Case Study (Market Muggings)

CASE STUDY: How We Hijacked $58.1M in GMV for Bidbus 

The Patient: Bidbus (Automotive Buying Service) The Fuel: $3.3M Seed Round from Mucker Capital. The Result: $58.1M in GMV (Gross Merchandise Value) in 2025. The Vibe: Grand Theft Auto, but legal.

The Context: High Stakes, High Speed

In 2025, Bidbus closed a $3.3M Seed Round from Mucker Capital. When a VC like Mucker cuts you a check, they don't want "steady growth." They want world domination, and they want it yesterday.

The mission was simple: Connect sellers with verified, licensed car dealers across California and move metal fast.

But when I audited the ad account, I didn't see a machine built for speed. I saw a dumpster fire.

The Crime Scene (Before I Arrived)

The previous media buyer treated that $3.3M like Monopoly money. They were addicted to Meta.

• 85% of the budget was being dumped into Facebook/Instagram.

• Lead Volume was high. The dashboard looked great.

• Lead Quality was garbage. We were generating leads for people who couldn't afford a bus ticket, let alone sell a car.

• They were Blind Scaling. They saw "cheap leads" and just kept cranking the budget knob until it broke, flooding our network of licensed dealers with phone numbers that didn't pick up. 

The Autopsy: The Google Geography Fail

The small amount of spend they did have on Google was set up by a rookie.

Fail #1: The "Recommended" Trap The buyer had the location settings on Google’s default: "People in, regularly in, or who've shown interest in your included locations (Recommended)." Do not ever trust Google when they say "Recommended." That is corporate speak for "We want to steal your money." Translation: We were showing ads to people interested in Los Angeles. That means we were paying for clicks from a guy in Ohio dreaming about an LA vacation. He has no car for us. He is useless. The Fix: I switched it to "Presence Only: People in or regularly in your included locations." We stopped funding tourists and started targeting locals.

Fail #2: The "City Limits" Blunder The buyer was targeting the individual City of Los Angeles. That’s cute. But real money isn't just in the city; it's in the sprawl. By ignoring the DMA (Designated Market Area), they were missing 80% of the actual market. The Fix: I fired the "City" targeting and targeted the full Los Angeles DMA. The volume exploded immediately because we stopped treating the suburbs like they didn't exist.

Fail #3: The Meta "Geographic" Trap Here is where they really wet the bed. For those who don't know, Meta recently removed the ability to strictly target "People living in this location." The new default (and only) choice is "Reach people living in or recently in this location." This is a feature designed by Meta to burn your budget.

• Translation: If you are a local business in LA, Meta will happily show your ad to a tourist at LAX waiting for a flight back to New York. That guy doesn't have a car to sell you. He has a carry-on bag and a bad attitude.

• The Fix: I didn't trust Meta’s default settings. I built aggressive Geofencing perimeters around our target zones to force the algorithm to behave. I built a digital wall to keep the tourists out and the locals in.

The Demographic Purge: Cutting the Dead Weight

The previous strategy was "spray and pray." They were showing ads to everyone with a pulse and a Facebook account. They were guessing.

I don't guess. I run surveillance.

I launched a two-step investigation to identify the target and then hunt them down.

Step 1: The Identity Check (CRM Data) I dug into the CRM to see who was actually selling us cars. The Reality: Our sellers weren't "everyone." They were Men, 30-42 years old, mostly Hispanic and White.

Step 2: The Digital Stalking (SparkToro) Knowing who they are is only half the battle. I needed to know where they hide. So I deployed SparkToro to conduct a background check on our market.

For the uninitiated, SparkToro isn't just an "audience tool." It is essentially legal stalking. It analyzes public data to tell you exactly where your audience hangs out.

The Fix: I combined the CRM hard data with the SparkToro surveillance to build a sniper scope. I stopped being polite. I cut the budget for everyone else and targeted that specific demographic exclusively in their specific digital hangouts.

Why pay to show ads to people who aren't invited to the party?

