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Partnership deck · 2026

Better creative. A cleaner path to checkout.

I work with ecommerce brands on the two things that tend to move revenue first: the ads people stop for, and the pages that convert them.

Steve Miguel
Steve Miguel
Head Ecom Coach, Ecom Capital · Senior Meta media buyer · Melbourne and Saigon
Meta Partner Shopify Verified $16M+ Meta spend managed 13 years in the AU market ShopX network
Steve Miguel presenting at Reed Gift Fairs Melbourne
01 · The short version

Thirteen years buying media here, and I still run stores of my own.

I started in paid social at NAB in 2013, when Facebook ads were still a column on the right hand side. Since then I have run seven figure budgets inside Melbourne agencies, built my own Shopify brands with my own money, and coached founders full time. The advice I give brands comes out of accounts I am still in this week.

$16M+
Meta ad spend managed across agency and client accounts
8fig
Mid eight figures in online revenue generated for clients
3×
Seven figure Shopify stores of my own, with Milestone awards
2,000+
Brands coached through the Ecom Capital program
13yrs
Inside the Australian market, from enterprise to D2C

Three of my stores were built in the Pilates, sleep and gadget niches, in under five years, with minimal overhead and one freelancer. I am not a passionate Pilates person. The wins came from positioning, offer, margin, creative and a product page that does its job.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO02
02 · How I think

I build, scale and structure ecom brands that cashflow.

That line has been on my profile for years and it is not a slogan. It is the filter I put every decision through, on my own stores and on the accounts I work in. I am not here for the noise, I am here for leverage.

MARGIN > VANITY REVENUE

The number you bank

A $2M year that nets nothing is a job with extra steps. I would rather grow slower on numbers that hold up after COGS, shipping and spend.

OWNED > RENTED

First party data

Email, SMS and owned audiences are the part of the business nobody can change on you overnight. Paid social is rented attention, so build something underneath it.

EQUITY > ATTENTION

Brand that compounds

Short term attention is buyable by anyone with a card. What people remember about you is not. Both matter, but only one of them keeps working when you pause spend.

Luxury is not Lambos. It is control. Control of cash flow, decisions, skills, and your head when things get cooked.

Steve Miguel · LinkedIn
LinkedIn

Ecommerce Coach · Meta Ads · 8 figures generated for clients · Meta Partner · Shopify Verified

Instagram

Helping others get better at ecommerce, one lesson at a time. Ecom coach. 3x seven figure founder. Verified by Shopify.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO03
03 · The market I know

Thirteen years in this market, from three different seats.

  • 01

    The enterprise seat

    National Australia Bank in 2013, on internal Meta budgets before paid social was a department anywhere here. Then Sensis, with 250+ Australian small businesses and about $80K a month in spend across them. Two very different ends of Australian advertising, back before D2C was a category.

  • 02

    The agency seat

    Social Status and Synq Digital, on seven and eight figure Australian brands. Homewares, fashion, sport, supplements, hospitality, property and services. Seven figure budgets, with case studies behind the work.

  • 03

    My own money

    Three seven figure Shopify stores built here, in Australian niches, at Australian CPMs, with Australian shipping costs and Australian margins. Nobody reimbursed me for the tests that did not work, which is a good teacher.

What I tend to check first

  • Whether the CAC and CPM targets are realistic for your category here, rather than a US number borrowed off a podcast
  • The Australian calendar. Click Frenzy, EOFY, a Black Friday that lands in summer, and Christmas shipping cut offs that quietly break trust
  • How this market behaves. Shipping sensitivity, buy now pay later expectations, and how much review proof it wants before committing
  • Who is sitting in your Ad Library, how they price, and what they have been running for months
  • Who I can call. Local brand owners, the Reed Gift Fairs crowd and the Ecom Capital community are usually a message away
Steve MiguelCreative + CRO04
04 · Track record

Local brands I have run media for.

Through Synq Digital (2021 to 2024) and Social Status (2020 to 2021), working across seven and eight figure Australian accounts with seven figure ad budgets. Case studies available on request.

