There are over 25 million South Africans on Facebook. Your customers are scrolling right now — past competitors who know how to show up, and past your business if you don't.

Paid ads are one-to-many communication with a cold audience. Unlike organic content or referrals, paid ads let you reach thousands of strangers simultaneously — people who have never heard of you, but match your ideal customer profile. As Alex Hormozi teaches in $100M Leads, paid ads are the fastest way to scale lead generation, but they require capital and a system. This blueprint gives you that system.

This blueprint changes that. Inside, you'll find the exact ad system Elevate Digital uses for clients like SuperSpar, Debonairs, Build It, and dozens of other local businesses across the Eastern Cape — built on the proven frameworks from Hormozi's $100M Leads and $100M Offers. The same framework. The same structure. The same thinking.

The path is simple: start organic to validate your offer, then scale with paid ads. If your offer already converts through word-of-mouth, referrals, or organic content, paid ads pour fuel on that fire. Whether you run the ads yourself or hand them to us, this document gives you the playbook.

Before you spend a single rand on ads, you need two things: the right infrastructure in place, and a clear understanding of the Advertising Math that makes paid ads profitable.

The Advertising Math: LTGP-to-CAC Ratio

Hormozi's paid ads playbook starts with one number: your LTGP:CAC ratio. LTGP is your Lifetime Gross Profit per customer — the total profit a customer generates over their entire relationship with you. CAC is your Customer Acquisition Cost — what you spend on ads to acquire that customer.

Business Manager Setup

Stop running ads from your personal Facebook account. Facebook Business Manager (business.facebook.com) is the professional command centre for your advertising. It separates your personal profile from your business assets, gives you proper access controls, and unlocks advanced features you simply cannot access any other way.

If you don't have a Business Manager account yet, set one up today. It takes 10 minutes.

Facebook Pixel Installation

The Facebook Pixel is a small piece of code you install on your website. It does two critical things:

• Tracks visitors — it records who visits your site, what pages they view, and what actions they take (purchases, form submissions, add-to-carts). This data feeds directly into your CAC calculation.
• Builds audiences — it creates pools of people who have interacted with your business, so you can re-target them with ads later. These retargeting audiences are how you turn break-even cold campaigns into profitable conversion machines.

Without the Pixel, Facebook has no data to learn from. Your ads will always be less effective, and you will never be able to calculate your true LTGP:CAC ratio.

Custom Audiences You Need

With your Pixel installed, create these three custom audiences immediately. These form the foundation of your retargeting campaigns — re-engaging leads who have already shown interest in your business:

Lookalike Audiences — The Hormozi Targeting Framework

Once you have custom audiences, Facebook can build Lookalike Audiences — entirely new groups of people who are statistically similar to your best customers. Hormozi's targeting framework for paid ads follows a clear sequence: Lookalike audiences first, then layer filters on top, then expand as you win.

• Start with Lookalikes — 1% Lookalike based on your customer list or website converters. This is your highest-probability cold audience.
• Add filters — Layer location, age, and interest targeting on top to narrow to your ideal local customer.
• Expand as you win — Once your LTGP:CAC ratio is healthy, broaden to 2–3% Lookalikes and wider geographic targeting.

Facebook Ads are organized in three levels. Understanding this hierarchy is essential — it's how every professional advertiser thinks about campaigns. But before you build a single campaign, you need an offer worth advertising.

The Grand Slam Offer (from $100M Offers)

Hormozi's Value Equation determines whether your ad stops the scroll or gets ignored. Every ad you run is really an offer in disguise, and the best offers feel stupid to say no to.

Before you spend a rand on ads, run your offer through this equation. If your offer is weak, no amount of ad spend will save it. A Grand Slam Offer makes every other part of your funnel easier — better click-through rates, lower cost per lead, higher conversion rates.

