Meta Ads Creative Testing for a Bespoke Kitchen Brand
Smallbone
Smallbone designs bespoke kitchens and handcrafted furniture in the UK, serving some of the world’s most prestigious developments and private residences.
The Challenge
Smallbone had an existing, engaged audience, but engagement was inconsistent, content lacked strategic direction, and paid advertising was underperforming. A familiar pattern for a brand producing beautiful work without a system for finding out which creative actually converts. As with any craftsmanship-led brand, the risk was defaulting to safe, generic "luxury lifestyle" imagery rather than proof of the actual work.
To protect brand positioning while translating interest into business growth, Smallbone needed a strategy that would:
✔ Strengthen brand identity through content built on genuine craftsmanship, not stock luxury visuals
✔ Drive high-value engagement across organic and paid
✔ Convert interest into tangible enquiries, not just reach
The Strategy
A content and paid creative system rather than a content calendar. This meant a mix of static product craftsmanship shots, video process content, carousel storytelling and testimonial-style social proof, tested against defined audience segments and iterated in short cycles based on competitor analysis, market research, brand engagement and lead data. It’s important not to make assumptions about what a luxury audience wants to see.
Creative testing followed a structured framework: launching a spread of new creative weekly across testing types, reading results by CPA, CTR and conversion rate rather than engagement alone, and scaling only what proved itself against real performance data - not by volume or gut feel.
Paid campaigns on Meta were built to work with, rather than against, Meta's Andromeda delivery systems. It prioritising genuine creative diversity and format variation to give the algorithm enough signal to find the right audience, rather than relying on narrow manual targeting alone.
1. Brand & Audience Audit
I conducted an in-depth audit of Smallbone’s existing social channels, reviewing past performance, engagement rates, and audience demographics.
Researched competitors and industry benchmarks to position the brand effectively in the market.
Mapped out key themes and content pillars to establish brand consistency and ensure storytelling aligned with the client’s luxury identity.
Defined a tailored content strategy every month against mapped out audience personas which were adapted as data was collected.
The Results
This system is what let Smallbone optimise CTR and lower CPL.
Estimated 2–3x ROAS in the high-AOV (£100K+) luxury segment
Qualified leads increased by 127% across Meta, Google and Pinterest
Cost per lead reduced by 15.5%, through creative testing and campaign structure, not increased spend
Key Learnings
Proof Over Polish: The creative that performed best wasn't the most aesthetic. Although important for this brand, it was the content that showed genuine craftsmanship and process, different messages tested rigorously rather than assumed to work because it looked premium.
Consistency Compounds: a defined content and testing cadence, run over months rather than campaign bursts, is what actually builds audience's trust that one-off "premium" content doesn't.
Lead Quality Over Volume: in a £100K+ AOV category, a cheaper lead is worthless if it isn't qualified. Testing was built around qualified lead volume and CPL together, not CPL in isolation.
*This project was completed during a period of full-time employment from April 2022 - April 2024. All strategy, campaign management, optimisation and reporting was carried out independently.
Summary
At The New Projects, we don't just post content — we build creative testing systems that turn content into a growth channel. What we built for Smallbone is the same system we'd build for the next luxury home or interior brand ready to treat paid social as infrastructure, not a campaign.
Looking to elevate your brand’s social media strategy? Request a Quote to see how we can scale your digital presence.