The Kapranov Brothers' publishing house came to Labgramm with a new product — “The Big Book of Ukrainian History”: an illustrated edition with the option of an author signing session, aimed at the gift segment. The start of the project coincided with a tight deadline, so the book already had to be selling at the pre-order price.
The task was clear: launch sales through the OpenCart website, ensure correct conversion tracking and scale the ads so that the cost per order stayed acceptable for a retail price of 1,000–1,500 UAH.
The first week went into technical preparation, and we immediately found two typical problems.
First, access to the Meta ad account was blocked: the only Business Manager admin was a person who hadn't been associated with the company for several years. Our team proposed a backup option (creating a new ad account) and at the same time helped the client sort out the admin structure so that this wouldn't happen again.
Second, the website didn't have its own Meta pixel. The one installed belonged to the previous contractor team and couldn't be transferred. So we had to install the pixel from scratch, verify it with a test purchase, and only then move on to launch.
While access was being sorted out, we prepared a market analysis and a launch strategy in parallel. For a quick start without waiting for the main campaigns, we boosted an existing publisher post on Instagram with a $10 daily budget. This move brought the first sales on the second day after launch and confirmed that conversion tracking was working correctly even before the main campaigns started.
Strategy
The strategy rested on three pillars:
- Classic campaigns with website purchase tracking
- Promoting sales posts on Instagram — the buy format showed some of the best results of the entire project
- Continuous creative testing — separately with and without photos of the authors, and separately static vs. video
Gradually, we found that author content — photos of the Kapranov Brothers, videos from the printing house, personal messages about the book — performed better than impersonal ad layouts. So over time, the share of authentic creatives grew.
Scaling and challenges
The first full weekly report set the benchmark cost per order for further work. The following week brought three times more orders, with CPA rising 50% from the first week's results.
At this stage, our team hit a technical limit: the main ad account reached Meta's daily spending limit, and the limit couldn't be raised quickly because of the verification procedure. The solution was to create a second ad account in the same Business Manager. This removed the restriction without losing momentum: in a week, the budget grew by 144% and the number of orders by 97%.
Comment from Labgramm PPC specialist Serhii Maslo: “I started working on the project back at the book's pre-order stage. That's when we were able to understand which ad formats, creatives and messaging worked best with the target audience. When we moved to regular sales, the main task became scaling the ads while maintaining the target CPA.
To do this, I abandoned narrow audience segments and gave Meta's algorithms more freedom to find potential buyers. The second important factor was constantly refreshing creatives: as soon as the cost per purchase started rising, we launched new creatives for testing and kept only those that delivered the best results.
Frequency control also played an important role. We noticed a pattern: as frequency increased, so did the cost per purchase. So regularly refreshing creatives let us reach new audiences, lower frequency and, as a result, keep CPA within the KPI even while scaling.”
The second wave: regular sales instead of pre-orders and an expanded product line
After the pre-order stage ended, the book's price rose to 1,300 UAH. The team launched a separate sales campaign and added promotion of a new sales post on Instagram. Within a week, with the budget doubled, CPA didn't rise — it actually fell, while the number of orders tripled. The key role was played by a lookalike audience based on existing buyers and scaling the most effective ad sets.
In the middle of the month, our marketer noticed a drop in conversion at checkout. Our investigation showed that the client's developer had disabled the SEO module due to a plugin conflict, and the registration form by default required creating a password, which added an extra step to the CJM and filtered out some buyers. We immediately proposed a specific fix — making registration optional — which was quickly implemented.
In the third month of the collaboration, the publisher announced a second print run on coated paper at a higher price of 1,500 UAH with a bonus mechanism — a 150 UAH discount on another book with purchase. At the same time, the client began more actively offering gift book sets priced at 1,000–1,200 UAH (the team prepared separate ad copy and reporting for them).
The cost per order never once exceeded the limits that the client and the agency jointly defined as acceptable at the start of the project — even with a tenfold scaling of the ad budget. Here's why it all worked:
- A quick start without waiting for the final strategy. Boosting an existing post brought the first sales and confirmed tracking even before the main campaigns launched.
- Continuous A/B testing of creatives. The real faces of the publishing house's founders consistently outperformed impersonal layouts.
- Flexible handling of Meta's technical limits. A second ad account allowed scaling without losing momentum when the first one hit its limits.
- Transparent weekly reporting. Specific numbers and explanations of CPA changes allowed the client to get involved only at the strategic level, not in day-to-day management.
Client testimonial
“We are very happy with our collaboration — above all with the clarity and transparency of the relationship and the consistency and clarity of the processes. When you understand where everything comes from and why something isn't working, you can trust your partner's expertise and calmly focus on your own business. We had always been skeptical about online advertising, since many of us have had bad experiences with it. But working with Labgramm convinced us otherwise.” — Vitaliy Kapranov
