From No Creative to a Creative System for Software

How we helped salonMonster build the video assets, testimonials, and testing framework their Meta campaigns had been missing.

3×: CPA Improvement Within 10 Weeks

The Challenge

When salonMonster came to us in August 2023, they had a product that hair stylists genuinely loved: a salon management platform built specifically for independent owners and stylists, helping them handle bookings, reduce no-shows, manage waitlists, process payments, and run a more professional operation overall.

But loving the product and knowing how to reach new customers at scale are very different things.

The campaign needed to work across two distinct markets — Canada and the United States — each with different price sensitivities, competitive dynamics, and audience behaviours.

There was also a creative gap. salonMonster had no original video assets, no testimonial library, and no systematic way of testing what messaging actually moved their audience.

Our challenge was building a creative system from scratch capable of finding and converting the right customers at a sustainable cost.

The Approach

Every week, we introduced new creative concepts, tested different customer motivations, analyzed performance, and used those learnings to inform what we produced next.

We started by building the foundation. Our first shoot was a fully produced salon environment — a booked location, three actors, professional lighting and camera gear — designed not just to create ads, but to establish a high-quality B-roll library we could draw on for months. The footage from that first shoot became raw material for many creative iterations that followed. The upfront production investment paid dividends well beyond the initial campaign.

In parallel, we launched a structured testing program: landing page comparisons, CTA testing, format experiments.

Over time, we developed three creative pillars that drove the strongest and most consistent results:

Customer testimonials

We developed a framework of interview questions designed to surface the emotional core of the salonMonster experience, then coordinated shoots with real customers. Testimonials became the account’s dominant creative format.

Educational videos

Short videos explaining specific product features: no-shows, waitlists, gender-neutral pricing, special hours. These worked because they met stylists at a real pain point and let the product speak for itself.

Produced brand content

Scripted, fully produced video ads built on the B-roll library, giving the account a polished layer that complemented rawer UGC formats. For a software product especially, high-quality footage matters. Unlike physical products you can hold and demonstrate, salon management software lives on a screen, which means great B-roll of the salon environment, stylists at work, and the actual product interface does a lot of heavy lifting in making the ad feel real and credible.

Our shoots also supported salonMonster’s product roadmap beyond advertising. When they rolled out their integrated payment terminal, we incorporated it directly into one of our shoots, scripting and producing ads around the new hardware so the launch had creative ready to go from day one.

Results

The numbers reflect what systematic creative testing can do when it’s allowed to build over time.

Within roughly ten weeks of launch, we had brought cost per trial down significantly in both Canada and the US — hitting the CPA targets the team had set and allowing them to confidently scale spend.