How Sea Love Reduced CAC by 55% While Scaling to 8+ Locations
Strategic audience targeting and creative optimization that transformed performance across multiple markets
Strategic audience targeting and creative optimization that transformed performance across multiple markets
Sea Love is a unique paint-your-own-pottery and creative experience franchise with multiple locations across the United States. They offer customers a relaxing, social environment to create custom pottery pieces while enjoying wine and refreshments—perfect for girls' night out, date nights, and special celebrations.
When we began working with Sea Love in August 2024, they were operating in just 2 locations (Hilton Head and Naperville) with basic campaign structures, no conversion tracking, and high customer acquisition costs. The challenge was to build a scalable performance marketing system that could expand to new locations while continuously improving efficiency.
Neither Google Ads nor Meta had proper conversion tracking set up, making it impossible to measure true campaign performance or optimize for bookings.
Cost per booking was $13 on Google and $9 on Meta—too high for a local service business to scale profitably across multiple locations.
Campaigns were optimized for "Max Clicks" instead of conversions, wasting budget on traffic that didn't convert into actual bookings.
No audience segmentation or demographic targeting meant campaigns reached everyone instead of the ideal "girls' night out" customer profile.
We built a complete conversion tracking system from scratch:
We completely restructured campaigns for conversion optimization:
We identified and targeted the ideal customer profile:
We dramatically improved ROI by optimizing ad creative:
We systematically scaled from 2 to 8+ locations:
Reduced Meta cost per booking from $9 to $4 on Naperville through creative optimization and audience refinement.
Naperville bookings increased from 27 to 136 monthly at peak, while maintaining low acquisition costs.
Achieved 26% conversion rate on Google Ads for Naperville through conversion-focused campaign optimization.
Successfully scaled from 2 to 8+ locations with fully optimized campaigns and conversion tracking infrastructure.
Consistently maintained $3-4 cost per booking on top-performing locations (Naperville, Freeport) by November-December.
This wasn't about spending more money or running more ads—it was about ruthless optimization and strategic focus. By identifying what actually worked and doubling down on it while eliminating waste, we transformed Sea Love's performance marketing from an expense into a profitable growth engine.
The Three Pillars of Success:
The "Girls Squad" ad consistently delivered 70%+ of all bookings. Instead of testing endless variations, we identified this winner early and scaled it while pausing underperforming evergreen ads that were consuming budget. This creative focus alone drove a 55% reduction in CAC on Meta.
Excluding men from targeting was a game-changer—Sea Love's core audience is women seeking social experiences. Combined with household income targeting (top 10-30%) and age optimization, we eliminated wasted impressions and focused budget on high-intent customers. This precision targeting improved conversion rates from 11% to 26%.
Setting up proper conversion tracking and shifting from "Max Clicks" to "Max Conversions" allowed Google's and Meta's algorithms to optimize for actual bookings, not just cheap clicks. This foundational change enabled sustainable scaling across 8+ locations.
The Naperville Success Story:
Result: A scalable, multi-location performance marketing system that consistently delivers $3-7 cost per booking—profitable economics that enable aggressive expansion into new markets.
Let's build a performance marketing system that reduces CAC while expanding to new markets—just like we did for Sea Love.
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