Case study · Meta video ads · Construction software Nine new prospects in 19 days for Cadynce, from an AI-made video that more than doubled the click rate
Cadynce makes estimating software for building-products manufacturers, and its sales pipeline ran on trade shows and cold outreach. The founder’s own phone videos proved its small, specialized buyer could be found on Facebook: eight leads in seven weeks at $20 a day, with the cost of each falling from $188.08 in August to $99.42 in September. In October we added a video made with AI, so the founder never had to film it. In its first 19 days it more than doubled the click rate and brought in nine new prospects, each one confirmed in Cadynce’s CRM, at $38.52 apiece.
I reached out to Trace about some help with social media, but after discussing our goals we pivoted to some Meta video ads, and he was right. I find the Meta platform really confusing and was glad to turn this over to Trace and his team. They write the scripts, adjust the spend and tie back the attribution so we could begin to see where our leads were coming from. He finally made Meta work for us.
The first seven weeks Aug 13 to Sep 30, 2026
- Leads
- 8
- Cost per lead
- $121.58
- People reached
- 5,405
- Total ad spend
- $972.65
129 link clicks · 1.02% link click-through rate · 12,678 impressions · $20/day · 48 live days, Aug 13 to Sep 30, 2026
- August 18 live days · $376.15$188.08 per lead
- September 30 days · $596.50$99.42 per lead
Meta needs about 50 conversions in a month before delivery settles, and this campaign had eight by the end of September. The September drop in cost per lead came with no change to budget or creative; the platform simply had more to learn from.
August, 18 live days: $376.15 spent, 2 leads, $188.08 per lead. September, 30 days: $596.50 spent, 6 leads, $99.42 per lead.
- 12,678 Impressions5,405 people, 2.35 views each
- 129 Link clicks1.02% of impressions · $7.54 each
- 55 Page viewsTracked landing page loads
- 8 Leads$121.58 each
12,678 impressions reached 5,405 people. 129 of them clicked through to the site, 55 landing page loads were tracked, and the campaign produced 8 leads, at $121.58 per lead.
For a product that sells for five figures a year, $121.58 per lead is cheap, and the trend matters more than the average: month two cost half what month one did. The harder thing these seven weeks proved is that a niche manufacturing buyer can be reached on Facebook with a phone-recorded video and a budget smaller than most companies spend on coffee.
A video made with AI Oct 6 to 24, 2026
On Oct 6 we put a second video into the same campaign: an AI presenter reading a script the founder approved, so he never had to step in front of a camera. It ran beside his original at the same $20 a day. Within two days Meta was giving it nearly all of the budget, and over the 19 days it took 95% of the spend.
- New prospects
- 9
- Per new prospect
- $38.52
- Link click rate
- 2.22%
- Cost per link click
- $1.69
205 link clicks · 164 landing page views · 9,227 impressions · 5,649 people reached · $346.71 in ad spend · 19 days, Oct 6 to 24, 2026
Link click-through rate
Cost per link click
The new video also drew 164 landing page views in 19 days, against 55 in the first 48.
Link click-through rate rose from 1.02% over Aug 13 to Sep 30 to 2.22% on the new video. Cost per link click fell from $7.54 to $1.69.
Meta credits the new video with 11 leads and four booking events. Matched against Cadynce’s CRM, they come to nine new people: one booked a demo two days after the video went live, and eight sent in their own project plans. That is $38.52 in ad spend for each new prospect, less than a third of the $121.58 per lead in August and September, on a stricter count.
Same budget, same audience, a new video: people clicked more than twice as often, and each visit to the site cost less than a quarter of what it did before. The founder never had to film it, and nine new prospects are in Cadynce’s CRM to show for it.
The situation
Cadynce makes estimating and bid-workflow software for manufacturers in wood-frame construction. Its buyers are owners and operations leaders at plants with a handful of estimators each, a group small enough that most agencies would steer it toward LinkedIn or trade publications. The founder had tried organic social and wanted a channel that could put his product in front of a buyer this week, with a budget he set himself and could stop at any time.
What the client saw
One of the two August leads told the founder directly that he had clicked a Facebook link, and the founder’s read was that the account could become a valuable customer. By the end of September he had a demo on the calendar that he traced to the ad, from a prospect who told him the video kept showing up in his feed. In October, the night the new video’s first booking came in, he forwarded it to us as the ad’s first appointment. Reporting on this account continues monthly, and this page will grow with it.
What we did
- Had the founder record the ads himself on a phone, vertical and in one take, so the person a buyer would meet on the demo call is the person talking in the ad.
- Wrote two scripts around the operational problems buyers describe on sales calls, and answered the objection prospects raise most often inside the ad itself, without naming any other product.
- Cut the weaker video after its first week and moved the whole $20 a day onto the one that held attention, instead of splitting a small budget across creative that was not earning it.
- Counted only a form completed on the client’s own site as a conversion, and switched off the instant form Meta kept re-enabling, so every dollar optimized toward a buyer landing on the client’s own page.
- Left the budget and the winning creative alone through September rather than reacting to a thin first month. With more conversion data to learn from, the cost per lead fell by nearly half.
- Produced a new video in October with an AI presenter, built on a script the founder approved, so he never had to film it, and ran it beside the original at the same budget so the two could be compared directly.
- Connected Cadynce’s CRM to Meta through the Conversions API, so a demo booked on Cadynce’s calendar reports back to the ad that drove it.
- Matched every lead Meta credited to the new video against Cadynce’s CRM, so it is judged on new prospects, not on form events.
Figures from Cadynce’s Meta ads account for the single campaign under management, Aug 1 to Oct 24, 2026, pulled through our monthly reporting pipeline and the Meta Marketing API. The campaign first spent on Aug 13 and did not spend on Aug 23, so it was live 18 days in August and all 30 in September, 48 in total. The new video went live on Oct 6, and its figures are for that ad alone, Oct 6 to 24, 19 days. Cadynce is named with its written permission. For August and September, a lead is a form completed on Cadynce’s site and recorded by the Meta pixel, such as a demo request or a guide download. Spend, impressions, reach, link clicks, leads, and monthly cost per lead are as reported by the platform. Combined cost per lead (spend ÷ leads), link click-through rate (link clicks ÷ impressions), and cost per link click (spend ÷ link clicks) are derived from the totals. Reach is the platform’s deduplicated count of people, read once for each window, because reach figures for separate periods cannot be added. For the new video we use a stricter count. Meta recorded 11 leads and four booking events for it; three of the booking events are one booking recorded three times. A new prospect is a person who appears as a new contact in Cadynce’s CRM and whom Meta credits to the video or the CRM traces to the ad’s own tracking link: nine, one of whom booked a demo and eight of whom sent in project plans. Four leads came on a day the CRM added no new contact, one booking event matches no booking, and anything we could not match is left out. Cost per new prospect is spend ÷ 9. The source of one August lead and the bookings the founder traced to the ads are reported by the client, not by the platform. One account in one market, in its first ten weeks; not a projection of typical results.
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