How a Quiz Cut Stone Canyon Advisors' Cost Per Lead to a Third

A boutique M&A firm launched paid acquisition from zero and found a front door its lean budget could actually afford.

Client Overview

Stone Canyon Advisors is a boutique M&A and growth advisory firm for founder-led, mid-market businesses. Their model runs in two steps: first they make a company Acquirable™, then they run the sale. The framework behind it is a 75-point diagnostic across efficiencies, financials, culture, and scale.

The setup

• Primary channel: Meta (Facebook / Instagram)

• Lean monthly budget, high-ticket advisory offer

• No paid acquisition history at all

The audience

• Founder-led operators, typically $5M+ in revenue, often considerably larger

• Owners who built something real and want a buyer who will pay what it's worth

• The team has advised on more than $1.5B in transactions

The goal

• Build a pipeline of businesses genuinely in range

• Keep tire-kickers off the sales team's calendar

• Make lead volume possible on a budget that does not buy many impressions

The Challenge

The most expensive audience on Meta

• High-net-worth business owners sit in the most competitive inventory on the platform

• CPMs run high, so a lean monthly budget buys very little reach

• Cheap clicks were never going to be the win

Friction on both conversion points

• The booked-call page asked for a calendar commitment up front

• The 15-question assessment asked for too much before giving anything back

• The leak was after the click, not in the creative

Volume without quality is worthless here

• One bad-fit call costs more sales time than it returns

• A high-ticket advisory practice cannot absorb a calendar of unqualified conversations

• Volume and qualification had to be solved together, not in sequence

What We Did

We built the Meta account from scratch, then kept cutting friction until the offer matched the budget.

1. Launched from zero with tracking built right the first time. New Pixel, CAPI integration, and conversion events on both the booked-call page and the assessment, so a lead in Ads Manager was the same lead their CRM saw. No discrepancy to reconcile later.

2. Proved the creative worked, then diagnosed the real leak. We launched in late October 2025 and the creative clicked immediately: booked-call ads ran a 13.63% CTR in the first week against a roughly 1.5% Meta average. The long assessment was simply too heavy for the spend level. They needed a front door Meta could learn from.

3. Replaced the 15-question assessment with a short Acquirable Score quiz. This was the unlock. Quiz leads came in at $39.49 against $121.62 on the 15-question assessment, roughly a third of the cost, with six quiz completions in a single week.

4. Put the quiz on the ads, not just the page. Headlines and creative named the quiz out loud, so the click and the landing page made the same promise. That alignment let the audience self-qualify before they ever clicked. We cut the losers and piled spend onto the winning batch. A later week delivered 7 quiz leads at $64.91, with the winning ad set at $48.72. Booked-call stayed off.

5. Tightened quality once volume was working. A revenue filter on the site enforces the $5M+ ICP. Foundations sits ahead of Growth Advisory and M&A as the trust offer. A form-first flow keeps a learning signal going to Meta even when someone does not book. Under-$5M leads route to referral partners instead of burning sales hours.

The Results

Meta Ads performance since launch:

• Cost per lead cut to roughly a third: $39.49 on the quiz against $121.62 on the original 15-question assessment, about 68% cheaper per lead

• 13.63% CTR in week one, roughly 9x the 1.5% Meta average

• Consistent weekly flow on a lean budget: six quiz completions in one week, and a later week of 7 quiz leads at $64.91 with the winning ad set at $48.72

• Clean measurement from day one: new Pixel, CAPI, and conversion events on both conversion points meant Ads Manager and the CRM agreed on what a lead was

• Qualified pipeline, not just volume: a $5M+ revenue filter, with under-threshold leads routed to referral partners

Key Outcomes

• Built and launched the Meta program from scratch, including Pixel, CAPI, and dual conversion events

• Diagnosed a post-click friction problem rather than blaming the creative, and fixed the offer instead

• Replaced a 15-question assessment with a short Acquirable Score quiz, cutting cost per lead from $121.62 to $39.49

• Hit a 13.63% CTR in week one, roughly 9x the Meta average

• Aligned ad messaging with the landing page so the audience self-qualified before clicking

• Delivered steady weekly qualified lead flow on a lean budget

• Added a $5M+ revenue filter and referral routing so the sales team only works in-range opportunities

Top-Performing Creative

The through-line is simple: every winner named the quiz in the headline.

• "Take the Quiz to Find Your Exit Value" (handshake image): the exit-value angle, aimed at owners already thinking about a number

• "Take the Quiz to See What's Holding You Back" (boardroom image): the diagnostic angle, aimed at owners who know something is off but cannot name it

• Both ran the same opening line, "Owners, you've built something real. A company doing eight or nine figures in annual revenue," which filtered the audience before the click

• Both used the same 30-second promise in the link description: "Discover Your Acquirable Score in 30 seconds"

The Bottom Line

Stone Canyon Advisors had a real problem hiding behind a lean budget: the most expensive audience on Meta, no paid acquisition history, and an offer that asked for too much before it gave anything back. The creative was never the issue, and a 13.63% CTR in week one proved it. The issue was what happened after the click. We swapped a 15-question assessment for a short Acquirable Score quiz, put that quiz front and center in the ads, and cut cost per lead to roughly a third of where it started. Then we tightened the back end so only $5M+ operators reached the sales team.