How @sd__tattoo Booked $173K of Black & Grey Work in Mentor, Ohio on $11K of Meta Ads
Artist: Stas · Location: Mentor, Ohio · Styles: Black & Grey, Realism, Chicano
Twelve months of numbers from a Mentor, Ohio black and grey realism tattoo artist: $173,850 booked on $10,595 of Meta ad spend, a 16x ROAS.
The numbers
- Reporting window: Mar 2025 - Feb 2026
- Revenue booked: $173,850
- Meta ad spend: $10,595.26
- Return on ad spend: 16.41x
- Booked clients: 154
- Messages: 1,741
- Booking rate: 8.8%
- Average check: $1,128.9
The brief
- Style and themes: Black and grey realism, Chicano, and graphic work, with fine line now and then. No color, no cover-ups, and nothing copied from someone else's design - he only tattoos his own.
- Tone of voice: Calm and individual, no two pieces alike. No pomp, no aggressive calls, and no claims about being the best in the county.
- Goals: Fill the nearest dates with clients; Around 11 bookings a month; Book more weeks out in advance; The right clients, not price-shoppers
- Definition of success: In his words, a strong month is a steady 2 to 3 of the right clients booked every week for future dates - people who come for his style, understand the level of the work, and do not need to be talked down on price.
What we did
Audit and client map
Before anything ran, we took his account and local market apart: who in his part of Ohio actually books black and grey realism at full rate, and what makes them stop and open a message. For him that was a specific man - mid-thirties to forties, family and faith at the center, money he does not show off - 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 man who books him for the work and trusts his read, not the one shopping for the lowest price. Positioning does the sorting before anyone messages, so his inbox fills with people ready to sit down instead of price-shoppers he would have to talk down.
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 men 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 town and the kind of client who actually books him there - down to where they live and which segments sit for a full-day realism piece - then kept tightening it as real bookings showed who was worth more.
Creative as a system
One video is not a campaign, especially in a market that only holds so many clients. 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
- 16x return on ad spend across 12 months
- $173,850 in booked-session revenue from $10,595 of ad spend
- 154 booked clients at a $1,129 average check
- Instagram grew from 8.4K to 13.3K followers over the partnership