Free Meta ads audit · Australian ecommerce
A free Meta ads audit for Australian ecommerce stores. Fifteen minutes, your live account, one fix to make first.
I’m Mark Tran, a Melbourne-based Meta and Google Ads specialist who works with ecommerce stores across Australia. The audit is me, on Zoom, reading your Facebook and Instagram ads account with you: what’s working, what’s wasting money, and what your real break-even is once margin, GST and management are in the maths.
No access needed, no report to wait for, no obligation. You share your screen, I show you what I see, and you leave with the change I’d make first.
What I look at in fifteen minutes
Six things that decide whether a Meta account makes money.
What the reported ROAS includes
I review attribution settings and the mix of prospecting, retargeting and returning customers. This identifies questions to investigate; it does not prove which sales would have happened without advertising.
Who the campaigns are reaching
I check customer exclusions, audience overlap and the purpose of each offer. Acquisition, retention and clearance campaigns can need different audiences.
The return your costs require
We use your product and variable costs to estimate the margin available for advertising, with management included separately and a consistent tax basis. The result depends on the cost information available.
Whether purchase tracking is reliable
I look at the Pixel, Conversions API, event values and deduplication. Store orders and attributed purchases can differ for legitimate reasons, so a mismatch needs diagnosis before a tracking change.
Creative performance and frequency
I review which assets are contributing sales, which are receiving repeated exposure and what is being tested. Engagement alone is not evidence that an ad produces profitable sales.
Budget and decision timing
I look at spend limits, conversion delay and recent changes. The question is whether the evidence supports the next decision, rather than whether a campaign has reached a fixed age.
Fifteen minutes is enough for the first fix on most accounts because the same handful of problems keep turning up. What changes account to account is which one is costing you the most, and that is what the call is for.
How it works
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.
The number the audit starts from
Your break-even ROAS is not the platform’s target.
Meta reports revenue over spend. Your business runs on margin after product cost, payment fees, returns, shipping, GST if you are registered, and whatever you pay to have the account managed. Put those in and the ROAS you need to break even is usually well above the one that looks fine on screen. Every audit starts by working that number out for your store, because every other decision on the call depends on it.
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.
This preserves the previous contribution after adding a fee, assuming spend and margin stay the same. It is a different question from breaking even. The fee here is an example, not a quote; your scope and account size determine the actual cost.Calculate your break-even and fee recovery
Worked example at $10,000 a month · not a quote
up from 3.0x
A good fit
- Established Australian ecommerce brands selling physical products
- You're spending on Meta or Google, or about to
- You want a straight answer on what your spend is actually doing
Not a fit
- Pre-revenue stores
- Products without a real market yet
- Gambling and get-rich-quick
Most of the stores I work with sell physical products on Shopify or WooCommerce and spend somewhere between a few hundred and a few tens of thousands a month on ads. The audit works at either end; the fixes just look different. If you are unsure whether it applies to you, book it anyway and I will tell you honestly in the first two minutes.
I started in paid media at WME in 2017, spent four years at Megantic working on more than a hundred Australian ecommerce brands, and now run Step Digital on my own. At Step Digital I have run one Australian ecommerce brand’s paid across Meta and Google at half a million dollars of spend in a year, and I run accounts at a thousand dollars a month. Which tactics survive the trip between those two budgets is most of what an audit is worth.
There is no account manager between you and the work. The person you talk to on the audit is the person who would build and run the account, and the person who writes the monthly report against your revenue rather than Meta’s attribution.
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.”
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.
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.
My Meta ads are unprofitable. Is this the right place to start?+
Yes. That is the most common reason people book. We work out your real break-even first, then look at where the spend is going against it. The next step may involve tracking, the offer, creative, the store or campaign structure; the audit helps prioritise it.
Do you audit Google Ads as well?+
Yes. The same 15 minutes can cover Search, Shopping and Performance Max, or both platforms if that is where the question is. Pick the account that worries you most and we start there.
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?+
Management is a monthly base plus an agreed percentage of total ad spend across the platforms I manage, calculated on spend excluding GST. Fees are quoted excluding GST and the exact scope and price are agreed on the call. Management is month to month with 30 days' written notice; a three-month commitment can waive eligible setup fees. The audit is free.
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.
Book your free 15-minute Meta ads audit.
Pick a time, drop in your store URL and roughly what you spend, and bring the account to the call.
Calls run on Zoom. You’ll get the invite straight away.