The Two Meta Ads Metrics That Actually Matter: Joe's Lead Factors Framework

Most ecommerce brands track dozens of Meta ads metrics and still can't figure out why campaigns aren't scaling. They're watching CTR, CPM, hook rate, hold rate, and whatever the latest LinkedIn guru says matters this week. Meanwhile, they're burning thousands in ad spend without knowing whether to fix their creative or their landing page.

I recently sat down with Joe Chavez, a full Funnel DTC expert advising subscription focused Shopify brands.

Joe's managed hundreds of millions in Meta ad spend across brands like Crocs, NutraBullet, and Taylor Stitch. Now he's applying those lessons to scaling his own acquired Shopify store from 250K to a million in revenue (plus joining us at Storetasker as a performance marketing expert!).

When he breaks down his approach, it's refreshingly simple: forget the vanity metrics and focus on two numbers that actually tell you where to put your energy.

The framework he's built lets you diagnose any Meta ads account in five minutes. Not hours of analysis, not complex dashboards. Five minutes to know whether your problem is left of click (in the ads platform) or right of click (on your site). And once you know that, you know exactly what to fix.

This isn't theory. It's the system Joe used managing 20-25 clients simultaneously on the agency side, eventually co-running an entire agency because this approach actually scaled. While everyone else was drowning in data, his team knew exactly which three accounts needed attention each week and where to focus.

Here's how the lead factors framework works and why it changes how you think about Meta ads entirely.

The Problem With How Most Brands Track Meta Performance

Open any Meta ads dashboard and you'll see fifty different metrics competing for attention. The platform wants you to look at everything: reach, impressions, frequency, CTR, CPC, CPM, hook rate, hold rate, engagement rate, and on and on.

Agencies and consultants add to the noise by championing their favorite metrics. One swears by thumb-stop ratio. Another obsesses over 3-second video views. Someone on LinkedIn posts about a new metric they discovered that "changed everything." So you add it to your tracking.

Pretty soon you're monitoring so many numbers that you can't tell which ones actually matter. Your head spins trying to connect the dots between all these metrics and your actual business goal, which is usually something simple like "acquire customers profitably."

The core issue is that most metrics are lagging indicators. They tell you what already happened but don't point clearly to what action you should take next. Knowing your CTR was 1.2% last week is interesting, but what do you do with that information? Is that good or bad? Should you change creative or targeting or something else entirely?

The Distraction Trap

Joe describes the pattern he sees constantly. Brands get confused and start chasing different channels or tactics because they read something compelling online. They're not making progress on their 90-day goals because they keep pivoting to whatever sounds promising this week.

The math is straightforward: if you're working in 12-week or 13-week periods, each week represents about 7.7% progress toward your goal. If you're not moving roughly 8% closer each week, you're off plan. But you can't know if you're on plan if you don't have clarity on what specific metrics need to move.

Most brands treat their CPA or ROAS target like it's enough. "We need to hit a $50 CPA" or "We need 3x ROAS." That's like saying you just need to go south. Okay, but where south? What specifically needs to change to get there?

Without breaking down that top-level target into the metrics that create it, you're constantly guessing whether to work on creative, targeting, landing pages, offers, or something else. So teams waste time and money trying everything instead of focusing on the one or two things that would actually move the needle.

The Lead Factors Framework

Joe's solution is brutally simple: focus on two metrics that tell you everything you need to know about where to put your energy. Cost per outbound click and conversion rate. That's it.

These aren't random picks. They're what he calls lead factors because they lead to your CPA. Change these two numbers and your CPA changes automatically. More importantly, they tell you exactly where the problem lives: in your ads or on your site.

Cost Per Outbound Click

This is different from regular cost per click. Meta tracks several click types: clicks to your profile, clicks on comments, clicks to your site. Outbound clicks specifically means people actually going to your website, which is what creates a session that could convert.

