I took full ownership of SweetLeaf’s entire $2.5 million annual advertising budget across Instacart, Facebook, Instagram, Google, and in-store promotions. A lot of it simply wasn’t delivering. So I ran a complete ROI audit on every platform, every creative, and every single dollar we were spending.

I saw the inefficiencies right away... overlapping audiences, outdated bidding strategies, campaigns that looked flashy but weren’t actually moving sales. I cut what wasn’t working and reallocated every dollar to what was. That single move became the foundation for saving $480,000 in yearly marketing expenses while still growing sales. It worked big time.

Instacart Analytics Overhaul +

On Instacart specifically, I dug deep into the analytics and saw we were burning money on low-intent placements that just weren’t converting. I rebuilt the entire campaign from the ground up... cleaned up product listings, got far more precise with search-term targeting, optimized bids in real time, and focused only on shoppers who were already adding stevia products to their carts.

The turnaround was dramatic. I saved $250,000 annually on that channel alone, while conversion rates and average order value both climbed. Instacart went from one of our biggest money losers to a real profit driver.

On Instacart specifically, we were spending close to $500,000 a year when I started. They had committed to that full budget before I arrived, and no one ever changed it... they just left the faucet on with no one at the wheel.

I worked closely with my Instacart manager and dug deep into the analytics. I saw we were burning money on low-intent placements while spreading everything too thin across all products. I rebuilt the entire campaign from the ground up... optimized our ads and location spending, shifted focus to our top-selling products instead of trying to push every item, cleaned up listings, got far more precise with search-term targeting, and optimized bids in real time.

The turnaround was dramatic. I cut the budget in half while actually getting more traction and more eyeballs on us. Conversion rates and average order value climbed too. Instacart went from one of our biggest money losers to a real profit driver, and that $250,000 annual saving became a big piece of the overall $480k.

Seven years earlier, someone had taken over our official Instagram and Facebook accounts for SweetLeaf. Customers literally couldn’t find us when they searched our actual name... it was quietly killing our organic reach. I had to go through the complex legal process of proving ownership... trademark filings, detailed documentation, and multiple appeals through Meta’s system to get the accounts back.

It was incredibly difficult and most people never get them back. But I pushed it through and had both accounts fully restored in just 30 days. Once we had control again, customers could actually find us by name. That unlocked everything. I started investing real time into the channels... weekly promotions, giveaways, and authentic content. The community responded immediately: people began posting their own recipes, drinks, and everyday ways they were using SweetLeaf. That user-generated momentum is still carrying strong today... our social is still rocking. If I hadn’t gotten the accounts and the name back, the whole growth story could have been very different.

I caught wind of a big organic opportunity when Jennifer Aniston posted about promoting another product... a paid gig where she used our SweetLeaf Stevia as her sweetener. She actually posted it herself, and I found the post right away. I jumped on it immediately and piggy-backed off the moment by creating our own “Jennifer Aniston chocolate smoothie” recipe that uses just 5 drops of our Chocolate Sweet Drops for perfect sweetness.

We started calling it the celebrity smoothie... “breakfast like Jennifer Aniston” or “we hear she likes stevia in the morning.” This content lives mostly on TikTok from @sweetleafsweeteners... short recipe videos with captions like “Want to have breakfast like Jennifer Aniston? Make this chocolate smoothie with our celebrity-approved SweetLeaf Sweet Drops.”

I amplified the authentic moment across all our social channels with natural, genuine content and targeted sharing. The real buzz it created was incredible. That viral organic wave drove a record-breaking $75,000 sales weekend... the highest single weekend and month in company history... and we didn’t spend one extra dollar on paid ads to make it happen. Still to this day, people are coming from her original post straight to our site.

For Facebook and Instagram I leaned hard into smarter advertising tactics. I ran nonstop A/B tests on creatives, headlines, and calls-to-action, built custom lookalike audiences from our best customers, and launched dynamic product ads so each person saw exactly what they were most likely to buy.

These changes cut our cost-per-acquisition by 38% and delivered a consistent 4.2× return on ad spend. What used to be expensive guesswork became a precise, scalable system that helped drive the overall savings.

I also ran point on our $750,000 NASCAR sponsorship from start to finish. We activated at 7 races throughout the racing season and actually traveled to each one to fully activate our tent. This included nationwide TV commercials, on-track activations at the races, and in-store promotions partnered with Kroger across the country.

Before the racing even started, we tried to figure out what to give away besides just product... because it’s NASCAR and people expect food at the track. We decided on sugar free chocolate chip cookies. During the activations, our team members handed out cookies and product to anyone who came to our tent.

Liz Ammon (formerly of Hanes), our VP of Sales and Marketing, and the whole marketing team sat down and brainstormed. The consensus was chocolate chip cookies... and it was so fun to see actual lines forming for our cookies at the races.

We found a great local baker in Gilbert and worked closely with them to nail the perfect recipe. My team and I shot fun reels while we were there activating the tent. I also designed all the wraps on Ricky Stenhouse Jr’s race car along with our corporate partner Kroger.

I made sure every element actually tied back to sales goals and measurable results. The high-visibility campaign introduced SweetLeaf to entirely new audiences and delivered strong ROI that supported our overall growth.

I knew we needed to own our customer relationships long-term, so I improved our CRM and lead-capture systems on the new website. I made the communications with interactive emails. We used GIFs which linked to social media videos which made the emails more engaging and started better segmentation. In the end I grew our subscriber list from 45,000 to more than 70,000 high-quality contacts.

I led a full redesign of the SweetLeaf website to make it faster, more mobile-friendly, and actually convert visitors into buyers. At the same time I updated every product label for better shelf appeal and strengthened our presence and rankings on Amazon.

Designed the entire product lineup and refreshed brand messaging, packaging, and marketing materials across the company. They are still using the same packing today.