Paid ads · Australian ecommerce
Google and Meta ads for Australian ecommerce brands.
One senior operator. No account managers between you and the work.
I’m Mark Tran, and Step Digital is my Melbourne consultancy for Shopify and WooCommerce stores. I’ve run half a million dollars of ad spend in a year for a single brand across Meta and Google. I’ve also run accounts at $1,000 a month. Most of what works at the top doesn’t survive the drop, and knowing which half to keep is the whole job.
- On your real account
- You keep the plan either way
- No lock-in contracts
$2.24M
attributed revenue, Google + Meta
$514k spend
4.36x return
9,389 attributed orders
Brands I’ve worked on
A selection from 35+ Australian retail and ecommerce brands I’ve worked with, mostly during my years at Megantic.
Straight answers
Things I’ll tell you that most agencies won’t.
Good ROAS can hide bad growth.
A lot of reported return is ads shown to people who already follow you. Real growth comes from cold traffic, and cold traffic is harder. If your numbers look great but sales are flat, this is usually why.
Big-budget tactics break at small budgets.
I've run half a million dollars of ad spend in a year and I've run $1,000 a month. Most enterprise plays collapse on the way down. Plenty of agencies sell them anyway. Knowing which ones survive is most of what you're paying for.
The platforms mark their own homework.
Meta and Google both flatter their own numbers. I judge campaigns against your revenue, not the platform's attribution, and I'll show you the gap in your own account.
If that’s the kind of reporting you want, we’ll get along.
Selected work
Results I’ll put my name to.
What I run
The cadence
What a month actually looks like.
No mystery, no ticket queue.
Week 1
I go through the account properly, not a quick skim of what Meta or Google shows up front. You get the changes I’m making and why, in plain English.
Ongoing
Budgets, bids, audiences and creative rotation managed continuously. You get a message when something changes materially, not a monthly surprise.
Every month
A report that leads with what happened to your revenue, then what I changed, then what's next. Written to be read, not to justify the invoice.
Any time
You can call or message me directly. There’s no one else to route through.
The free 15-minute audit
Fifteen minutes on your real account. Here’s exactly what you get.
01
Book a time
Grab a slot and drop in your store URL and roughly what you spend. That's all I need to prepare.
02
We look at your account together
Zoom, screen shared, your live campaigns on screen. I'll show you what's working, what's wasting money, and why.
03
You leave with a plan
The one change I'd make first, and the order I'd make the rest. Run it yourself, hand it to your current agency, or ask me to do it. All three are fine.
If I think we should work together, I’ll say so. If I don’t, I’ll say that too.
“His insight and depth of knowledge was extremely helpful, and the session was very practical and actionable. Highly recommend if you want clarity and real direction rather than just generic advice.”
From the accounts ·
Four rules I applied on live accounts this month.
A new Meta campaign gets ten untouched days.
Meta keeps crediting sales for days after someone clicks or sees an ad, so the first week of a new campaign reads low while conversions are still landing. Editing inside that window reacts to half the data and resets learning. So a fresh campaign sits for ten days while I watch outbound CTR, video retention, cost per click and cost per sale, and only then does anything change. A tracking fault or runaway spend still gets fixed the same day.
Never compare countries on blended ROAS.
One account looked like it should drop New Zealand: blended ROAS was well under Australia's. Split by campaign objective, NZ was carrying a far larger share of traffic and lead-gen spend that was never built to sell. Like for like on sales campaigns the gap narrowed, but not by much, and New Zealand still didn't clear the bar. Segment first, then decide, and say which number you decided on.
Break-even ROAS includes GST and the real cost of shipping.
A break-even worked out from platform revenue and product cost alone reads too optimistic. Once GST registration and the actual cost of landing stock from overseas were in the maths, one account's break-even moved up enough to move the line on what it could afford to spend. Spending in the gap between the two numbers loses money on every order.
Discounts are for new customers.
A discount shown to someone with no price anchor is an acquisition offer. The same discount shown to past buyers resets what they think the brand costs and teaches them to wait for the next sale. So discount ads run to cold audiences only, with warm and repeat buyers held out through retargeting exclusions.
Updated 26 September 2026. Client names left out on purpose; the rules are the transferable part.
Since 2017.
I started at WME running 45+ paid campaigns across a 90+ client portfolio, then spent four years at Megantic working on 100+ Australian ecommerce brands.