David JonesDavid Jones brands
FILA AustraliaFILA Australia
Early SettlerEarly Settler
WilsonWilson Tennis
Black PepperBlack Pepper
Melrose HealthMelrose Health
Ray WhiteRay White
Moon Dog BrewingMoon Dog Brewing
Mr MiyagiMr Miyagi
World Fitness AustraliaWorld Fitness AU
Scrub LabScrub Lab Clothing
Review Australia
Nutra Organics · Johansen

Fashion, homewares, sport, supplements, hospitality, property, services. Different categories, same job: find the angle this market responds to, then clear whatever is stopping the sale.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO05
05 · The path

Enterprise, agency, then my own money on the line.

2013 – 2014
Social Media Associate, National Australia Bank
Ran internal Meta campaigns on seven figure budgets when paid social was still an emerging channel.
2014 – 2017
Senior Social Ads Specialist, then Digital Account Manager, Sensis
Portfolio of 250+ Australian clients and more than $80K a month in ad spend. Subject matter expert for social.
2018 – 2020
Paid Social Manager, Digital Next
Ecommerce and lead gen across Facebook and Instagram.
2020 – 2021
Head of Paid Social, Social Status
Six and seven figure brands, contributing to mid eight figure revenue growth.
2021 – 2024
Senior Media Buyer, Synq Digital
Seven and eight figure Australian brands. Seven figure budgets under management.
2020 – now
Founder, three seven figure Shopify stores
Built and scaled with my own capital. Verified by Shopify, three Milestone awards. One exit.
2024 – now
Head Ecom Coach, Ecom Capital
Coaching founders from zero through $10K, $30K, $50K and $100K+ months, week in week out.
Steve MiguelCreative + CRO06
06 · Before all this

I spent years reading rooms before I ever read an ad account.

  • Reading a crowd is reading a market. You cannot force a song, the same way you cannot force an ad. You watch what the room gives back, adjust, and double down on whatever is working, in real time.
  • Rapport is trust. You get a few seconds with people who do not know you. If you do not hook attention early, you have lost them. A feed is no different.
  • Selling is energy transfer. A DJ does not sell with words. Timing and emotion do the work, and you have to read what people want before they say it.
Steve Miguel behind the decks

Melbourne, before ecommerce. Culture Kings, clubs and a lot of late nights.

There was a night the USB would not load and I nearly did not play. Fixed it at the last minute, and ten minutes in the whole room flipped. Business feels the same. One creative, one product, one decision. Most people quit right before that moment.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO07
07 · What I keep seeing

Most brands are not short on traffic. They are short on angles and long on friction.

01

Creative is the bottleneck

A handful of assets a month, then confusion when CPA drifts up. Targeting stopped being the lever years ago. Creative supply is the lever now.

02

The ad account is not the scoreboard

Decisions get made on platform ROAS while contribution margin quietly shrinks. Measurement has to live outside Meta.

03

Pages built for browsing

Paid traffic lands on a page written for the brand, not for a stranger who just saw one ad and has one question left.

04

Offer treated as a pricing job

Bundles, shipping and guarantees get decided in a finance meeting. They are media decisions. They change what an ad can promise.

In this market the gap is almost always creative volume. Brands here run good products through too few angles, then blame the platform when the account goes flat. That is the cheapest growth available to most Australian brands right now.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO08
08 · What I do

Two levers, pulled together.

A great ad on a leaky page just burns money faster. A perfect page with no new angles goes flat within a quarter. I work on both, in the same sprint.

LEVER 01

Creative

More angles, produced faster, written the way your customer actually talks.

  • Customer language research before anyone opens Figma
  • Angles first, ads second. Each angle kills one objection
  • Volume without the agency cost, using AI where it holds up
  • A fixed testing cadence your team can keep running
LEVER 02

CRO

Take the friction out of the distance between the ad and the card details.

  • Offer and bundle structure that the ad can actually promise
  • Product pages rewritten around the last remaining objection
  • Advertorials and pre landers to qualify paid traffic
  • Checkout and shipping expectations set before the click
Steve MiguelCreative + CRO09
09 · Creative

How I build the creative engine.

STEP 01

Mine the language

Reddit threads, Amazon reviews, your support tickets and returns. People write down their pain points, objections and exact wording for free. That becomes the copy.

STEP 02

Build angles, not ads

Each angle gets one hook, one promise and one objection it exists to kill. Ten angles beat fifty variations of the same idea.

