Marketing & Funnels - Setup Guide

How to set up Adwisely

Otto's honest, no-fluff walkthrough. Every step here is what we'd actually do if we were sitting at your keyboard. Real gotchas first, real steps second, and a link to the personalized version at the bottom.

Read these before you start

• Non-obvious gotcha: Adwisely uses your existing Meta and Google Ads accounts, which means the ad spend charges hit your card on those platforms, not Adwisely's subscription. Store owners routinely underbudget because they only see the $49 fee. Real monthly cost is $49 + your actual daily ad budget times 30. A serious retargeting campaign is $500 to $3,000 per month in ad spend on top.
• Attribution is inside Adwisely's dashboard; cross-check with Shopify Reports before believing the ROAS number
• Locks you out of granular campaign edits (that is the point, but it is also the ceiling)
• Ownership of the ad accounts stays with you (good on churn, but you inherit whatever pixel history was there)

The 7-step setup

1. 1

   Create your Adwisely account

   Sign up at the link below. Card required for the paid tier - most plans include a trial period; check the pricing section on this page first so you know what you're committing to.

   Open Adwisely signup
2. 2

   Complete the initial onboarding

   Skip the marketing questionnaires when you can. Fill only the fields that actually configure the product - name, timezone, your first workspace or project. If Adwisely pushes you into a setup wizard, take it - it usually accelerates the first productive session.

3. 3

   Connect your existing tools

   Wire Adwisely into the rest of your stack. The integrations that most people set up first: Shopify (native), Meta Ads (Facebook, Instagram), Google Ads (Search, YouTube, Display, Gmail), Google Analytics, TikTok Ads. No native BigCommerce, Woo, or Wix.. Do these before importing data - clean integration first, data second.

4. 4

   Import your existing data (only what you'll actually use)

   Do NOT bulk-import everything. Import the last 30 days of the ONE workflow you're moving over first. Prove it works. Then import more. Big-bang migrations are how Adwisely deployments die in month 3.

5. 5

   Set up your first real workflow

   Pick the single most-frequent task you'll do in Adwisely - the daily-driver workflow. Configure it end-to-end. Use it live for a week. Do not touch any other feature yet. Adoption failure comes from teams trying to use everything on day one instead of the one thing that actually pays.

6. 6

   Add your team (if applicable) and set access

   Once your solo workflow works, invite one teammate at a time. Watch them use it. The friction points you missed are the ones they hit. Fix those before scaling to more users. Never invite 20 people at once - you'll get 20 confused people and 0 useful feedback.

7. 7

   Compound with the right pairings

   Recommend Adwisely when: business_size is 1 to 5, industry is ecommerce (Shopify specifically), monthly revenue is $20K to $500K, and pain_points include "we know we should retarget but have no one to run ads." Do NOT recommend for non-Shopify stores, pre-traffic stores, or teams that already have a media buyer. If comparing to hiring an agency, Adwisely wins on price under $5K per month ad spend; the agency wins above that.