Most businesses check one number after running Meta ads: the cost per lead. If it is low, the campaign is working. If it is high, the campaign is broken. That is the common thinking.
But what if you fix your cost per lead, feel good about the results, and then find out that most of those leads never actually showed up?
That is exactly what happened with Al-Muyassar Group. And it changed how we think about every campaign we run.
Al-Muyassar Group is an online Quranic learning platform for adults aged 35 to 45 in Brunei. Many of their learners are busy with work and family. They want to improve their Quran recitation. But they carry a quiet embarrassment about where they are now.
Before we stepped in, the team was running Messaging campaigns on Meta. The goal was to get people to start a chat and express interest.
The results were all over the place.
In August, the average cost per result was $24. In September, it crept up to $25. In October, some campaigns hit $13 while others produced zero results. For context, WordStream’s 2025 Facebook Ads benchmark report puts the average cost per lead across industries at $27.66. So these numbers were not unusual. But inconsistent results make it hard to plan, hard to grow, and hard to trust what the ads are actually doing.
We needed to find a better way to generate leads. Specifically: more of them, at a lower cost, with results we could count on. Based on that, we will go with the following objectives to accomplish.
Rather than changing the audience or the budget, we focused on the creative. This matters more than most people realise. As we have written before, Meta ad creative is effectively the targeting. The right message finds the right person. The wrong message burns budget against the same audience and gets nothing back.
We switched from Messaging campaigns to Instant Form campaigns. Unlike Messaging, where a user has to start a chat, Instant Forms let people submit their details directly inside the ad. Less friction. Faster decision.
We switched from Messaging campaigns to Instant Form campaigns.
Unlike Messaging, where a user has to start a chat, Instant Forms let people submit their details directly inside the ad. Less friction. Faster decision.
That was the bet we went for. And if all else fails, they will still be directed to the dedicated WhatsApp number if they choose not to fill in the form.
We then tested two video creatives against the same cold audience, with the same budget and placements:
Same audience. Same spend. Only the creative was different. Creative A (challenge) generated 46 leads. Creative B (emotional pain point) generated 521 leads. More than 11 times as many.
So we know it is not the market that is issue, but purely creative. Awesome, something that we can control.
A common issue with instant forms is you actually have to wait for 24hrs before being able to download the lead list.
By then, most would already lost interest in whatever they had to sell. We know this could become a large bottleneck for a two person team.
We solved this by connecting the form to a Google sheet that automated an immediate response via WATI, a WhatsApp automation provider (not sponsored, we just find it to be the best option at the current time).
The entire change is gradual. It took us 3 months to find and AB test creatives and format formula that works consistently. This is all in preparation for the 3 months event in Q1 of 2026.
Big pressure for the team. But trusting the process has always been our mantra. Here are the results from our 6 months of work.
After several testing of creatives. The lowest ever CPR we tracked was $0.87. That is a 96% reduction compared to the previous messaging campaigns.
Overall, the event registration campaign averaged out to a CPR of $7.16 (a ~70% average reduction) from their average CPR pre-Synapse.
Remember Creative B? We scaled it into a second campaign. It generated 590 more leads at a cost per result of $2.13.
We tested over 50+ creatives in the 6 months we planned out for this case study. From the 50, we found that 15-30 second, emotionally driven reels do better at reaching the audience.
While a mix of statics and reels performs well as Ads. Of course with the emotional relatability as the hook. This made content creation a no-brainer.
At this point, the campaign looked like a success. Hundreds of leads at low cost. A clear creative direction. Confidence in the process.
Then we looked at the full funnel.
Across the wider 90-day campaign for their Q1 event, we tracked what actually happened after every lead came in. Here is what the numbers showed:
The total number of leads we generated over the 3 months campaign.
The total number of people who actually registered for the event. Not just ghosting.
The total number of people who registered for their first session of the event.
From 642 leads to 166 attendees. A 74% drop from first contact to actual participation.
The ads were working. The creative was strong. The leads were real people who had expressed genuine interest. But the conversion from “I am curious” to “I showed up” was collapsing between the WhatsApp group and the first session.
This is one of the most common and least visible problems in paid social. You solve the CPL problem and think the hard work is done. But as HubSpot’s research on lead nurturing shows, most leads need several touchpoints before they take committed action. Joining a WhatsApp group is not commitment. It is curiosity. Commitment requires something more.
Two separate things became true through this work.
The first: the right creative can cut your cost per lead dramatically. We moved from an average $24 CPR to $0.87 without changing the audience or the budget. The only change was finding the message that resonated with how the audience actually felt.
The second: a low CPR does not mean your funnel is healthy. 642 leads producing only 166 attendees is a system that will drain your ad spend no matter how efficient the front end becomes. The fix lives after the click, not inside Ads Manager. Which is beyond the scope of our arrangement.
If your ads are generating leads but your results are not improving, the question is rarely “how do I get more leads?” The better question is: “what is happening to the leads I already have?”
Here are five questions worth sitting with before your next campaign:
Cheap leads and high participation are both possible. But you need to look at the full picture to get both.
As for our client. This is still a big win for them. A close to 2x improvement in students completing the event. That is not something to scoff at. They can now focus on improving the conversion process while we take care of their marketing.
Inspired by this case study? Check out more of our case studies in one of your industries here!
If you’re a scaling business struggling to grow beyond your current circle, we can help. Our Meta marketing strategies are tailored to connect you with the right audience, build your brand, and scale your business sustainably.
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