About the project

Mamaсita Beauty Salon is a newly opened beauty studio in Dubai, entering one of the most competitive and expensive beauty markets in the UAE.

Starting point and challenges

• modest five-figure monthly revenue
• several unsuccessful advertising attempts before our cooperation
• no analytics: no tracking of CPL, booking conversion or show-up rate
• low brand awareness and almost no trust from new clients
• inconsistent lead quality: many inquiries did not convert into bookings
• low show-up rate for booked appointments

Objectives for Facebook / Instagram Ads

Main request from the client:

“Make advertising predictable and bring money, not just leads.”

Campaign goals:

• increase monthly revenue by 50%+ compared to the starting point
• increase the number of real bookings, not just messages
• improve lead quality, so a higher share of WhatsApp conversations turns into confirmed appointments
• increase the show-up rate for booked clients through better communication and reminders
• build a predictable funnel with clear metrics:
• cost per lead and cost per booking
• conversion message → booking → visit
• strengthen brand awareness and trust for a new beauty studio in Dubai through consistent presence and social proof
• keep ad spend within reasonable limits (with a planned ceiling of around 30–35% of revenue during the growth phase)

Solution:

Meta Ads Strategy & Campaign Structure

To turn the business goals into a predictable system, I first built a clear campaign structure in Meta Ads Manager for Facebook and Instagram.

For cold audience acquisition, I:

• targeted broad audiences of women aged 18–65 in Dubai, relying on Meta’s algorithms and strong video creatives instead of narrow interest stacks
• tested campaigns in different languages to reflect Dubai’s multicultural audience
• used interest-based audiences such as “hair salons”, “beauty” and “hair coloring”
• launched lookalike audiences based on people who watched our videos or engaged with the salon’s Instagram account
• in selected campaigns, excluded warm audiences (video viewers, engaged users, profile visitors) from cold ad sets so that segments would not overlap or compete against each other in the auction

Based on the performance results,

I increased budgets in the campaigns and ad sets with the best cost per message and cost per booking and reduced spend in underperforming segments. Over time, broad targeting with strong video creatives became the main scalable driver of results, while interest-based and lookalike audiences played a supporting role for additional reach and refinement.

This structure provided a stable foundation for scalable acquisition and made further optimization (offers, creatives, retargeting) data-driven rather than based on assumptions.

Top-of-funnel

Meta Ads campaigns for cold audiences: Messages to WhatsApp and Leads objective (lead form on the landing page).

Types of creatives:

For cold audiences, I focused on short “before & after” Reels featuring real stylists and real clients. This creative format clearly communicated the value proposition and delivered strong view-through and click-through rates, helping to drive new salon bookings.

Landing page used in the campaign

I created a dedicated landing page for this campaign to focus traffic on the salon’s current offers and make it easy for new clients to book.

The page repeated the same key “before & after” videos as in the ads, showed a gallery of real transformations, a video tour of the studio and a simple booking form.

To build trust, I also added Google and Instagram reviews, so visitors could see real client feedback before making a decision. The landing page was designed to give a seamless experience from ad → page → WhatsApp or booking form, without breaking the promise of the creatives.

Social-style videos:

In addition to the “before & after” creatives, I used a social-style storytelling video and ran it with the Traffic objective to drive visits to the Instagram profile and attract a new cold audience.

The video followed the journey of an everyday woman - from her usual look and routine job to a full makeover in the salon. With the message “beauty is not only for influencers,” I aimed to build trust in the brand and encourage users to visit the profile, where they could explore more real results and book an appointment.

This top-of-funnel activity helped build a warm audience for the next step – retargeting.

Retargeting Strategy

With a growing pool of engaged users, I implemented a structured retargeting setup in Meta Ads. The goal was to re-engage people who had already interacted with the brand and maximize the conversion of existing leads into confirmed bookings.

