Most case studies are useless because they bury the numbers. So here are the numbers first, then the explanation.
Total ad spend, paid directly to Meta. No agency markup, no platform fees beyond Meta's own ad delivery cost.
That $96 produced:
- 12,500 video views — roughly 130 views for every dollar spent.
- 578 profile visits — at $0.17 per visit.
- 362 new followers — at $0.27 per follower, or 3.75 followers per dollar.
- 63% conversion — sixty-three percent of the people who visited the profile became followers.
- 105 website clicks — direct traffic from the campaign.
That last number is the one most clinic owners miss. Sixty-three percent profile-visit-to-follow conversion is unusually high for any industry, let alone an aesthetic clinic. Most accounts I see sit at 8-12%. So what made this one different.
What the Campaign Actually Was
The campaign was a single video — one of three videos we produced as part of our paid-ad package — pinned to the top of the clinic's Instagram profile and run as a paid ad on Meta. The video was about thirty seconds long, shot at the clinic, featuring the practitioner explaining one specific treatment in plain language. No before-and-after. No agency-speak. No "look ten years younger." Just a real person at a real clinic explaining real work.
The ad was distributed through Meta Ads Manager, not the Instagram boost button. That distinction matters and I wrote a separate post about it.
Why the 63% Conversion Happened
Three things, in order of importance.
1. The Profile Was Built for Conversion Before the Ad Ran
This is the part nobody talks about. You can run the best ad in Meta's library, but if the profile a visitor lands on does not immediately answer "who is this, what do they do, why should I follow them" — they bounce. The clinic's profile had been restructured before the ad campaign. The bio was clear. The pinned content explained the offer. The grid was on-brand. The ad drove visitors to a profile that was already optimised to convert them.
2. The Ad Was Educational, Not Promotional
Meta's algorithm rewards content that holds attention. Educational content about a treatment people are curious about holds attention longer than "book your consultation today" content. The ad never asked for the booking. It explained the treatment, and the booking came as a downstream consequence of trust.
3. The Audience Was Local and Specific
The ad was targeted to a tightly defined geographic area around the clinic — not "all of Ontario, ages 25-55, interest: skincare." Tight geo plus tight interest plus right age range produced an audience small enough to be relevant and large enough to deliver. Meta has gotten less precise with targeting since the iOS 14 changes, but if you keep the geo tight, you can still find your people.
What This Does Not Mean
$96 is not a magic number. The campaign worked because of what came before it — three months of content that built the clinic's grid, a restructured profile, and a video produced specifically to perform as a paid ad. Without those things, you can spend $96 and get nothing.
What the number does prove is that for a small Ontario clinic, you do not need a five-figure ad budget to move the needle. You need infrastructure.
Spending more on ads without fixing the profile they land on is the most common mistake I see med spa owners make. The ad budget gets the visitor. The profile decides whether they stay.
The Other Numbers Worth Knowing
- Cost per profile visit: $0.17 — for context, the Toronto and Niagara med spa benchmarks I see for cold paid traffic typically sit between $0.40 and $1.20 per profile visit. So $0.17 is genuinely on the low end.
- Cost per follower: $0.27 — also at the low end for the aesthetic category.
- Views per dollar: 130 — useful for getting a sense of attention, less useful as a business metric.
What I'd Tell a Med Spa Owner Looking at These Numbers
Do not run an ad until you have answered three questions. What is the visitor going to land on. What action do you want them to take when they get there. What does your content say about you when they look at the rest of your grid.
If those three are dialled in, $96 can do real work. If they are not, $9,600 will not save you.