SUMMARY

Sam Piliero, a Facebook ads expert, details a step-by-step strategy that scaled an ecommerce brand's sales by 440% in 90 days, emphasizing new customer acquisition through targeted prospecting and scaling campaigns.

STATEMENTS

This strategy scaled a business by over 400% in just 90 days using only two campaigns focused exclusively on new customer acquisition at break-even ROAS.
The brand's Shopify dashboard showed gross sales up 377%, net sales up 452%, with only 10% of $200,000 in sales from discounts, indicating steady organic growth.
The approach excluded existing and engaged audiences to drive net new customers, resulting in $170,000 in revenue from ads with a 260% spend increase from $23,000 to $84,000.
Prospecting uses a CBO campaign with individualized creative packs to minimize learning phase disruptions and allow spend to flow to top performers.
The scale campaign mirrors prospecting but guarantees spend on top ads via a single adset with broad targeting and exclusions for existing customers.
Top ads are identified by sorting all ads by spend and incremental ROAS in the prospecting campaign, focusing on those below average cost per purchase.
Graduation involves hard-duplicating top-performing ads into the scale campaign every two weeks, preserving social proof to guide algorithm targeting.
Iterations of top ads involve swapping core elements like models, text, or product variations, leading to ads that spent $29,000 and achieved nearly 2x ROAS.
Aggressive spend increases on new customers, doubling budgets when above target ROI, enabled the 400% revenue growth without conservative increments.
Nurturing the scale campaign strictly with proven ads prevents algorithm misinformation, while keeping multiple high-performers active across campaigns sustains overall account health.

IDEAS

Focusing solely on new customer acquisition, excluding retargeting, can hyper-scale revenue by prioritizing fresh traffic over milking existing audiences.
Using creative packs in CBO campaigns isolates new ad learning, protecting established performers from disruptions and enabling smoother budget allocation.
A dedicated scale campaign with one adset and broad targeting acts as a "guaranteed spend" zone for top ads, accelerating growth without risking broader account stability.
Incremental attribution reveals hidden high-performers by showing true net new customer value, often overlooked in standard metrics.
Graduating ads via hard duplicates every two weeks transfers social proof, turning viral elements into algorithmic advantages for sustained targeting.
Iterating ads by swapping core elements—like models or bold text variations—yields massive performance lifts, far beyond minor tweaks like font changes.
Aggressive daily spend scaling, rather than incremental 5-10% boosts, can quadruple revenue when data confirms ROI thresholds are met.
AI-generated UGC serves as a high-leverage tool for rapid creative production, addressing common roadblocks in ad testing for ecommerce brands.
Steady daily growth charts indicate algorithm maturity; avoiding pauses on high-performers preserves this momentum across the account.
Agencies should prioritize new customer metrics over total ROAS to build long-term business health, not just short-term conversions from warm traffic.

INSIGHTS

True scaling emerges from siloed strategies that isolate innovation (new creatives) from optimization (top ads), allowing algorithms to learn without interference.
Excluding engaged audiences forces creative efficiency, revealing ads that genuinely convert cold traffic and build sustainable customer bases.
Social proof duplication in ad graduation creates a feedback loop where proven engagement influences future targeting, compounding performance organically.
Core element iterations amplify winners by testing meaningful variations, turning single successes into diversified revenue engines without diluting focus.
Aggressive scaling tied to daily new-customer data analytics transforms break-even campaigns into exponential growth machines, rewarding bold execution over caution.
Account health depends on multiplicity: running parallel high-performers prevents single-point failures and maintains algorithmic trust across ecosystems.

QUOTES

"This is the single highest performing strategy I've used to scale a business significantly in just one quarter. That's just 90 days."
"All we cared about was driving net new customers to this brand's website."
"When the good is good, get aggressive and double down."
"The thing that we have seen in this case and many other cases is that when you start to interfere and add too many ads too quickly, especially unproven ads, is that the entire campaign falls."
"If your agency or whoever is managing your ads is not talking to you about new customer acquisition, then I would highly recommend you hit that link down below in the description."

HABITS

Review ad performance bi-weekly to identify and graduate top ads into scaling campaigns via hard duplicates, preserving social proof.
Create iterations of winning ads by systematically swapping one core element at a time, such as models or text, to test impactful variations.
Monitor Shopify and Facebook dashboards daily for new customer metrics, aggressively increasing spend when above target ROI.
Segment new creatives into isolated packs within CBO campaigns to minimize learning disruptions and protect ongoing performers.
Maintain multiple versions of high-performing ads active across campaigns, avoiding pauses to sustain account-wide algorithmic stability.

FACTS

The strategy drove 440% growth in total orders and 452% in net sales for a brand, with only 10% of $200,000 in revenue from discounts.
Ad spend increased 260% from $23,000 to $84,000 in one quarter, generating $170,000 in new customer revenue at break-even ROAS.
Two iterations of a top ad accounted for $29,000 in spend—75% of the scaling campaign—and achieved nearly 2x ROAS, 40% above baseline.
The brand's returning customer rate decreased due to the focus on new acquisitions, yet overall revenue surged 377% in gross sales.
A single ad from Skinny Confidential has run successfully for 400 days, highlighting the longevity of strong creative elements.