CBO retargeting (Meta Ads):

group 1: video viewers

group 2: engaged Instagram audience

group 3: landing page visitors

Creatives for Warm Audiences

In retargeting, I combined direct offer creatives with native Instagram Stories from inside the salon.

Alongside “before & after” videos with a clear booking offer, I promoted live Stories showing the real atmosphere and even a playful “how to find us” walk-through recorded by the team in Mamacita uniforms.

This mix removed friction for people who were ready to visit but unsure about the location, kept warm audiences engaged in a natural way, and improved the overall experience of the journey from ad to offline visit.

Tracking & Measurement Framework

Since the client did not have a CRM system at the start, I built a simple but effective tracking framework to monitor real performance every day.

I created two working spreadsheets that the salon administrator updated daily:

• a booking log with each client booking and visit
• a daily sales log with the number and value of completed services

These spreadsheets allowed us to:

• calculate key metrics such as number of bookings, show-up rate and daily revenue
• see how Meta campaigns affected real appointments and sales, not just clicks and impressions
• make 10-day performance snapshots and adjust budgets, offers and scripts based on actual numbers

This manual tracking system provided reliable operational data to evaluate campaign effectiveness and guide further optimization.

Show-Up Rate Optimization

At the start of the project, the salon did not have a structured system to manage bookings or reduce no-shows – clients could simply forget about their appointments, and this directly affected revenue. To address this,

I introduced a simple CRM-like approach with automated reminders before each visit.

I worked with the salon team to set up a reminder sequence:

• 3 days before the appointment
• 1 day before
• 2 hours before

Each reminder repeated the key details (time, service, location) and encouraged clients to confirm or reschedule if needed.

Thanks to this systematic communication, the show-up rate improved not because of advertising alone, but because the entire journey

from first message to actual visit became more organized and predictable for both the salon and the clients.

Trust Through Reviews

I also created and fully set up a Google Business Profile for Mamacita Beauty Salon to increase organic visibility and build trust through real client reviews.

I added the website, photos and key service information so that potential clients could find the salon via Google Search and Maps and see social proof before booking. The best reviews from Google were also used on the main landing page that I drove traffic to with Meta ads.

Results & Marketing Effectiveness

Over the first 4 months of systematic work with Facebook / Instagram (Meta) Ads, the salon moved from occasional experiments to a predictable, performance-driven growth model.

During this period, the salon achieved:

Revenue growth: monthly revenue increased by more than 50% over the 4-month period

– with the peak month generating almost 2× the starting revenue

Lead volume: more than 1,400 WhatsApp conversations per month generated by Meta campaigns

Bookings:

– bookings grew by around 60–70%, from just over one hundred to almost two hundred per month

– on average, every 6th–8th WhatsApp conversation turned into a confirmed appointment

Cost per booking stayed within a healthy range, keeping the fixed-price combo offer profitable.

Ad spend share:

– between 23–30% of monthly revenue during the growth phase

– in the peak revenue month, ad spend accounted for 28.7% of revenue

– this corresponds to an estimated ROAS of roughly 3.3–4.3x (around 230–335% ROI) over the period, with about 3.5x ROAS (~250% ROI) in the peak month.

These results show how the Meta Ads strategy – combining a strong offer, structured Facebook / Instagram campaigns, data-driven optimization and retargeting – turned ad spend into consistent, measurable revenue growth and a positive return on investment for a new beauty salon in a highly competitive Dubai market.

The campaign delivered an estimated 3.3–4.3x ROAS (230–335% ROI), clearly demonstrating its marketing effectiveness.

Key takeaways

• A clear offer, honest “before & after” creatives and a simple booking path can deliver strong revenue growth and positive ROI even in a highly competitive market like Dubai.
• Broad audiences powered by Meta’s algorithms work better than narrow “magic” interest stacks when optimization is driven by real performance data.
• Measuring the full funnel – from leads to bookings, visits, revenue and ROAS – and supporting it with basic CRM processes (reminders and scripts) turns Meta Ads from just a traffic source into a predictable revenue engine.