If you look at CPC in tools like Triple Whale without specifying outbound clicks, you might be tracking clicks that never create site sessions. That gives you false confidence that your ads are driving traffic when people are just clicking around without visiting your store.

Cost per outbound click tells you how efficiently your ads are driving actual website visits. It's the clearest picture of your left-of-click performance because it accounts for creative quality, targeting accuracy, and platform costs.

When this number is off target, your problem is in the ads platform. You need better creative, smarter targeting, improved offers in the ad copy, or to find audiences with lower CPMs. This is where you iterate on hooks, test new concepts, send products to UGC creators, or refine your audience strategy.

Conversion Rate

Once people click and land on your site, conversion rate measures how many actually buy. This is your right-of-click metric that tells you everything about your site experience, product pages, offers, and trust building.

When conversion rate is below target, your ads might be performing perfectly but your site isn't converting the traffic. No amount of creative improvement will fix a landing page that doesn't build enough belief for people to purchase.

This is where you focus on pre-sale pages, product page optimization, better imagery, stronger social proof, clearer value propositions, and offer improvements. The traffic quality is fine. The conversion mechanism is broken.

Why These Two Metrics Change Everything

The power in this framework is how clearly it directs your focus. Instead of guessing whether you need new creative or better landing pages, these two metrics tell you definitively.

If cost per outbound click is on target but conversion rate is low, stop wasting time on creative. Your ads are working. Fix the site.

If conversion rate is solid but cost per click is too high, your site is fine. The ads need work.

If both are off, you've got problems on both sides and can prioritize based on which is furthest from target.

This instantly cuts through the noise and tells teams whether the media buyers need to focus on campaign work or whether the CRO team needs to optimize landing experiences. No more everyone working on everything and hoping something works.

Breaking Down The Live Example

When Joe walks through this framework live, he picks Allbirds as an example and focuses on their men's Wool Dasher Mizzle shoe at $145 retail price.

First step is calculating unit economics to know what CPA target you can afford. This isn't pulled from thin air or something an agency suggested. It's math based on your actual margins.

The Unit Economics

Starting with the retail price of $145, Joe works through the costs:

• Product is currently on sale, roughly 20% off, so actual selling price around $116
• COGS estimated at $15 (though he notes this could be way off)
• Shipping and receiving to warehouse: $2
• Transaction fees: 2.9% on Shopify standard (not Plus)
• Pick and pack from 3PL: $3
• Shipping to customer: $12 (assuming free shipping offer)
• Return rate: 15% for men's shoes (women's can hit 30%)

This gets you to a gross margin of around $57 per pair. If you're in pure growth mode and willing to break even on first order to acquire customers, that $57 becomes your CAC target. You're spending 39% of revenue on acquisition, which is aggressive but works if you have solid retention or LTV justification.

Now you know: you need to acquire customers at $57 or less for this product to make sense. Not some arbitrary number. Actual unit economics.

Setting The Target Metrics

With a $57 CAC target, Joe works backward to figure out what cost per outbound click and conversion rate you need to hit that number.

He starts with $1.25 cost per outbound click as a baseline. This is realistic for decent creative with reasonable CPMs. He's seen it go lower (some brands get crazy low 50-cent CPCs), but $1.25 is achievable without heroic effort.

With that locked in, he calculates what conversion rate gets you to the $57 CAC target. The answer: 2.5%.

So now you have concrete targets:

• $1.25 cost per outbound click
• 2.5% conversion rate

These are your lead factors. If you hit both numbers, you hit your $57 CAC. Miss one and you know exactly which side of the equation needs work.

Diagnosing The Current State

Next step is looking at where you actually are versus these targets. Tim throws out example numbers: $1.50 cost per outbound click and 1.5% conversion rate.

Now the math shows clearly which problem is bigger:

• Cost per outbound click is 20% above target ($1.50 vs $1.25)
• Conversion rate is 40% below target (1.5% vs 2.5%)

This instantly tells you: don't waste time on creative and ad optimization. Your bigger problem is conversion rate. Focus there first.

