Facebook ads for a B2B coffee supplier

A coffee subscription business selling into offices had ads that worked but cost $150 to $160 per acquisition. Testing brought that to around $100, through the iOS 14 update.

Alvise, B2B coffee. Recorded July 2021.

Alvise runs a coffee supply business aimed at reducing plastic waste, selling to offices and homes. It had been growing quickly for three or four years before we spoke, and the ads were already running — this was not a rescue.

The problem was cost per acquisition. They were paying around $150 to $160 to acquire a customer, which the business could absorb but which capped how far it could scale. His description of why is the interesting part: the data was there, they simply could not see it. Reading an ad account is a separate skill from running one.

The work was structured testing rather than a rebuild — running variants against each other, finding which actually carried the economics, and moving spend toward those. Cost per acquisition came down to roughly $120, then closer to $100.

The timing mattered more than it looks. This ran through Apple’s iOS 14 changes, which broke tracking across the industry and sent costs up almost everywhere. Holding an improvement through that period was the real result.

Alvise is clear about who this suits, and it is not only struggling accounts. He knew what he was doing. What he did not have was someone in the account daily, because he was running a company rather than watching campaigns.

A profitable account with a high acquisition cost is often the best case for management. There is nothing to fix, only headroom to find, and every dollar off the acquisition cost goes straight to scale.

In Alvise’s words