How @andrewstopay Booked CA$140K of Dark Surrealism Work in Vancouver, British Columbia on CA$15K of Meta Ads

Artist: Andrew · Location: Vancouver, British Columbia · Styles: Surrealism, Blackwork, Realism

Twelve months of numbers from a Vancouver dark surrealism tattoo artist: CA$140,675 booked on CA$15,398 of Meta ad spend, a 9x ROAS, from our dashboard.

The numbers

The brief

What we did

Audit and client map

Before anything ran, we took his account and market apart: who in Vancouver actually books premium dark, moody work, and what makes them stop and open a message. For him that was a specific person - late twenties to thirties, settled in a real career, into dark art, quality over price - and every targeting and creative call after it traced back to that page.

Premium positioning

The account was pointed at one kind of client: the one who books him for the work and the world around it, not the one hunting a deal. Positioning does the sorting before anyone messages, so his inbox fills with people who already want the kind of piece he makes.

A messages-first funnel

Everything was built around one action: someone opening a real conversation in his DMs. That is the lead we optimized for. Because this kind of campaign aims loosely on its own, we steered it by hand early on, so the budget stayed on the right people instead of whoever was cheapest to reach.

Targeting built for his market

No broad audience handed to the algorithm to sort out. We built the targeting by hand around his city and the people who actually sit for multi-day dark work, and around the guest spots he travels for, so the ads ran where he would be working, then kept tightening it as real bookings showed who was worth more.

Creative as a system

One video is not a campaign, especially for a look this specific. We kept new work going out on a steady rhythm so the ads never wore thin, and refreshed them without throwing away the likes, saves, and comments a winning ad had already earned.

Read, adjust, scale

This part never really stops. Every few days we read what the account was doing, pulled budget off whatever was fading, and put more behind whatever was booking, giving the strongest ads a longer run so the system could settle in. The longer it ran, the sharper it got.

Key takeaways