Marble and natural stone company
0.55 $
2,217 WhatsApp conversations on $1,216 via YouTube · best month $0.42
Marble is not bought from an ad into a cart. The buyer needs to see the material and speak with the company, so the outcome was a qualified WhatsApp conversation.
Instead of defaulting to the sector’s usual channel, I tested YouTube on an explicit conversion objective and compared it with Instagram on the same goal and near-equal spend.
What was happening
Marble is not bought in a click. It is a project decision: the buyer needs to see the material, compare, and speak to someone before committing. So the only sensible outcome is a qualified conversation, not a purchase.
What did not add up
The product is visual by nature and video explains it better than any still image. I also noticed YouTube in this sector was far less crowded with ads than Instagram, and that the people using it were using it for awareness rather than lead generation.
What I changed
- I ran a YouTube video campaign on a conversion objective explicitly, not a views objective.
- I held the budget flat at $10 a day for five straight months.
- I ran a parallel Instagram campaign on the same objective over the same period, so I could compare the two side by side.
What happened next
- YouTube conversations
- 2,217
- YouTube spend
- $1,216
- Cost per conversation
- $0.55
- Instagram at comparable spend
- 469 conversations at $2.48 each
- The gap
- 4.7× the conversations for the same spend
What this means for a similar account
If every competitor is in the same channel, that channel may be the most expensive one rather than the best one. The decision starts from comparing the same objective across channels.
The default channel for a sector is not always the right one, because everyone bids on the same audience there and the price rises. Instagram did not fail here either: it produced 982 new followers, an asset that compounds and that YouTube does not produce. The real mistake would be judging both on one measure.
Recognise your account here?