REFERENCES

Skinny Confidential Facebook ad (running for 400 days, used as iteration example).
AI UGC video breakdown (23-minute tutorial on creating ads with AI).
The Moonlighters application and M3 Method resources (for professional ad management).

HOW TO APPLY

Launch Prospecting CBO Campaign: Set up a campaign budget optimization structure with individualized creative packs; add new creatives to fresh packs to isolate learning phases and ensure spend favors top performers without broad disruptions.
Configure Scale Campaign: Create an advantage+ shopping campaign with one adset using broad targeting, 7-day click/1-day view attribution, and exclusions for existing customers; this guarantees focused spend on graduated top ads for new acquisition only.
Identify Top Ads: In the prospecting campaign, sort all ads by spend and enable incremental attribution; select those with high spend, low cost per purchase (below average like $51), and ROAS above target (e.g., 1.6x) for graduation.
Graduate Ads Bi-Weekly: Hard-duplicate the best ads into the scale campaign, selecting "existing campaign" and enabling "show existing reactions, comments, and shares" to transfer social proof; avoid adding unproven ads to prevent algorithm confusion.
Iterate and Scale Aggressively: For top ads, create variations by changing core elements (e.g., model, text boldness, product color); monitor daily new-customer data and double spend when ROI exceeds targets like 1.6x to fuel exponential growth.

ONE-SENTENCE TAKEAWAY

Master new customer acquisition via siloed prospecting and scaling campaigns to achieve 400% ecommerce growth in 90 days.

RECOMMENDATIONS

Prioritize incremental ROAS metrics over total conversions to uncover ads truly driving new business, avoiding reliance on warm traffic.
Iterate winners boldly by swapping core creative elements, not superficial tweaks, to multiply performance without overcomplicating testing.
Scale spend aggressively—doubling budgets daily—when data shows sustained new-customer ROI, rejecting conservative increments for faster results.
Exclude retargeting entirely in growth phases to force creative innovation and build a broader, more resilient customer base.
Partner with agencies focused on net new acquisition if internal efforts stall, ensuring long-term scaling over short-term milking.

MEMO

In the high-stakes world of ecommerce advertising, where algorithms dictate fortunes, Sam Piliero has distilled a blueprint that propelled one brand to a staggering 440% growth spurt in just 90 days. Drawing from his experience scaling Shopify stores, Piliero unveiled this framework in a candid breakdown, emphasizing a laser focus on net new customers. Gone were the distractions of retargeting existing buyers; instead, the strategy zeroed in on cold traffic, achieving break-even returns while ballooning revenue from $23,000 in ad spend to $84,000. The result? $170,000 in fresh sales, with net figures climbing 452% and discounts comprising a mere 10% of the haul. This wasn't erratic spikes but steady, daily climbs—a testament to algorithmic harmony.

At the heart of Piliero's method lies a dual-campaign architecture: the prospecting consolidated budget optimization (CBO) setup and its scaling counterpart. The former acts as an incubator, housing creative "packs" that quarantine new ads, shielding proven performers from learning-phase turbulence. Piliero stresses individualizing these packs—whether one or nine creatives—to let Facebook's system distribute budgets fluidly to winners. Exclusions for engaged audiences ensure purity: 100% novel visitors. Transitioning seamlessly, the scale campaign deploys a minimalist ad set—broad targeting, one audience, top ads only—graduating stars from prospecting every two weeks via hard duplicates that carry over social proof like reactions and shares. This ritual, Piliero notes, every fortnight prevents stagnation and misfeeds the algorithm.

Uncovering those stars demands forensic analysis. Piliero sorts by spend and toggles incremental attribution, a lens that spotlights ads forging true paths to new purchases. In his case study, standouts dipped below the $51 average cost per acquisition while hitting 1.6x ROAS—10% above the norm. But iteration ignites the real fire: not trivial font swaps, but seismic shifts in core elements. Piliero cites a 400-day Skinny Confidential ad as inspiration, suggesting swaps of models, text urgency, or product angles. For his brand, two such variants devoured $29,000—75% of scaling spend—and neared 2x ROAS, 40% superior to baselines. This disciplined evolution, he argues, avoids the pitfall of flooding scales with untested ideas, which can crater entire efforts.

Aggression seals the deal. When metrics glow green, Piliero urges doubling down—eschewing 5-10% daily creeps for bold surges that quadrupled this brand's revenue. Daily Shopify-Facebook cross-checks on new-customer inflows guide the throttle. For the uninitiated, roadblocks like creative drought find relief in AI-generated user content, a tactic Piliero champions in deeper tutorials. Yet the ethos transcends tactics: agencies must evangelize new acquisition, not coast on warm leads. In an era where ad fatigue looms, this framework reimagines growth as a deliberate hunt for untapped audiences, promising not just survival but explosive flourishing for savvy ecommerce operators.