The Three Levels

The 3 Campaign Types for Local Businesses

For most local businesses, you only need three types of campaigns. Each one maps to a stage of the customer journey — from stranger to lead to paying customer:

The best ad in the world is worthless if the wrong person sees it. Hormozi's targeting framework from $100M Leads is deceptively simple: Lookalike audiences first, layer filters on top, then expand as you win. Local businesses have a massive advantage here — you know exactly who your customers are and where they live.

Step 1: Start with Lookalike Audiences

Your Lookalike audiences (built from the custom audiences in Chapter 1) are your highest-probability cold prospects. Facebook's algorithm already knows what your best customers look like — let it find more of them. Start with a 1% Lookalike based on your customer list or website converters.

Step 2: Layer Filters on Top

Once you have your Lookalike audience, add targeting filters to narrow it down to your ideal local customer:

Location Targeting

Set a 15–30 km radius around your business address. Use the pin-drop feature in Ads Manager to place your exact location on the map. For businesses in Port Elizabeth, this typically covers the metro and surrounding areas perfectly.

Age & Gender

Match your actual customer base. If 80% of your customers are women aged 25–45, don't target men aged 18–65. Be honest about who actually buys from you.

Interest Targeting

Layer interests related to your industry on top of your location and demographic targeting.

Step 3: Expand as You Win

Once your campaigns are profitable (LTGP:CAC ratio at 3:1 or better), systematically expand:

• Widen your Lookalike from 1% to 2–3%, then 5%.
• Expand your radius to reach neighbouring areas.
• Turn on Detailed Targeting Expansion — this allows Facebook to show your ad to people outside your selected interests if the algorithm predicts they will convert. This consistently improves results at scale.
• Test new Lookalike sources — create Lookalikes from your page engagers, video viewers, and lead form submitters.

Retargeting: Re-engage Leads Who Showed Interest

Remember the custom audiences you built in Chapter 1? This is where they become your most profitable campaigns. Retargeting means showing ads to people who have already interacted with your business — they visited your website, engaged with your content, or started a lead form but did not complete it.

• Website visitor retargeting — Show specific ads to people who visited your pricing page, product pages, or spent significant time on your site.
• Engagement retargeting — Target people who watched 50%+ of your video ads, liked your posts, or clicked but did not convert.
• Lead form retargeting — Re-engage people who opened your lead form but abandoned it before submitting.

Retargeting campaigns typically deliver your lowest CAC because these people already know and trust you. This is where the LTGP:CAC math gets very favourable very fast.

Your creative — the image, video, and copy — is what stops the scroll. Hormozi's ad creative structure from $100M Leads distils every winning ad into three parts: Call Out, Value, and Call to Action. Master this framework and you will never stare at a blank screen wondering what to write again.

The Hormozi Ad Creative Structure

The Hook Is Everything

Hormozi's team ran 1,100+ creatives on Meta Ads Manager to find what works. The single biggest variable in ad performance is the hook — the first line of copy or the first 3 seconds of video. Everything else can stay the same; change the hook and you change the result entirely.

Ad Format Best Practices

Image Ads

Use real photos of your business, products, and team. No stock photos. Authenticity outperforms polish every single time on Facebook. A well-lit phone photo of your actual product will beat a generic stock image.

Video Ads

15–30 second videos outperform everything. Film on your phone. Show your product in action, a quick testimonial from a customer, or a behind-the-scenes look at your business. Vertical format (9:16) for Stories and Reels. Square (1:1) for feed. The hook must land in the first 3 seconds.

Carousel Ads

Show multiple products or services in one ad. Each card has its own image, headline, and link. Great for restaurants (menu items), retailers (product range), and service businesses (different packages).

Lead Magnets in Your Ads (from $100M Leads)

One of the most powerful ad strategies is to offer a lead magnet instead of asking for the sale directly. Hormozi's 7-Step Lead Magnet Framework applied to ad funnels works like this: solve a narrow problem completely for free, and the right people will raise their hand.

