday, when spend and competition were both elevated.
The central question: how do you increase paid-media investment while keeping the economics of acquisition under control?
Our Approach & Technical Decisions
Reallocate budget toward proven performance — rather than treating every campaign equally, budget was shifted toward campaigns and audiences already demonstrating stronger commercial performance.
Strengthen Google Ads performance — optimized through campaign refinement, budget reallocation, Performance Max optimization, and product-feed improvements, with regular ROAS tracking to keep the 2.0+ objective central to every decision.
Refine Meta campaign structure and audiences — budget shifted toward higher-performing retargeting and customer-list campaigns. Two groups stood out clearly: Retargeting at 3.24 ROAS and Customer List at 2.99 ROAS. Audience consolidation and frequency management further improved efficiency.
Test creative based on purchase performance, not engagement — the team analyzed which creative formats actually drove purchases rather than treating creative testing as an engagement exercise. Static ads generated 64% of total purchases, outperforming video creative. Creator-led UGC also delivered strong engagement and conversion, adding a second viable creative direction.
Test additional acquisition channels — TikTok and X were tested for incremental growth. Both had limited time to generate meaningful results within the campaign window, reinforcing the value of concentrating investment in channels and structures with stronger demonstrated performance.
Challenge encountered: the most difficult part of the engagement was maintaining efficiency while pushing spend higher around the product launch and Black Friday, without letting performance slip below the client’s 2.0 ROAS threshold. This meant budget had to be continually redirected toward better-performing campaigns rather than simply increased everywhere. The creative testing reinforced this discipline directly — the finding that static creative, not video, drove 64% of purchases showed that more visually complex creative was not automatically the strongest commercial performer. The result was a paid-media system built around purchase performance rather than surface-level engagement metrics.
Implementation Timeline
Technology Stack
Measurable Results
- Purchases increased 79%, giving the brand substantially more customers during its most important product and promotional window.
- Cost per acquisition decreased 37%, meaning the increase in purchase volume came with improved efficiency, not just higher spend.
- ROAS increased 88%, strengthening overall returns — particularly important given maintaining a 2.0+ ROAS was a core requirement of the engagement.
- Conversion value increased 112%, showing the campaign's commercial impact went beyond purchase count alone.
- Meta's Retargeting campaigns reached a 3.24 ROAS, while Customer List campaigns generated a 2.99 ROAS — giving a clear basis for directing additional budget.
- Creative testing identified that static ads accounted for 64% of total purchases, outperforming video and providing a clear creative learning for future paid-media activity.
- Creator-led UGC delivered strong engagement and conversion performance, adding a second viable creative direction alongside static ads.
Post-Launch & Ongoing Engagement
Following the initial scale-up, the client continued with an ongoing paid media management retainer covering campaign optimization, creative testing, and monthly performance reviews across Google and Meta. The static-creative insight from this campaign has since been applied to subsequent product launches.