STEP 03

Produce at volume

AI assisted statics and UGC scripts so cost per concept stays low. I scrape emerging niches for formats before they saturate, so we arrive early instead of copying.

STEP 04

Test on a cadence

Fixed weekly rhythm. Clear win and kill rules. Winners get iterated into a family, losers get cut without a debate.

The game has shifted from making ads to being good at directing the research and the inputs. First to a format takes the market share.

Steve Miguel
Steve MiguelCreative + CRO10
10 · Creative

Formats earning their spend right now.

Tested across multiple client brands last quarter. The first two outperformed everything else on sales and ROAS.

01

Us vs Them

Clear contrast against the obvious alternative. Instant attention, and it does the positioning work in the first frame.

02

Four square statics

Lifestyle, proof, benefit and scarcity in one frame. Cheap to produce, easy to iterate, reads fast in feed.

03

UGC

Social proof that reads native. Scripted properly it qualifies the buyer instead of just entertaining them.

04

VSL

For considered and higher ticket purchases where the customer needs the full argument before they will click.

05

Advertorials and pre landers

Qualify paid traffic before it hits the product page. This is what changed the economics on cold traffic for the brands I run it on.

06

Bundle led creative

Show the bundle in the ad and you future pace a bigger cart. They land thinking which one, not whether.

The formats change. The method does not. Pick the angle from what the customer already says, put it in the format that carries it best, then let the test decide instead of the room.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO11
11 · CRO

Where the money leaks after the click.

None of these need a budget increase. Most of them are a week of work.

✕

Shipping surprise

They clicked thinking $49.95, then saw $49.95 plus $9.95. Trust breaks in that second. Pre frame free shipping in the ad copy and the price feels clean on arrival.

✕

No bundle on the page

The ad showed one product, so the customer arrives anchored to one product. AOV gets set before they land, not at the cart.

✕

Page written for the brand

Founder story above the fold, objection handling nowhere. The buyer has one question left and the page never answers it.

✕

Cold traffic sent straight to product

No advertorial, no pre lander, no qualification. You pay full price for a click that was never going to convert today.

✕

Offer that cannot carry an ad

If the offer has nothing to promise, the creative has nothing to say. Offer work is upstream of creative work.

✕

Reviews and proof buried

The proof exists, it just sits below three scrolls of lifestyle imagery where nobody paying for traffic will see it.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO12
12 · How I report

Profit first, not account structure.

We had a heated internal debate about CBO versus ABO, broad versus stacked, cost caps versus lowest cost. Everyone had data. Everyone had conviction. The client does not lose sleep over how we structure the account. They care whether the setup makes money.

Steve Miguel

Contribution margin

After COGS, shipping, fees and ad spend. This is the number the business actually banks, and the one I optimise to.

MER and blended CAC

Total revenue against total spend. It survives attribution changes and it is the only view that scales cleanly.

Ad account metrics

ROAS, CPM, hook rate and hold rate. Useful as diagnostics for creative, never used as the scoreboard.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO13
13 · Proof

Results from the last two years.

Client work through Ecom Capital coaching and consulting. Screenshots and full case studies available on a call.

$4Ka day

Apparel brand
Stuck at $300 to $400 a day. Scaled to $4K days within 60 days.

$100Ka month

From absolute zero
Store hit $100K months in three months and picked up an Ecom Capital Milestone award.

1.7→2.2ROAS

One week of changes
Small structural tweaks going into Black Friday, no budget increase.

9 moto $1M

First millionaire built
Nine months from starting work together, from zero revenue.

Most coaching and retainer models only take a business on once it is already at $30K a month, because they want proof of product market fit first. I have spent two years doing the harder version, taking brands from zero. That is where the systems came from.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO14
14 · In the room

On stage, in the warehouse, in the accounts.

Steve Miguel on stage at ShopX Vietnam
ShopX 2025, Hanoi. CRO and retention, first panel of the event.
Reed Gift Fairs Melbourne guest speaker announcement for Steve Miguel
Reed Gift Fairs Melbourne, guest speaker
Shopify milestone award for 10,000 orders
Shopify milestone, 10,000 orders
Steve Miguel presenting a UGC creative breakdown
UGC teardown, live creative session
Steve Miguel presenting to a full room at the Ecom Capital Black Friday event
Ecom Capital Black Friday preparation event, Gold Coast.
Steve Miguel visiting the FFOrder fulfilment warehouse in Shenzhen
FFOrder warehouse, Shenzhen
Steve MiguelCreative + CRO15
15 · The network behind me

I do not work on your brand alone.