The Prescription

With conversion rate 40% off target, Joe's recommendation is building a pre-sale page. Not sending traffic directly to the product page, but adding a landing page that pre-frames the value proposition and builds belief before asking for the purchase.

His reasoning: if people landed on the product page and believed this was what they needed, they'd buy. They're not buying because belief isn't strong enough yet. You can build that belief through creative (which takes time and money) or through a pre-sale page (which you can launch this week).

The pre-sale page would pull content that already exists on the product page (features, benefits, use cases) and expand on it. Five reasons why this shoe solves your problems. Social proof. Clear value proposition. Then a button that applies a promo code automatically when they click through to checkout.

This achieves two things: improves conversion rate by building more belief, and lets you track attribution clearly because that page and promo code only exist for this specific funnel.

The Funnel Metrics That Support Lead Factors

Once you know your two lead metrics, you can build out a complete funnel with targets at each stage. Joe shows how he structures this for client accounts:

• Cost per outbound click: $1.25
• Click-through from pre-sale page to product: 40%
• Add to cart rate: 20% of all traffic (or half of everyone who clicks through)
• Reach checkout: 15% of all traffic
• Complete checkout: 40% of people who reach checkout

These funnel metrics let you diagnose exactly where drop-off happens. If 40% are clicking through the pre-sale page but only 10% are adding to cart, the problem is product page or offer. If add-to-cart is fine but checkout completion sucks, you've got friction in the checkout flow.

The point isn't tracking these metrics for the sake of it. It's creating a map that shows exactly where the customer journey breaks down so you know precisely what to fix.

When The Math Doesn't Work

Joe addresses the situation everyone hits eventually: you've optimized creative, you've improved conversion rate, and the math still doesn't work. Your best possible performance still doesn't hit the CPA target you need.

At that point, you need to change the offer structure or bundle strategy. You can't just sell a single shoe at the base price. You need to increase AOV through bundling, upsells, or cross-sells.

Examples for a shoe brand:

• Bundle the shoe with insoles
• Add water-repellent treatment as an upsell
• Offer matching accessories
• Create in-cart upsells that appear before checkout

Joe shares that he's implemented Kaching cart for exactly this purpose. It creates a branded cart experience where customers can select add-ons, choose colors for additional items, and unlock free shipping thresholds. These are strategically designed to push average order value above the level where the math works.

If you need customers to spend $19 more to hit the free shipping threshold, the upsells conveniently start at around that price point. Not an accident. Designed specifically to make the unit economics work.

This is how you make products with marginal unit economics profitable at scale. You can't change the product cost, but you can increase what customers buy per transaction.

The AOV Question: Fact or Fiction?

Tim raises a question he's heard repeatedly: you need an AOV above $100 to scale profitably on Meta. Is that actually true?

Joe runs the math live. Take the same shoe scenario but drop the price to $75. Keep all the costs the same. Suddenly your gross margin is only $15, which means your maximum CAC is $15 if you're breaking even.

Now try to hit a $15 CAC with realistic metrics. Can you get $1 cost per outbound click and 7% conversion rate? Almost certainly not. Even if you did, that's exceptional performance that's not sustainable.

The statement about needing $100+ AOV is true, but most people don't understand why. It's not a magic number. It's math. Lower AOV means lower margins mean lower affordable CAC mean you need impossibly good metrics to make it work.

The only exceptions are incredibly low COGS (making something for $2 and selling for $75, which is rare) or subscription models where you're willing to lose money on first order because the LTV math works out over time.

Joe shares his experience with a brand at the $30 AOV mark. It was brutal trying to make it work unless they had subscriptions and were willing to eat costs upfront with massive discounts (save 56% on first order) to acquire subscribers.

