Star-Batt: From Prototype to Sold Out on Meta Ads
Most brands hire a marketer once they have sales. Star-Batt brought me in when all they had was a prototype and an idea. Two years later, Meta ads are still the engine behind their growth.
The starting point
Star-Batt builds portable battery systems that power Starlink anywhere, packed in a rugged Pelican case with 24+ hours of runtime on a charge. When we started there was no store history, no customer list, no pixel data and no reviews. Just a prototype and a founding team who believed in it.
That's the hardest spot to advertise from. Meta's algorithm learns from purchases, and there weren't any yet.
What we did
- Kickstarter first. Star-Batt launched on Kickstarter, and we ran Meta ads straight to the campaign page about six months before product shipped. The pre-orders proved demand, funded production and gave us real buyer data to build on before the store opened.
- Sell the problem, not the specs. People don't buy batteries. They buy not losing power when it matters. The creative led with that.
- Let the data pick the winners. Test angles fast, cut what doesn't convert, scale what does.
The results
The first production run sold out in month one. Since then Meta ads have stayed the main growth channel, and I've been with the team the whole way.
Two years in, orders are still months out. Sales are coming in faster than the team can build units, which is the kind of problem every brand wants.
The part I didn't see coming: the Meta ads didn't just reach consumers. On a recent podcast, one of Star-Batt's co-founders credited the Meta ad strategy with landing Star-Batt contracts with government buyers like NASA, SOCOM and other Department of Defense branches. To be clear, I'm not involved in those contracts. That's all the Star-Batt team. But it shows how far good ads reach. You're not only hitting customers, you're getting in front of buyers you'd never think to target.
Today about 80% of sales go to consumers and 20% to commercial and government buyers, and the company is working to flip that ratio.
Hear it from the co-founder
One of Star-Batt's co-founders talks about me and the company on this podcast: watch on YouTube.
The takeaway
You don't need years of sales history to make Meta work. You need a real product, an offer people want, and a plan to build data from day one. A Kickstarter campaign did that for Star-Batt.
Launching something new?
The earlier I'm in, the more I can build the right way from the start.