When Carol opened The Shoe Garden in Brisbane in 2012, she was recovering from burnout and building something she knew women needed: fashionable, colourful shoes for longer feet, starting at size 10. Mainstream retailers offer women with longer feet very few options, so Carol's customers don't just buy shoes from her. They light up, and some even tear up, when they finally have real choice.

Carol's niche and loyal customer base still didn't make marketing easy. After radio ads and other efforts that didn't deliver, she started working with Lume Marketing in 2024 to run Meta ads. Comparing the year before ads with the last financial year, the results were:

- 79% growth in online sales
- 45% increase in new customers
- Around 600% return on ad spend

In 2026, Carol went a step further. She completed our 8-week program and now runs her own ads, handling the tracking, analysis and optimisation herself.

In this episode, Megan and Carol talk about:

- How Carol built a business serving an underserved niche
- Why consistency and repetition keep you top of mind with customers
- Why Carol first chose to outsource her ads, and what made her ready to take them back in-house
- How one-on-one training lets you apply what you learn to your own data and circumstances, beyond the general advice that's everywhere
- How Carol's historical data from her time as a client gave her a head start when she took over
- Why you need to either learn to run your ads well or hire experts, because doing neither stalls growth

Learn more about working with us:

• The next 8-week mentoring program where you'll learn to run Meta ads like a pro is opening soon. Apply now.
• Hire me and my team to run your ads. Learn more.
• Learn how to run your own ads. Click here.

Learn more about your host:

Megan Winter is a meta ads expert, an experienced ADMA and AMI-awarded marketer and founder of Goodkind Media.
As an early-adopter of digital marketing and social media advertising, she has consulted to global brands owned by Heineken and Lexus, has taught hundreds of small business owners at The Facebook Ads Academy, and presented on digital marketing at Bond University.

Now, her passion is helping ethical, purpose-led brands achieve more income and impact with high-performing meta ads.

Connect with Megan on Instagram @meganwinter or LinkedIn

"Fire your agency" content is everywhere right now — but is it good advice? Megan (who runs both an agency and a training program teaching people to run their own ads) breaks down the truth: there's no universal right answer, only the right fit for your business and your timing.

In this episode Megan covers:

• What an agency actually is (and why the term "agency" has become diluted over the last decade)
• Why so many agencies are better at marketing themselves than they are at delivering results
• The real cost of hiring too soon vs waiting too long
• The "sleepless night test" — a simple way to know if a decision (or a fee) is right for you
• Key questions to ask yourself before hiring an agency, including whether you're ready to grow and whether you actually love data
• The red flags that mean it might be time to break up with your current agency — word salad reporting, being palmed off to a junior, order-takers, and agencies with no real strategy
• How to decide whether learning to run your own ads is the smarter move for where your business is right now

Learn more about working with us:

• The next 8-week mentoring program where you'll learn to run Meta ads like a pro is opening soon. Apply now.
• Hire me and my team to run your ads. Learn more.
• Learn how to run your own ads. Click here.

Learn more about your host:

Megan Winter is a meta ads expert, an experienced ADMA and AMI-awarded marketer and founder of Lume Marketing.

As an early-adopter of digital marketing and social media advertising, she has consulted to global brands owned by Heineken and Lexus, has taught hundreds of small business owners at The Facebook Ads Academy, and presented on digital marketing at Bond University.

Now, her passion is helping ethical, purpose-led brands achieve more income and impact with high-performing meta ads.

Connect with Megan on Instagram @meganwinter or LinkedIn

"Until you test, it's just a guess." You've probably heard Megan say it a hundred times — but most small businesses are still testing their meta ads the wrong way, which means they're not really testing at all. They're just guessing with extra steps.

In this episode, Megan breaks down the 5 most common testing mistakes she sees, and what to do instead so your data actually tells you something useful.

In this episode, Megan covers these mistakes:

1. Testing without a strategy behind it — Throwing AI-generated creative into ads just to "see what happens" without checking it aligns with your brand and offer first. Testing rubbish still gives you rubbish.

2. Trusting the Meta dashboard as the source of truth — Why every platform wants to claim credit for the same sale, and why your website and sales numbers matter more than what Meta tells you.

3. Not checking that the pixel is actually tracking correctly — A real example of a client whose purchase pixel was triple-firing, making an $18 cost per purchase look like $6.

4. Testing too many things at once — Why changing your creative, landing page, and offer all at the same time makes it impossible to know what actually worked.

5. Panicking and adding more instead of reading the data — When results dip, the instinct is to create more. Often the real answer is hiding in the data already — like the account that was losing money until the data pointed straight to a landing page fix.

Plus, two real case studies: an account that started losing money (and what the data tells us to do about it), and a client who set a target of 100 memberships, tested the plan, and sold 104 while spending 20% less.

Learn more about working with us:
The next 8-week mentoring program where you'll learn to run Meta ads like a pro is opening soon. Apply now.
Hire us to run your ads. Learn more.
Learn how to run your own ads. Click here.

Learn more about your host:

Megan Winter is a meta ads expert, an experienced ADMA and AMI-awarded marketer and founder of Lume Marketing.

As an early-adopter of digital marketing and social media advertising, she has consulted to global brands owned by Heineken and Lexus, has taught hundreds of small business owners at The Facebook Ads Academy, and presented on digital marketing at Bond University.

Now, her passion is helping ethical, purpose-led brands achieve more income and impact with high-performing meta ads.

Connect with Megan on Instagram @meganwinter or LinkedIn