The Tools That Make This Work

Joe calls out specific tools that make implementing this framework easier:

Replo for building pre-sale pages. He's tried PageFly, Gem Pages, and others. Replo wins because you can auto-apply promo codes on the frontend, and the code is unique to your ads funnel. This means you know definitively when sales came from ads because that page and code don't exist anywhere else.

Kaching for cart optimization. Lets you build branded cart experiences with strategic upsells, color selection, free gift options, and free shipping progress bars. All designed to increase AOV at the critical moment before checkout.

These aren't the only options, but they're what Joe uses because they solve specific problems the framework requires: clear attribution and effective AOV increases.

Starting Every Conversation With Lead Factors

Joe's process with any new account or consulting engagement starts exactly here. Not with creative review. Not with campaign structure audit. Not with audience analysis.

First question: what are your unit economics and what CPA can you afford?

Second question: what cost per outbound click and conversion rate do you need to hit that CPA?

Third question: where are you currently on those two metrics?

That five-minute exercise tells you everything you need to know about where to focus. If the math shows conversion rate is 40% off but cost per click is only 20% off, you start with conversion rate optimization.

Then you build the action plan: pre-sale page, offer improvements, product page optimization, whatever the specific solution is for that brand. But you know exactly what you're solving for because the lead factors told you.

This is how he scaled agency operations to manage dozens of clients. Create a dashboard showing just these two metrics for every account. Each week, look at which accounts are furthest from their targets. Those are the ones that need attention. Assign teams accordingly.

No complexity. No guessing. Just clear math that points to clear action.

Why This Framework Actually Scales

The genius of lead factors is simplicity. Two metrics. That's it. Anyone on your team can understand this framework in one conversation.

Media buyers know immediately whether their campaigns are performing because cost per outbound click tells them definitively. CRO specialists know whether they need to optimize pages because conversion rate is unambiguous. Leadership knows whether the business is on track to hit acquisition targets because the lead factors predict CAC.

This transparency eliminates the finger-pointing that happens when campaigns underperform. Everyone knows exactly which part of the funnel needs work. No more media buyers blaming poor landing pages while CRO teams blame bad traffic quality. The data shows conclusively where the problem lives.

It also prevents the distraction trap. When you're tracking two clear metrics against specific targets, you're not tempted to chase whatever new tactic showed up in your LinkedIn feed. You know what you're trying to move and whether it's moving. Everything else is noise.

Joe's trying to help 100 stores break a million dollars in annual revenue by 2027. Not because he's focused on huge brands and massive budgets. Because he wants to work with people he enjoys while homeschooling his kids and starting his workday at 10 a.m. The lead factors framework is what makes that possible because it cuts through complexity and creates focus.

Getting Clear On What Actually Matters

Most Meta ads advice focuses on creative tactics, audience strategies, or campaign structures. All of that matters, but it's secondary to knowing what you're actually trying to optimize.

The lead factors framework gives you that clarity. Two metrics that predict your CAC, with each one clearly pointing to where you need to focus energy. Left of click or right of click. Ads or site. Media team or CRO team.

The next time someone tells you to track some new metric or implement some new tactic, ask yourself: does this move cost per outbound click or conversion rate? If the answer is no, it's probably distraction.

Track the lead factors. Set targets based on your unit economics. Measure where you actually are. Focus on whichever is furthest from target. That's the work. Everything else is commentary.

Whether you're trying to scale from 250K to a million like Joe, or you're running an eight-figure brand with complex channel mix, the principle is the same. Know your two critical numbers, know where you stand against them, and do the specific work that moves them toward target.

If you're burning budget without clear direction on what to fix, the lead factors framework gives you the diagnostic tool you've been missing. Five minutes to know exactly where your Meta ads need work and what to prioritize.

Need help implementing this framework or optimizing your Meta ads strategy? Connect with Storetasker's performance marketing experts who specialize in turning Meta spend into profitable customer acquisition at scale.