When Click Genius took over Green Safaris' Meta Ads account in January 2026, we rebuilt it from scratch. By May, the cost of each website lead had fallen from $91.91 to $43.47, while monthly leads rose from about 9 to 23.
The brief
Green Safaris runs luxury eco-lodges across Zambia and Malawi, from Victoria Falls and the Zambezi to Lake Malawi, and also operates Livingstone Island, the famous Victoria Falls experience. Its two brands sit on two separate websites.
The account had changed hands, so there was no campaign structure worth inheriting. We were asked to generate qualified safari enquiries for greensafaris.com and to grow an engaged audience for livingstoneisland.com, and to do both on a tight monthly budget.
What we built
We launched three Meta campaigns from scratch, each with its own objective:
- Lead generation for greensafaris.com: promoting the Wings & Wheels offer (free flights and transfers between select lodges on stays of 4+ nights) and Kaya Mawa on Lake Malawi, aimed at UK audiences.
- A UK and US lead test (March): a short burst to see whether US travellers would respond to a direct enquiry ask.
- Page growth for livingstoneisland.com: a Facebook Likes and Instagram Follows campaign built on lookalike audiences from page engagers, to build a warm pool for future promotion.
The two websites were reported separately, so lead costs and audience-growth costs never got blended.
What we changed
The March test taught us the most. UK and US ad sets ran side by side, the budget was spent by 16 March, and the US ad sets produced no confirmed leads. Rather than keep spending, we paused the test and folded the learning into the main campaign, concentrating spend on the best UK ad sets. In May we went back to the US, but differently:
- Proven creative only. We reused the carousels and videos that had already earned leads instead of testing fresh assets on a cold market.
- Organic-style video. Journey-led, experience-first clips that look native to the feed, rather than polished brand film.
- Budget raised to about $1,000 a month, up from $690 in February and $809 in March, once cost per lead justified it.
The US restart returned 6 leads on $140 of spend, about $23 per lead.
The results
Lead cost fell by more than half between the first three months and May, and every efficiency metric improved.
| Metric | Feb to Apr 2026 | May 2026 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Spend (USD) | $2,390 | $999.77 | about $797 a month vs $1,000 |
| Link clicks | 3,878 | 2,104 | n/a |
| Cost per link click | $0.62 | $0.48 | down 23% |
| CPM (per 1,000 impressions) | $11.19 | $9.93 | down 11% |
| Pixel leads | 26 | 23 | about 9 a month vs 23 |
| Cost per lead | $91.91 | $43.47 | down 53% |
The two best-performing ads in May, a Kaya Mawa US carousel and a Wings & Wheels UK video, each delivered leads at about $20. From February to April the best ad managed $47.
As a cross-check, early HubSpot matching of Meta click IDs found roughly 40 Meta-sourced contacts, with about a quarter reaching the opportunity stage. These figures are approximate, because booking data from the reservations system was still being connected.
Livingstone Island: 2,054 new followers
The page-growth campaign added 1,424 followers from February to April ($0.41 each) and 630 more in May at about $0.32 each. Across the four months that is 2,054 new Facebook and Instagram followers on $784 of spend, roughly $0.38 per follower. They are a warm audience of people who chose to follow a luxury travel brand, and now a source for retargeting and for lookalike audiences that feed the lead campaigns.
What we learned and what's next
- Test, then commit. A failed US test in March became a profitable US campaign in May once we applied proven creative and a better-informed setup.
- Native-feeling content wins. Organic-style video and clear carousels that explain the offer step by step outperformed more produced content.
- Tracking decides how far you can scale. We are linking ad clicks to enquiries, quotes and bookings in a single dashboard, so spend can follow revenue and not just lead counts.
For July we benchmarked six safari brands. Most were either absent from paid social or used soft "learn more" calls to action, leaving room for experience-led storytelling paired with a direct enquiry ask. The plan scales the US carousels, adds organic-style journey and offer-explainer videos, and tests guest-review creative.
Source: Green Safaris' Meta Ads account. Figures in US dollars, as reported by Meta, for the greensafaris.com lead campaign (leads are website form events on the Meta pixel) and the livingstoneisland.com page-growth campaign. Published with Green Safaris' permission.
See our Meta Ads management service, or read the other case study: Turning Google Ads clicks into event enquiries for Better Measure.