Half a million dollars in a year.
At Step Digital I ran one Australian ecommerce brand's paid across Meta and Google: $514k of spend in twelve months, $2.24M in attributed revenue back.
Both ends of the budget scale.
National-brand budgets and $1,000 a month. I'll tell you which tactics apply at your size and which ones don't.
Specialist, not generalist.
Paid ads and SEO only. I don't try to do everything.
Month to month.
No lock-in. 30 days' notice, and I earn it every month.
Working with meYour options
What you get with me.Me, an agency, or your own evenings.
- Who runs the account
- The person you had the call with
- Who you talk to
- Me. There’s nobody else here
- Reporting
- Judged against your revenue, with the attribution gap shown
- Channels
- Paid ads and SEO. Nothing I’m not good at
- Commitment
- Month to month. 30 days’ notice
- After launch
- Managed continuously. You hear from me when something changes, not just at invoice time
- Price
- Priced on your account. Ask on the call, get a number
Client reviews
Reviews I can’t edit.
Pulled from my Google listing, where owners can’t change or remove a word.
“They didn’t just talk jargon - they explained the strategy clearly, kept us updated, and delivered results that mattered. Within a few months, we started ranking for keywords we’d struggled with for years, and our Google Ads ROAS has never been better.”
“The transparency, regular updates, and real business insights made it feel like I had a true partner, not just another agency. Since starting, I’ve seen real results.”
“We have a bricks and mortar business that needed to evolve into the complex world of ecommerce and Mark has been excellent in guiding us through that.”
The arithmetic
Do the arithmetic before you book.
Say you’re spending $10,000 a month and getting $3 back for every $1. That’s $30,000 in revenue. If 60% is left after product and other variable costs, $8,000 remains after ad spend, before management and fixed overheads.
A $2,000 management fee on that $10,000 of spend comes out of the $8,000. So the ads have to move you from 3.0x to roughly 3.33x for the management to pay for itself.
Not double. A third of a point.
Most agencies run this on revenue and tell you 3.2x. That version quietly ignores your margin, which is the number that actually pays you. The fee itself scales with the size of the account, so yours will land somewhere else. Bring your real spend and your real margin to the call and we’ll do it live.
Worked example at $10,000 a month · not a quote
up from 3.0x
Questions before you book.
Is this a sales call?+
It's a working session on your account. Most of the 15 minutes is me showing you things in your own campaigns. If I think there's a fit at the end, I'll say so in one sentence, and you can take it or leave it.
Who is Step Digital a fit for?+
Established Australian ecommerce brands selling physical products, with ads running or about to start. Shopify and WooCommerce stores are the usual fit. Pre-revenue stores and products without proven demand are too early, and I'll tell you so.
Do you need access to my ad account?+
No. You share your screen on the call and we look at it together. If you'd rather grant read-only access so I can look before we talk, that works too, and I'll send instructions when you book.
We already work with an agency.+
Then use this as a second opinion. You'll get an independent read on the account and the one thing I'd push your agency to do next. Some of the most useful audits I've done are for brands that stayed exactly where they were.
What does it cost if we work together?+
A monthly base plus a percentage of your ad spend, both ex GST, month to month on 30 days' notice. If your pixel, ad account or catalogue needs building there's a one-off setup fee, waived on a three-month commitment. Ask on the call and you'll get a straight number. The audit itself is free and stays free.
Is there a minimum ad spend?+
No fixed minimum. On the call we work out whether your budget, your margin and my fee can run a test worth reading. Usually that starts on one platform.
Who makes the ads?+
I write the ad copy and direct the creative. You supply the images and video, or production gets quoted separately before any work starts.
Do I keep my ad accounts?+
Yes. You own the ad accounts and the data. I'm added through the platforms, never with your password.
Do you do SEO as well?+
Yes. My roots are SEO, including national brands like Forty Winks and Musashi at Megantic. Paid ads leads; SEO comes in when it makes sense for your stage.
Why only 15 minutes?+
Because that's how long it takes to find the first meaningful fix on most accounts. Nobody needs an hour of introductions. If we need longer, that's what working together is for.
Get a straight answer on your ad account.
Fifteen minutes, your real campaigns, and the one thing I'd fix first.
Free, on your real account, no obligation.