Building supplies · Case study

Timber M8

A brand new Melbourne timber yard, 45 leads in nine weeks — and the best ad came in at $34.77.

Services we ran

Strategy Meta Ads Landing page CRM & tracking

$34.77

Best ad · cost per lead

Leads in nine weeks

$9,236

Largest single quote

Timber M8 timber yard in Melbourne, stacked hardwood lengths

The challenge

A brand new timber yard, bidding against Bunnings.

Timber M8 is Melbourne's online timber yard — the second front door on a real yard in Pakenham. Brand new business, no reviews, no brand recall, and a Google Ads account that was losing every auction to Bunnings, Bowens and every established merchant in the city. Search only reaches people already typing "timber supplies melbourne", and on those terms a yard nobody has heard of pays a premium for a click it cannot convert. We stopped waiting for people to search, and put a published price list in front of Melbourne tradies instead.

The story

No reviews. No recall. One thing nobody else would do.

Every timber merchant in Melbourne makes you ring for a price. That is the single most annoying thing about buying timber, and it was sitting there unused as a wedge.

Client Background

An online timber merchant selling eight ranges across Melbourne and surrounds — fencing, framing, cladding, screening, posts, decking, flooring and mouldings. Real yard, real stock, owner-operated. What it did not have was a single review or a minute of brand recall.

Problem Statement

Google Ads was underperforming and could not be fixed by bidding harder. Search needed the brand to already have trust it had not earned yet, and there was no social proof to put on a page. Anything we ran had to earn the click on something the business could back up on day one.

Solution Provided

Publish the prices. Build a landing page that shows every starting price in the open, wire both forms into the CRM with full channel attribution, and run Meta creative that sells the one thing no competitor will do: a same-day quote on your list, straight from the owner.

Channel 1 of 2

Meta Ads performance

45 leads at $57 CPL.

$2,565.33 ad spend across nine weeks. 203,095 impressions, 75,982 people reached, 45 leads. The best creative in the account landed at $34.77 a lead — and it was the one that named no product and showed no price.

01 · Ad creatives

Sell the mechanism, not the timber.

Nobody buys a pallet of Merbau off a Facebook ad. They will send you their list. So the creative sold the thing the business actually does differently — published prices and a same-day quote from the owner — rather than the timber itself. Twelve creatives were built across three directions, each one on the client's own job photography.

Timber M8 Facebook ad - your timber list priced today

Timber M8 Facebook ad - Merbau decking 140 x 19 set lengths

Timber M8 Facebook ad - long lengths going fast

Timber M8 Facebook ad - finished Merbau deck

Timber M8 ad concept - we publish our prices — Concept · published prices

Timber M8 ad concept - send us your list — Concept · send your list

Timber M8 ad concept - the docket — Concept · the docket

Timber M8 ad concept - eight ranges, one yard — Concept · eight ranges

Timber M8 ad concept - buying timber two ways — Concept · two ways

Timber M8 ad concept - Spotted Gum F27 kiln dried — Concept · Spotted Gum

02 · Campaign performance

$2,565 spend · 45 leads · $57.01 CPL.

The winning ad carried no price and no product. "Your timber list, priced today. Not in three days. Not by a call centre. By the bloke who owns the place." It pulled the highest click-through rate in the account at 2.92 percent and the lowest cost per lead at $34.77. Our creative ran on 27 percent of the budget and produced 44 percent of the leads, at $35.08 a lead against $74.55 for everything else in the account.

Timber M8 Meta Ads Manager - campaign view showing 45 website leads at $57.01 cost per lead on $2,565.33 spend — Ads Manager · 45 website leads at $57.01 on $2,565.33 spend

Channel 2 of 2

Landing page & tracking

Every price published. Every lead tracked.

Ads point at a page we built and control, not the shop homepage. Eight ranges with their real starting prices in the open, two forms, and every submission writing straight into the CRM with the range the lead picked and the channel that sent them.

01 · The page

The whole price list, in the open.

From $1.39 a lineal metre for pine mouldings to $25.36 for laminated posts. No "call for pricing", no bait number to get you on the phone. The hero form asks what range you are after; a second form at the bottom catches the people who read the price list first. Both require an email and a phone number, so every lead arrives with a way to call them back.

Timber M8 landing page hero on desktop with the quote form — Landing page · desktop

Timber M8 landing page on mobile — Landing page · mobile

Full Timber M8 landing page showing the eight priced timber ranges and the second quote form — Full page · eight ranges, every starting price published

02 · Attribution

47 contacts in the CRM, and we know where every one came from.

A lead arriving with a Facebook click ID is tagged to paid social automatically, so Meta and Google cohorts stay separable without anyone tagging by hand. The range picker writes the job type onto the contact before the owner picks up the phone. The conversion pixel fires on the thank-you page only, gated so refreshes and direct hits cannot inflate the count. Result: 47 contacts, 44 of them through the page we built, 40 of those attributable to Meta — a second independent record that agrees with what the ad platform reported.

The results

From invisible to 45 leads.

Nine weeks, one campaign, $2,565.33. A business with no reviews and no recall now has a repeatable channel, a tracked funnel, and a creative angle proven at $34.77 a lead.

$34.77

Best ad cost per lead

Leads in nine weeks

44%

Of leads on 27% of spend

$9,236

Largest single quote

Meta Ads Manager · full campaign view

Timber M8 Meta Ads Manager full campaign dashboard - 45 website leads, $57.01 cost per lead, 203,095 impressions — Ads Manager · 45 leads · 203,095 impressions · 75,982 reached

The winning creative

Timber M8 winning ad - your timber list priced today — Best performer · 18 leads at $34.77

Timber M8 landing page the winning ad pointed at — The page it pointed at

Lessons learned

"Automation is not strategy. The machine will happily spend your budget badly."

The same account ran two things side by side. Our creative, built on a real angle, delivered leads at $34.77. Meta's automated product ads, pulling images straight off the Shopify catalogue, took a near-identical share of the budget and delivered two leads at $350 apiece. Same audience, same money, ten times the cost. The lesson is not that automation is useless — it is that nothing replaces knowing what your customer actually wants to hear. For a timber yard with no reviews, that was never a product photo. It was a promise to price their list today.

Timber M8

A brand new timber yard, bidding against Bunnings.

No reviews. No recall. One thing nobody else would do.

Client Background

Problem Statement

Solution Provided

45 leads at $57 CPL.

Sell the mechanism, not the timber.

$2,565 spend · 45 leads · $57.01 CPL.

Every price published. Every lead tracked.

The whole price list, in the open.

47 contacts in the CRM, and we know where every one came from.

From invisible to 45 leads.

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