The DTC Growth Audit.

Read this first.

This is not reading material. This is an audit.

Open your Meta Ads Manager, your Shopify backend and your email tool. Block out some time. Work through the four parts in order, because the order is half the work.

The order I work in — The North

I always measure honestly first, then close the leak, then let retention run, and only scale once the bottom line adds up. I call it The North: set your direction first, then move. When I once did it the other way round, adding budget while the funnel was broken, I only burned money faster. The order has been fixed ever since.

What you need: access to Meta Ads Manager, your store backend (order data), your email platform, and an empty spreadsheet. Nothing more.

The attribution audit

How much revenue does Meta not see?

Attribution is a simple question: which ad gets the credit when someone buys? This is mostly about Meta, because that is where you spend the most and where measurement breaks hardest (iOS, cookie banners). Trust what Meta reports about itself and you are steering your budget on numbers that are wrong.

The three leaks that caused our untracked revenue

Leak 1 — More than one sales channel or domain

At Rivali there was still an old site online that kept ranking on the brand name, with broken tracking. People saw an ad, searched for the brand later, and bought there. Meta never saw those sales. That is how part of our untracked revenue leaked away.

What I did: pushed for a 301 redirect to consolidate everything into one tracked store. As long as that was not live, I reconciled by hand, every order against the backend, and never judged on Meta ROAS alone.

Leak 2 — Client-side tracking (the default)

Our tracking was client-side, the default. iOS, ad blockers and cookie banners broke the pixel, and we easily lost 20 to 30% of our signal that way.

What I did: switched on server-side tracking (Conversions API), and clicked through the checkout myself to check whether the purchase event really arrived in the Events Manager.

Leak 3 — No UTMs, or sloppy ones

Our UTMs were sloppy, so the backend could not see where an order came from, even though the rest of the tracking was fine.

What I did: gave every ad a fixed UTM structure, no exceptions.

The ad audit

Scale, kill, or leave alone.

Open your Ads Manager, last 7 days, at adset level. Switch on these columns: spend, CTR, frequency, reach. For 'am I making money here?' you look at your backend and your MER and AMR, not at the ROAS column.

The only metrics that count

CPM (what you pay per thousand impressions) and CPC (what you pay per click) you ignore. They say nothing about making money. One expensive click that converts beats ten cheap ones that don't.

The decision tree

Refreshing: keep 2 to 3 ad creatives live at once in your winning adset. Test angles, not colours.

Killing: '0 sales' with a good CTR is not a loser. That is a tracking problem until proven otherwise. Check part 01 first.

The question your ROAS does not answer.

A blended ROAS above break-even looks healthy. But split it up and the picture flips. Standard ad accounts spend most of their budget on people you already knew: existing customers, retargeting, your email list. They buy anyway. Buying them again through ads is not growth, it is expensive retention.

The number that does tell you is your AMR (Acquisition MER): the revenue from new customers only, divided by your total ad spend.

How I find winners

I don't target interests, the machine does that better than I do. My ad creative is my targeting: I take a problem, attach a persona to it, and build an angle around that. That is what I test: different angles on the same product, not five variants of the same ad. And I never lean on one winning ad, I keep several strong angles live at once and keep feeding them.

The structure I run (and why)

I work with 3 campaigns, each with its own job. Not dozens of separate campaigns bidding against each other.

• 1 testing campaign. Here I test concepts against each other: different angles on the same product, a lot of ads. Whatever wins, I promote to the scaling campaign.
• 1 scaling campaign with Advantage+ (ASC). This is where the proven winners go. Existing buyers excluded, 7-day click, broad targeting without interests. That way Meta only hunts for new customers and the algorithm gets maximum signal per euro.
• 1 dynamic retargeting campaign, small. Dynamic product ads from your catalogue show exactly what someone looked at. Deliberately small: a large part of that retargeting revenue would have come anyway.

Why so simple? Every extra campaign or adset splits your data and lengthens the learning phase. 3 campaigns with their own job give the algorithm more signal per euro. You test in the one and scale the winners in the other.

How I test with concepts

I don't test single ads, I test concepts. A concept is 1 problem, 1 persona, 1 angle. For example: problem a pair of jeans that goes baggy after the first wash, persona someone who picks quality over fast fashion, angle jeans that last for years. I work that concept into several formats (static, video, UGC) and run it against other concepts. A winning concept I scale and develop further; a concept that doesn't land, I drop. That way I know not only which ad wins, but why, and that I can repeat.

How I scale

• I scale winners slowly: +20 to 30% every 3 to 4 days, then do nothing for a few days. Big budget jumps reset the learning phase and set you back.
• I judge on the 7-day click window, not per day. A purchase often comes in days after the click.
• I never switch off a weaker ad too early. Meta shows ads in a sequence; switching one off disturbs the whole funnel.
• I scale on MER and AMR, not on the ROAS column. As long as my new-customer number is above break-even, the budget can go up.

The funnel audit

Where do you lose the click you paid for?

Walk through your own product page (on mobile)

• Do you see trust signals above the fold? Returns window, delivery promise, support, payment security.
• Do you see reviews without scrolling? Social proof belongs on the first screen.
• Does the page load within 3 seconds? Every second above that costs you buyers.
• Is every variant visible and clickable? A hidden size or colour is a lost order.
• How many clicks to checkout? More than three is too many.
• Do you see the locally expected payment methods (Bancontact, iDEAL, Klarna)? If they are missing: immediate drop-off.

