$75,000. UAE. Lead generation.

The brief, as received

Halcyon Properties. Boutique brokerage, off-plan residential, UAE. Budget $75,000 for September. We want leads. Last agency got us leads at $60 so that is the target. Let us be on Meta, Google and TikTok. Creative is ready. Go live 1 September.

Eight sentences. Seven problems.

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Stage 1 · Diagnose

Not "what should the plan be." That comes later. The decision here is narrower: is there enough in this brief to plan against, and if not, what is the shortest list of questions that would fix it?

What came back

• Target is 4 sales in September. Off-plan, so a sale closes weeks after the enquiry.
• Average commission $45,000. Contribution after agent split and servicing: 40%.
• Leads go to a shared inbox. Two agents. Nobody could say how fast the first call happens.
• The Lead event was firing. On the landing page, not the thank-you page.
• $60 was cost per form submission, on a campaign optimised to form fills, with no CRM feedback. Nobody had checked what happened to those leads.
• Creative: one 4:5 video, English only.

The $60 target and the $60 that was achieved are not the same unit. That is the whole of the first conversation, and it happened before any media was planned.

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Stage 2 · Decide

Platforms

Funnel and objective

Business outcome: four sales. Customer behaviour: submits an enquiry a human can call. Optimisation event: Lead, fired on the thank-you page, once that page exists and the event is verified. Not landing page view. Not form start.

One stage, not three. At this budget a three-stage split produces three campaigns that never finish learning.

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Stage 3 · Build

What can this business actually pay?

Run before any target is accepted. Every input came from the client.

Revenue per sale                $45,000
Contribution margin                    40%
Contribution per sale           $18,000

Acceptable acquisition share           30%   (client's own policy)
Maximum CAC                      $5,400

Contactable rate                       45%   (CRM, three months)
Qualified rate                         35%
Close rate                             12%
Lead to sale rate                    1.89%   (0.45 x 0.35 x 0.12)

Maximum affordable CPL             $102   (5,400 x 1.89%)
Maximum affordable qualified CPL   $648
Leads needed per sale                   53
Leads needed for 4 sales               212

The $60 target was never the problem. The business can afford $102 for a lead it can actually contact. Chasing $60 was leaving quality on the table to hit a number nobody derived.

The fragmentation check

Gross budget                    $75,000
Fees                                   15%
Net working media               $63,750

As first drafted:
  1 market x 3 platforms x 2 stages x 1 campaign x 2 ad sets  =  12 cells
  Monthly per cell                     $5,313
  Daily per cell                       $177
  Minimum viable daily                 $400   (client's own account history)
  Verdict                              TOO THIN on all 12 lines

  Cells this budget can fund           5
  Cells planned                        12

Revised:
  1 market x 2 platforms x 1 stage x 1 campaign x 2 ad sets   =  4 cells
  Daily per cell                       $531   Above the floor

Twelve planned, five affordable. That gap is the entire argument for cutting TikTok and collapsing the funnel, and it is arithmetic rather than opinion, which is why the conversation lasted a minute.

The forecast

Rates from the client's own twelve-month account history, with sources and dates recorded. None are benchmarks and none should be reused on another account.

The plan against what the business can afford

Forecast cost per lead        $111      Affordable:  $102
Forecast cost per qualified   $704      Affordable:  $648
Forecast cost per sale      $5,865      Maximum CAC: $5,400

Every one is slightly over. And the campaign still returns $131,874 of net contribution. Both of those are true, and the second does not cancel the first. Cost per sale at $5,865 is 32.6% of contribution against a stated policy of 30%.

The campaign is profitable and outside policy. That is a policy conversation, not a media problem, and it is a much better conversation than the one where you quietly plan to 30% and miss it.

Scenarios

Conservative assumes CPM 20% worse, and CTR, landing page conversion, contactable, qualified and close rates each a fifth worse. Strong assumes CPM and the same five rates each a tenth better.

The conservative case misses the target and loses money. Three sales against four, and net contribution roughly $10,000 negative.

That is the finding, and it is worth more than the expected case. A forecast that only works when every assumption holds is not a forecast, it is a hope with a spreadsheet attached.

Two things followed, both agreed before launch rather than discovered in week three. A trigger: if cost per contactable lead exceeds $250 across a full week, the plan is reviewed rather than tuned. A mitigation: if the trigger fires, Google Search holds and Meta's budget is cut rather than optimised, because at this size there is not enough headroom to fix a structural miss with tuning.

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Stage 4 · Launch

Measurement first, because everything decided here is expensive to change once money is moving.

The phone field was the cheapest fix on the list and probably the largest. It had been silently rejecting a share of valid submissions for months. Nobody had completed the form on a phone since it was built.

Forty-seven checks. Three critical items open at first pass: the Lead event location, the missing thank-you page, and an expired PO. Launch moved by two days.

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Stage 5 · Improve

Week 2. Cost per lead $96, comfortably under affordable. Contactable rate came back at 31%, well below the 45% the CRM had reported historically.

Classified as a quality problem, not a delivery or attention problem. Nothing in the ad account was adjusted. Diagnosis: time from lead to first call was averaging 19 hours, and leads arriving Thursday evening were being called on Sunday.

Week 3. Response time addressed by the client. Contactable rate recovered to 41%. No media change was made in either week, and the account was left alone deliberately.

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Stage 6 · Reconcile

Approved plan               $75,000
PO raised                   $75,000
Platform actuals            $61,880   (net media)
Fees at 15%                 $ 9,282
Invoiced                    $71,162
Variance to approved        $ 3,838 under

Flag raised: the Google Search invoice referenced the August campaign name. Queried the same day with platform actuals attached, re-issued within 48 hours.

Outstanding exposure at month end: $4,410, being spend delivered in the final three days and not yet invoiced. Accrued, and given to finance before they asked.

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What this example is actually showing

Six things, and none of them are the media plan.

1. The target was never the problem. $60 was a real number measuring the wrong thing. The business could afford $102. Fifteen minutes of arithmetic found that, using nothing but the client's own figures.
2. The fragmentation check made the platform decision. Twelve cells planned against five affordable. TikTok came off because of arithmetic, not preference.
3. The cheapest fix was a phone number field. Nobody had filled in the form on a phone.
4. The best week involved changing nothing in the ad account. The largest available gain was response time, which belonged to the client.
5. The plan was profitable and outside policy at the same time. Naming that made it the client's decision rather than a quiet miss.
6. The conservative case lost money, and that was said before launch. It produced a written trigger and an agreed mitigation.

Every number's provenance

No industry benchmark was used at any point in this example. That is not a stylistic choice. It is the reason every number in it survived the client's own scrutiny.

The free case puts you inside a situation like this one and asks what you would do. No signup.