100 High-Intent Leads and 700 Engaged Prospects
Meta Ads | Organic Strategy | Giveaway Campaign Management
The Challenge
This project began with unusually tight constraints.
The client specifically wanted all lead generation to happen within Instagram DMs—no website, no landing pages, no automated appointment setting, and no CRM follow-up sequences.
While I advised that a full funnel would likely improve results, the client preferred to keep the process familiar and easy to manage within his established workflow.
The task was clear:
Design, execute, and optimize a complete giveaway campaign—spanning paid ads and organic content—while working entirely inside Instagram’s native environment.
The Result
A coordinated 1 month campaign that turned a €75 ad budget into:
100 high-intent leads ready to book
700 engaged prospects added to warm audiences
More than 100,000 combined paid and organic impressions in the local market
And perhaps most importantly, a proof of concept showing that disciplined strategy and creative execution can outperform budgets many times larger—even in a heavily trust-dependent niche like tattoos.
What You Will Learn From This Case Study
✅ How to design a clear incentive that balances exclusivity and guaranteed value
✅ How to build custom and lookalike audiences that get smarter in real time
✅ How to integrate organic and paid distribution for maximum reach
✅ Why this same approach applies seamlessly to home improvement services
Introduction
Tattoo services are among the most trust-sensitive, high-consideration decisions people make. The work is personal, permanent, and emotional—much like choosing a contractor to remodel your kitchen or renovate your home.
This campaign needed to create immediate curiosity, social proof, and urgency, all without the benefit of a landing page or automated booking.
Instead of seeing these constraints as limitations, I approached them as an opportunity to prove what happens when you combine disciplined media buying, smart incentive design, and consistent organic promotion.
Campaign Management
From the start, the goal was to build an ecosystem where every piece of the campaign reinforced the others:
Paid ads to spark initial engagement and feed the algorithm
Organic posts to keep awareness high and create authenticity
A giveaway incentive structured to reward both curiosity and commitment
Over the first week, broad targeting was used to seed engagement and gather signals about which profiles showed the most interest. This phase was crucial—it ensured the algorithm had enough data to make informed decisions as the campaign evolved.
Once a baseline of clicks, video views, and post interactions had accumulated, I created multiple custom audiences:
One set to exclude previous engagers, ensuring that later ads were always reaching fresh prospects who hadn't yet signed up for the giveaway.
Another to build a lookalike audience modeled on everyone who had interacted with the campaign so far
This dual approach allowed the campaign to keep running broad targeting for signal collection while simultaneously narrowing focus through lookalikes. Each euro spent made the targeting smarter in real time.
Organic posts that mirrored the messaging and visuals of the paid ads, was running simultaneously to engage and prime visitors once they enter the page. This wasn’t filler content—it was a deliberate strategy to compound reach and credibility. Between paid impressions and organic distribution, the campaign ultimately got 100,000 impressions from people in the local market with an average frequency of 2.1.
Offer Design and Creative Strategy
The core of the campaign was the incentive itself.
One winner would receive a free tattoo session, creating an element of exclusivity and excitement. But to avoid the common trap of engagement with no follow-through, every participant also received 25% off their next booking—a guaranteed reward with a clear expiration date.
This blend of exclusivity and certainty ensured that the campaign didn’t just collect vanity metrics. It created a pipeline of warm leads who had both intent and a reason to act.
The creative approach followed a simple principle: authenticity first.
Utilizing a testimonial video, added a layer of social proof that pure portfolio shots can’t deliver which provided strong credibility to the client and his work and overall strengthened his personal brand. In the final 48 hours, urgency overlays and countdown timers were added to the ads and stories to drive a last surge of conversions.
Combatting Brand Dilution
Giveaway campaigns can easily cheapen a service if they’re not handled carefully.
From the start, I was clear that every touchpoint needed to protect and strengthen the artist’s reputation. All visuals, captions, and story posts emphasized craftsmanship and personal connection, not just discounts. The angle was a 17 year anniversary giving back to tattoo passionate people, distancing from the narrative of offering discounts due to an issue getting clients.
This same discipline is exactly what home improvement brands need when they run promotions: an offer that feels valuable, feeling like a favor, not desperate.
Conclusion
Over 30 days, this campaign turned €75 into over 100 high-intent leads and 700 engaged prospects—while respecting the client’s choice to operate solely within Instagram DMs and a familiar outreach workflow.
I shared recommendations for adding landing pages, automated appointment setting, and follow-up sequences to increase efficiency and conversion even further. But ultimately, the client decided to keep the process consistent with how he had always worked.
If this approach could generate results under those constraints, imagine what happens when you combine it with a modern funnel and AI appointment setting.
For any home improvement business serious about growth, this is the lesson:
When you blend smart incentives, disciplined targeting, and cohesive organic distribution, you don’t need a huge budget to drive measurable results. You need a system and the commitment to execute it properly.