The TikTok Age Restriction: On TikTok, the previous buyer was targeting "All Ages." Listen to me: You do not want leads from a 19-year-old on TikTok. They either have a Hot Wheels toy car, or a 2003 Honda Civic with 300,000 miles and a missing door. We are a marketplace, not a junkyard. 

The Fix: I ruthlessly excluded anyone under 24. We stopped paying for teenagers to watch our videos and started paying for adults to sell us their cars.

The Wiring: Teaching the Robot to Taste Money

The previous agency was tracking "Leads." That is cute. It is also stupid.

Treating a "Lead" as the ultimate goal is like treating a first date like a marriage proposal. Just because they filled out a form doesn't mean they have the ring (or the car title).

To fix this, we migrated everything to Google Tag Manager (GTM) and engineered a Value-Based Bidding structure. We didn't just tell the pixel when a conversion happened; we told it how much money that conversion was worth.

We assigned a "Bounty Value" to every step of the auction funnel to train the AI on what a "Whale" looks like vs. a "Goldfish."

• Lead Form Filled: Low Value. (The Appetizer).

• Vehicle Appraisal Complete: Medium Value. (Now we are cooking).

• Photos Uploaded: High Value. (This requires effort. Lazy people don't do this).

• Vehicle Listed to Auction: Very High Value. (We are at the finish line).

• Vehicle SOLD at Auction: MAXIMUM VALUE. (The Jackpot).

The Result: Instead of optimizing for cheap leads (people who fill forms and ghost), the algorithm started optimizing for Revenue. It learned that a guy who uploads photos is worth 50x more than a guy who just drops an email.

We stopped giving the algorithm a scent. We gave it the taste of blood. And guess what? It went into a frenzy. 

It became a heat-seeking missile that didn't just find the Whales, it developed a toxic allergy to the Goldfish. It started dodging broke people like a gold digger dodging a guy who asks to split the bill. 

The Surgery: Following the Money (Not the Dashboard)

We installed Hyros. We stopped listening to the platform dashboards and started looking at forensic data.

Here is what the data actually said:

1. Meta was the Drunk Uncle: Loud, expensive, and largely useless. It had an 8% conversion rate on leads and was hemorrhaging cash.

The Fix: I put the platform in court-ordered rehab.

I didn't kill the account; I just seized the credit card. I cut the "spray and pray" allowance and put the algorithm on a starvation diet. I told the pixel: "You don't eat unless you hunt."

We forced it to run only our high-velocity creative with a skeletal budget. Suddenly, the Drunk Uncle sobered up, got a job, and started paying rent.

2. Google was the Sniper: Once we fixed the Geo-Targeting, PMax, Search, and YouTube Demand Gen started bringing in high-quality, high-intent traffic, aka people with the pink slip in their hand ready to sell.

3. TikTok was the Glitch: This was the arbitrage of the century.

The TikTok Arbitrage: We found that $400/day on TikTok was bringing in the same lead volume as $2,000/day on Meta. And these weren't trash leads. The low-intent leads from TikTok were converting 3.4x better than the low-intent leads from Meta.

The Pivot: I cut the blood supply to Meta. I shifted the budget heavily into Google (High Intent) for the adults, and TikTok (Low Cost) for the volume.

The Creative Face-Lift

The old ads were digital sleeping pills.

• Shot: Static image of a car.

• Copy: "Sell your car here please."

Boring. Invisible. Stale.

We launched Edgy, High-Velocity Creative. We broke the mold. We made content that looked like entertainment, not a sales pitch.

Crucially, we stopped making ads for "everyone." We realized our core buyer was a 30-42 year old male. So we stopped filming generic fluff that appeals to grandmothers and teenagers. We built creative specifically for him. We spoke his language.

The Philosophy: Conversion = Consumption Most marketers think "Conversion" happens at the Buy Button. Wrong. Conversion happens every single millisecond the user decides to keep reading. My rule is simple: I improve Conversion by improving Consumption. You cannot sell to a ghost. If the copy is hard to read, they leave. If they leave, they don't buy. I make the content so frictionless that the user slides down the page. To do that, I use two specific weapons:

Weapon #1: The 5th Grade Rule I run every script and ad hook through the Hemingway App. If the reading level goes above Grade 5, I delete it. Why? Because confusion is the conversion killer. Most brands try to sound smart with words like "depreciation" or "equity optimization." That is noise. I boil the complex down to the brutal, black-and-white basics:

• The Corporate Way: "Maximize the residual value of your vehicle." (Grade 12. Boring. Ignored.)

