A self-directed concept case study built around Ritual's subscription vitamin business model — not real client work. I imagined picking up the performance marketing function for a subscription supplement brand at a familiar inflection point: paid acquisition cost creeping upward, and a funnel that hadn't been restructured to match.
Ritual built its reputation on transparency — ingredients that are sourced, tested, and traceable, sold as daily vitamin packs on a subscribe-and-save model. For this concept project, I imagined picking up the performance marketing function for a subscription vitamin brand at a familiar inflection point: paid acquisition had been the main growth lever, but blended CAC had been creeping upward for months, eating into the margin a subscription model depends on. The brief: rebuild the paid acquisition engine across Meta and Google so the brand could keep growing its subscriber base without acquisition cost outrunning lifetime value.
Separate prospecting, retargeting and retention into distinct campaign structures — instead of one blended pool competing against itself for budget.
Test hook-first creative formats that lead with a relatable problem or a traceability story, rather than a product shot and a discount code.
The real test: could spend keep increasing month over month while blended CAC moved in the opposite direction?
In this concept role as performance marketing lead, I owned the Meta Ads & Google Ads account structure end to end — rebuilding the campaign architecture around the funnel, setting up a weekly creative testing cadence, and building the CAC/ROAS reporting that showed whether the restructure was actually working.
A funnel that's structured correctly still needs creative that performs at each stage — so the two pillars were designed to work together.
Rebuilt the account into three distinct layers: prospecting (broad & lookalike audiences, introducing the brand and its traceability story), retargeting (site visitors and cart abandoners, with the subscribe-and-save offer front and centre), and retention (existing subscribers, cross-sold into other product lines as their needs evolve).
Designed a weekly testing cadence of 4-6 new creative concepts across Meta and Google, rotating through formats that lead with a relatable "before" moment or a traceability hook — testing which hooks earned attention before asking for the sale.
Rebuilt the Meta Ads Manager account into the three funnel layers — prospecting, retargeting, retention — each with its own budget, audience and creative pool, instead of one campaign trying to do everything.
Set up a weekly cycle of 4-6 new creative concepts, tracking hook performance (thumb-stop rate, CTR) separately from conversion performance, so winning hooks could be promoted into the conversion-focused campaigns.
Leaned into "every ingredient sourced, tested and traceable" as a core creative hook — reframing a often-overlooked supply-chain detail as the brand's main point of difference versus generic vitamin brands.
Shifted budget between Meta and Google on a monthly cadence based on blended ROAS by platform, rather than a fixed split — letting the better-performing platform absorb a larger share of the scale-up.
Two of the creative concepts from the weekly testing cadence, alongside a mockup of the restructured account.
The restructured account separated prospecting, retargeting and retention into distinct campaigns — each with its own budget, audience and creative rotation, reported on separately.
These figures are illustrative projections for this concept project — modelled on what a successful funnel restructure and creative testing programme could plausibly achieve, not Ritual's real results.
Modelled fall from ~£46 to ~£29
Up from a modelled 1.6x
While CAC moved in the opposite direction
Modelled rise from ~0.9% to ~1.8%
Splitting the account into funnel layers made it possible to see that prospecting CTR — not retargeting or retention — was the main lever for the overall CAC improvement. A single blended view would have hidden that.
"Every ingredient sourced and tested" sounds like a supply-chain detail, not a marketing hook — but reframed as a traceability story, it became the strongest-performing creative concept in the model. I'd look for this kind of underused brand truth earlier next time.
The +65% spend increase only worked alongside the funnel restructure and creative cadence; scaling the old, unstructured account would likely have made CAC worse, not better.
This concept project assumes a steady weekly cadence of new creative keeps performance stable. A real account would need a model for how quickly each hook fatigues, to know how far ahead the creative pipeline needs to run.