Hormozi identifies 3 solution types crossed with 4 delivery methods, giving you 12 possible lead magnets to test:

Solution Types

• Reveal a problem — Show them something they did not know was costing them money or results. Example: "Free Audit: 5 things wrong with your current Facebook ads."
• Offer a sample or trial — Give them a taste of your core service for free. Example: "Free 7-day meal plan" for a nutrition business.
• Provide one step of a multi-step process — Solve one piece of their bigger problem. Example: "Free Ad Copy Template" when you sell a full marketing service.

Delivery Methods

• Software — A free tool, calculator, or app. Example: "Free ROAS Calculator."
• Information — A PDF guide, video training, or checklist. Example: "The Local Business Ad Blueprint" (like this one).
• Services — A free consultation, audit, or strategy session. Example: "Free 15-minute ad account audit."
• Physical products — A free sample or trial product mailed to them. Example: "Free sample pack, just cover shipping."

3 Ready-to-Use Ad Copy Templates (Call Out → Value → CTA)

Copy these, fill in the blanks, and launch. Each template follows the Hormozi Call Out → Value → CTA structure.

You don't need a massive budget to see results. But you do need to spend enough for Facebook's algorithm to learn — and you need the Advertising Math to govern every spending decision. Hormozi's Rule of 100 for Ads sets the baseline: spend a minimum of $100/day (approximately R1,800/day or R55,000/month at scale). For local South African businesses, we adapt this principle to local economics while keeping the same discipline.

Recommended Budgets

Daily vs. Lifetime Budget

Start with daily budget — it's simpler and easier to control. Set your daily spend and let it run. You can adjust it any time without disrupting the campaign. Hormozi's approach is to treat ad spend like investing: you want consistent daily deployment, not sporadic bursts.

Bidding Strategy

Use "Lowest Cost" bidding. This lets Facebook automatically find you the cheapest results. Don't try manual bidding until you're spending R10,000+/month and have deep data. Remember: the goal is not the cheapest clicks — it's the best LTGP:CAC ratio. A R50 lead that converts at 20% is better than a R10 lead that converts at 2%.

The Rules That Save You Money

If you can't measure it, you can't improve it. The metrics below feed into the one number that matters most: your LTGP:CAC ratio. Every other metric is a diagnostic tool to help you find the bottleneck in your funnel.

Key Metrics to Track

Theory of Constraints: Find Your One Bottleneck

Hormozi teaches that at any given time, your ad funnel has one bottleneck — one constraint that limits everything else. Your job is to find it, fix it, then move to the next one. Here is how the metrics tell you where the bottleneck is:

Where to Check

Open Facebook Ads Manager, navigate to your campaign, then click Columns → Customize Columns. Add CTR, CPC, CPL, and CPM so they appear in your dashboard. Track CAC and LTGP separately in a spreadsheet — Facebook cannot tell you your lifetime customer value, but it can tell you everything leading up to the acquisition.

Here is the exact month-by-month rollout we follow for every new partner business, combined with Hormozi's More, Better, New optimization framework and the 70/20/10 Rule for ad creative management. No guesswork. No random boosting. A clear system.

The Month-by-Month Rollout

The 70/20/10 Rule for Ad Creative

At any given time, your active ad budget should be allocated across three tiers of creative:

The Retargeting Stack

Your retargeting campaigns should form a layered system that re-engages leads at every stage of their journey:

• Layer 1 (1–3 days): Retarget website visitors and lead form abandoners with a reminder of your Grand Slam Offer.
• Layer 2 (3–7 days): Show testimonials and social proof to people who clicked but did not convert. Increase perceived likelihood of achievement.
• Layer 3 (7–14 days): Present a time-sensitive bonus or risk-reversal offer to re-engage leads who have gone cold. Decrease perceived effort and sacrifice.
• Layer 4 (14–30 days): Nurture with valuable content — a new lead magnet, a behind-the-scenes video, a customer success story. Keep your brand top of mind.