Test your checkout — with your own money

Make a real purchase in your own store. Yes, actually check out.

• Is your purchase event recorded? Check in your Events Manager whether the purchase arrives.
• Do you get a confirmation email? And how fast?
• Is there an unexpected shipping cost in the last step? Reason number one for abandoned carts.

The retention audit

The money you leave on the table every month.

Email is the highest-margin channel in e-commerce. No ad costs, no platform commission. And in the beginning ours was simply switched off.

Test your own flows

• Sign up to your own newsletter. Do you get a welcome email within an hour?
• Put something in your cart and leave the site. Do you get a cart email within 24 hours?
• Buy something. Do you get a post-purchase email?

The three flows that make the money

Flows before campaigns. Always. A campaign is sent once. A flow earns on autopilot for every new visitor, forever.

The deliverability rules (don't ignore these)

Email the engaged segment, not your whole list. Mailing dead profiles pulls your opens down and trains inbox providers to send you to spam.

Never mail an old, unvalidated list in one go. I was once handed a list: "it's ours, feel free to use it." One campaign later: 8.92% bounce and the account under review. Since then I validate every inherited list before I send it a single email.

The weekly rhythm

The rhythm that keeps it that way.

An audit is a snapshot. This is the rhythm that keeps you from drifting off again. Every week, the same loop, about an hour.

The ad creative & structure

Everything starts with the concept. The structure follows from that, then the ad creative in the adset, then the budget.

Structure — where the concepts land

You saw the campaigns in Part 02: 1 testing, 1 scaling with Advantage+, and 1 retargeting. Your winning concepts from testing you scale in the scaling campaign. Within those campaigns I split by geo: 1 adset Belgium, 1 adset Netherlands. The less I fragment, the faster it learns.

The largest part of the budget goes to prospecting. Optimise for purchases, never for clicks. I never copy a winning adset to scale it, that resets the learning phase. New ad creative goes into the existing adset.

Why I start with Belgium

I start in Belgium because the brand already has some name recognition here: that audience is warmer and converts better. I deliberately leave the Netherlands for later, until iDEAL is in order. iDEAL is the payment method Dutch customers expect; without that option you leave conversion on the table at checkout, however good your ads are. First iDEAL, then I scale on to NL.

Ad creative — what works

I always mix photo and video in the same adset, Meta rewards this. Use the real product photo as the basis: otherwise AI gets patterns and fabrics wrong.

Hooks — stopping the scroll

• Problem → solution. "Visible seams under your white trousers? That is what this one was made for."
• Comfort / feel. "Underwear you forget you are wearing all day."
• Founder. "Why I started this brand and what makes it different."
• Social proof. "As seen in the press: why customers switch."
• Price / value. "Hotel feel from €4,95."

Always run several hooks against each other. You never know in advance which one wins, let the data speak. Does the CTR drop below ~1% or the frequency rise above ~1.8? Fresh ad creative in the same adset, pause the tired one.

The tools I use

The tools I use, and what I look at on each one. Nothing more.

You never sign anything you don't understand.

This audit was free and without conditions. That is not a marketing trick, it is how we work. In case you ever work with us, here is what we stand for.

A contract you don't fully understand is not an agreement. It is a gamble. And we don't gamble with someone else's business. So we go through every clause with you until you can retell it in your own words: what counts as a new customer, how the fee is calculated, what happens if it doesn't work. No small print, no surprises on invoice three.

And if we notice it is still not clear, we don't sign. Better no client than a client who doesn't know exactly what they are saying yes to.

We don't work with everything. Not even for the money.

• Alcohol, tobacco & vapes
• Gambling, casinos & betting
• Erotica & adult content
• Loans, credit & buy-now-pay-later
• Products made with child labour
• Subscriptions that are deliberately hard to cancel
• Brands that exploit vulnerable people
• Uncertified products for children

The common thread: we don't grow brands that sell addiction, push people into debt, exploit people or harm children. We do grow brands we can scale with a clear conscience. Full stop.

Ready to scale on profit, not on ROAS?

You have just read my whole system, nothing held back, because the information is not my edge. My edge is this: I am one operator who reads your P&L, not just your ad manager. I understand the cash flow and margins of e-commerce, and I only charge on the new customers I add. An agency sells you hours and ROAS; I sell you growth in your bank account. That is the difference.

What it costs, no detour. A Pilot of €2,500 one-off, thirty days, to work through your economics and run one acquisition test. Or the partnership straight away: €3,500 per month with no onboarding or setup costs for the full management of your Meta Ads with the creative strategy around it; Google Ads, the core flows in Klaviyo and CRO advice we add where that makes sense. Creative production and your ad budget are not included. What you pay exactly depends on your ad budget, your markets and how complex your measurement is.

Minimum term 8 weeks. Shorter cannot be measured fairly: the first weeks go into setting up and learning. After that it continues per month with a notice period of 4 weeks; you can give notice during those first 8 weeks, but the partnership does not end before the minimum term. Creative production is not included — that is made by our regular partner Third Witness and you pay them directly.

I work with a limited number of brands at a time. On direct competition we make an agreement at the intro call that we can both keep.