• The Bidbus Way: "Dealers are stealing from you. Stop them." (Grade 4. Aggressive. Profitable.)

Weapon #2: The Wiretap (The Dark Web aka Reddit) I don't guess what customers are worried about. I steal their thoughts. Most marketers sit in a boardroom and brainstorm "pain points." I go to the only place where people are actually honest about their money and their misery: Reddit. I treat subreddits like r/personalfinance and r/askcarsales like a wiretap. I don't look for "industry terms." I look for the exact verbatim language real people use when they are stressed out.

• The Industry Term: "Negative Equity"

• The Reddit Reality: "I am underwater and drowning on this loan."

• The Industry Term: "Market Adjustment"

• The Reddit Reality: "These dealerships are gouging me."

When a user hears their own internal monologue spoken out loud in an ad, they don't just watch it. They trust it.

We stopped asking him to sell his car and started telling him why selling it to anyone else was basically a scam and just plain dumb.

The Offer was our Sledgehammer: Our product isn't just slightly better. It is legitimately superior. We pay, on average, $3,000 MORE than a dealer trade-in or the "Big Box" wholesalers like CarMax or Carvana.

We used that fact to crush them. We framed selling to CarMax not as "convenient," but as lighting $3,000 on fire. And the kicker? Our process is just as fast. So the choice wasn't "Fast vs. Money." The choice was "Fast & Rich vs. Fast & Broke."

And I didn't outsource this to some neutered agency "partner" who thinks a daring creative choice is changing the font color to Beige.

I produced the beast below personally, from the first unhinged keystroke to the final export. Why? Because to really hook a viewer in 2025, you can't just tickle them. You have to grab them by the throat.

And the data proves we didn't just grab them. We choked them out.

Here are the actual forensic results from Meta:

• Hook Rate: 46.95% (Translation: We stopped the scroll for almost half the audience. The average user is a doom-scrolling zombie. A 47% hook rate means we physically broke the trance and forced them to look.)

• Hold Rate: 28.96% (Translation: Almost 30% of people stayed for the main event. Most ads lose the audience in 2 seconds. We held their attention hostage.)

👇 EXHIBIT A: "THE ARSONIST" (Watch Below) 👇 

👇 EXHIBIT B: THE TIME TRAVELER (Watch Below) 👇

Thou Art Being Fleeced! ⚔️ Stop Selling Like a Peasant

If Exhibit A was an Arsonist, Exhibit B was a Guillotine.

We didn't just want to tell people they were losing money; we wanted to shame them for it.

The psychological lever here is simple: Status. Nobody wants to be the idiot. Nobody wants to be the "Peasant."

We took a futuristic asset (a Tesla) and dropped it into a medieval nightmare to visually demonstrate exactly what selling to a traditional dealer feels like: Archaic. Slow. Painful.

We weaponized the "Pattern Interrupt." When a user is doom-scrolling through endless, polished car ads, seeing a guy in a velvet doublet screaming "THOU ART BEING FLEECED" acts like a digital slap in the face. It freezes the thumb.

The Psychology of the Script:

• The Hook: "Thou Art Being Fleeced?" (Triggers Loss Aversion immediately).

• The Insult: "That is peasant thinking." (Attacks the Ego. The viewer immediately thinks, "I'm not a peasant, I'm smart.")

• The Pivot: We frame the "instant cash" offer from dealers not as a convenience, but as a trap for the desperate.

• The Payoff: Bidbus isn't just a service; it's the evolution.

We didn't just ask for the click. We demanded they stop acting like it's 1599 and get the extra $3,000 they deserve.

👇 EXHIBIT C: THE TORTURE TEST (Watch Below) 👇 Pain is Relative. Stupid is Absolute.