ShopX is the APAC commerce network I speak at and help build. It is how a brand I work with gets more than one person's opinion.

  • ShopX 2025, Hanoi. On the first panel of the event, talking CRO and what was working at the time. Back for ShopX 2026 in Saigon this September.
  • Coffee chats and buildathons. Regular Saigon sessions on offers, UGC, email with AI and building store tools. Ecom North and ShopX chats in Singapore.
  • Supply chain access. Factory tours in Shenzhen with FFOrder, and the Vietnam Global Sourcing Expo. Sourcing and 3PL introductions when your bottleneck turns out to be fulfilment.
  • App and platform partners. GemPages, PushOwl and the wider Shopify app ecosystem, plus operators running eight figure brands across Southeast Asia.
The ShopX community on stage in Hanoi
Steve MiguelShopX network16
16 · Working together

Four ways in, depending on where you are.

OPTION A

Audit

Two weeks. Full teardown of the ad account, creative library, offer, product pages and margin structure. You get a prioritised 90 day plan whether or not we keep working together.

Fixed fee
OPTION B

Creative partner

Monthly. Angle research, concept volume, scripts and statics, plus the testing cadence. Runs with your team or with mine. This is where most brands see movement first.

Monthly retainer
OPTION C

Growth partner

Media buying, creative and CRO owned end to end. Reported on contribution margin. Structured as a base plus performance so we are on the same side of the number.

Retainer + performance
OPTION D

Advisory

Fortnightly call and Slack access. I review your tests, your pages and your numbers, and your team executes. Lightest touch, lowest cost.

Monthly, light touch

Scope and fee get set after the audit call, once I have seen the account and the margin. I would rather quote something I can actually deliver on than guess from the outside.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO17
17 · The plan

What the first 90 days look like.

DAYS 1 – 14

Audit and baseline

Ad account, creative library, analytics, product pages, offer and margin. Customer language research starts in week one. We agree the numbers we are going to be judged on, in writing.

DAYS 15 – 45

First wave shipped

First creative wave live across the new angles. Top three CRO fixes shipped. Measurement moved off platform ROAS and onto MER and contribution margin.

DAYS 46 – 90

Scale and hand over

Scale what won, cut what did not, iterate winners into families. Testing rhythm documented so your team can keep running it whether or not I am in the account.

What good looks like at day 90: a repeatable creative pipeline producing new angles every week, three to five conversion fixes shipped and measured, and a reporting view your finance person trusts.

The first two to three weeks are for learning, not for a record month. If we try to make month one the best month ever, we will not learn anything worth keeping.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO18
18 · What I need from you

Four things, and this works.

  • Access. Ad account, Shopify, analytics. I cannot fix what I cannot see, and a read only view for the first week is enough to start.
  • Real numbers. COGS, shipping cost, target margin. Optimising to ROAS without margin is how brands scale themselves broke.
  • One person who can approve creative quickly. Creative volume dies in approval queues. One decision maker, a two day turnaround, and the whole engine moves.
  • Room to test. A learning budget that is not the same budget you need to hit the month. Small, ringfenced, consistent.
Steve Miguel speaking at an Ecom Capital client event

Ecom Capital client event. Black Friday preparation session.

Not a fit if

You want someone to just run the ad account and leave the creative and the pages alone. That is where the growth is.

Not a fit if

The margin will not carry paid acquisition. I will tell you that on the first call rather than take the retainer.

Good fit if

You are already selling, you know your numbers, and you want a second operator in the account who has done it with their own money.

Steve MiguelCreative + CRO19
Next step

If you are building something real and playing long term, we will get along.

Book a 45 minute call. Bring the ad account and the margin sheet. You will leave with three specific things to change, whether or not we work together.

Book the audit call linkedin.com/in/stevemiguel instagram.com/stevemiguel
Steve MiguelHead Ecom Coach, Ecom CapitalMelbourne · Saigon
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