Solved: Ad Campaign Clicks, No Purchases - What's Wrong?

Hi there,

Thanks for your enquiry. It's a very common and frustrating problem to see clicks but no sales. The good news is that this pattern usually provides clear clues as to what's going wrong, and the issues are almost always fixable.

In short, I don't think your ads are the main problem. Your ad is getting a decent amount of clicks. The problem is almost certainly what happens *after* the click, which usually boils down to the audience quality, your website experience, and the offer itself. Let's break it down.

We'll need to look at your Campaign Objective... This is probably the biggest issue

First thing that jumps out at me is that €35.53 CPM (Cost Per Mille, or cost per 1,000 impressions). That is quite high for most markets, especially if you're not in a hyper-competitive niche. Combined with zero purchases, this tells me one thing with about 90% certainty: you've likely selected the wrong campaign objective.

I'd bet you're running a 'Reach', 'Brand Awareness', or maybe even a 'Traffic' campaign. You have to understand how the Meta algorithm works. When you give it an objective, it does *exactly* what you ask it to do, ruthlessly and efficiently.

• -> If you say "get me the most Reach", the algorithm goes and finds the cheapest possible people to show your ad to. These are users who scroll endlessly, never click, and certainly never buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason.
• -> If you say "get me the most Link Clicks", it will find people who are serial clickers. They click on everything out of habit or curiosity but have very low purchase intent. They'll land on your site, browse for a second, and bounce.

You have essentially paid Facebook to find you a perfect audience of non-customers. It's a harsh truth, but it's the most common mistake I see. You're getting clicks, yes, but from the lowest quality segment of your target audience.

The Fix: You MUST change your campaign objective to 'Sales' and choose 'Purchase' as the conversion event. This tells the algorithm, "I don't care about cheap impressions or clicks. Go and find me the people within my target audience who are most similar to others who have actually bought something before." It is more expensive on the front-end (your CPM and CPC might even go up initially), but it's the only way to find people with actual buying intent. Without this, you are just throwing money away for vanity metrics that don't lead to sales.

I've seen this exact situation countless times. One medical job matching SaaS client we worked with had a £100 cost to acquire a user. It was crippling them. The first thing we did was restructure their campaigns to focus purely on conversion objectives, alongside other optimisations. We brought their CPA down to just £7. That's the power of giving the algorithm the right instruction.

I'd say you need to diagnose your funnel leak...

Your CTR of 6.68% is actually pretty strong. Seriously, that's a good number. It means the visual and the headline of your ad are compelling enough to make people stop scrolling and click. So, the ad itself isn't the failure point. The failure is happening somewhere between the click and the checkout.

You have 71 people who were interested enough to visit your site, yet not one of them bought. That's a 0% conversion rate. You need to become a detective and figure out where in the journey you're losing them. You need to follow the data.

Here’s how you diagnose it. Look at your website analytics (like Google Analytics or Shopify Analytics) for the traffic coming from this specific ad campaign:

1. High Bounce Rate on Landing Page? Do the 71 visitors land on your homepage or product page and then immediately leave? If so, the problem is a disconnect between your ad and your landing page. The ad might be promising something your page doesn't deliver, or the page itself is slow, confusing, or untrustworthy.


2. Lots of Product Page Views, but No 'Add to Carts'? If people are looking at the products but not adding them to the basket, the issue is with the product presentation. This is the most common drop-off point. It could be:
   • Poor Product Photos: Are they blurry, dark, or just plain unappealing? For physical products, you need professional-looking shots, lifestyle images (showing the product in use), and maybe even video. I remember a client selling cleaning products who saw a 190% revenue increase largely by improving their product imagery and creative.
   • Weak Product Descriptions: Do you just list features, or do you sell the benefit? Nobody buys a drill because they want a drill; they buy it because they want a hole. What problem does your product solve? What feeling does it create?
   • Unclear Pricing or High Shipping Costs: Is the price clearly displayed? Are you surprising them with a massive shipping fee at the checkout? Be transparent upfront.


3. Lots of 'Add to Carts', but No Purchases? This is called cart abandonment. If you see this, the problem is with your checkout process. Is it too long and complicated? Do you force people to create an account? Are there unexpected fees? Do you not offer common payment methods like PayPal or Apple Pay?

Mapping this out is the only way to stop guessing and start fixing. To help you visualise this diagnostic process, here's a flowchart of the customer journey:

You probably should fix your offer... it's rarely good enough

Let's be brutally honest. Even with the right campaign objective and a perfect website, most campaigns fail for one simple reason: the offer is weak.

An 'offer' isn't just the product itself. It's the entire value proposition. It’s the product, the price, the messaging, the angle, and the reason someone should buy it from *you*, right *now*, instead of from a million other places online (or just closing the tab).

You need to stop thinking about your product's features and start thinking about the customer's nightmare. Your customer doesn't have a 'lack of your product' problem. They have a real, urgent, and expensive problem that they're trying to solve. Your product is just a potential solution. Does your messaging reflect that?

Let's take an example. Say you're selling high-quality, handcrafted leather wallets.

• A Weak Offer: "Handcrafted Leather Wallet - Made from genuine leather. Multiple card slots. Buy now for £50." -> This is generic. It describes features. It creates no urgency or desire.
• A Strong Offer: "Tired of bulky, dad-wallets ruining the line of your trousers? The 'Slimline' wallet carries 10 cards but feels like it's not even there. It's the last wallet you'll ever need to buy. We guarantee it for 25 years." -> This speaks to a pain point (bulky wallets), presents a clear solution (slim design), and reduces risk (long guarantee). It tells a story.

The number one thing you should do is define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) not by demographics ("men aged 25-40"), but by their *pain*. Who is this person that desperately needs what you sell? What keeps them up at night? Once you know that, you can craft a message they simply can't ignore. For one eCommerce client with a subscription box service, we honed their offer and messaging to focus on the 'joy of discovery' rather than just 'getting stuff in a box'. That small shift helped them acheive a 1000% Return On Ad Spend.

Your £48 spend hasn't brought a sale, which is a signal. It's market feedback telling you that for the 71 people who clicked, the value wasn't clear enough or compelling enough to get their credit card out. You either need to improve the offer or find a different audience that values your current offer more.

You'll need to build trust... fast

When someone clicks an ad from Facebook, they land on your site as a complete stranger. Their guard is up. They're looking for any reason to not trust you and go back to scrolling. Your website has about 3-5 seconds to convince them you are a legitimate, trustworthy business.

Many new eCommerce stores fail here. They look amateurish, and that scares customers away. Here are the non-negotiables you need:

• Professional Design: Does your site look clean, modern, and uncluttered? Or is it a mess of different colours and fonts? First impressions are everything.
• High-Quality Imagery: I mentioned this before, but it's worth repeating. Grainy, low-effort photos scream "scam" or "dropshipper". Invest in good photography. One client selling women's apparel saw a 691% return after we helped them revamp their creative, with a huge focus on professional and aspirational lifestyle imagery.
• Social Proof: Where are the customer reviews? Testimonials? User-generated photos? People trust other people far more than they trust your marketing copy. If you're new and have no sales, offer the product to some people for free in exchange for an honest review and photo to get you started.
• Clear Contact Information: Do you have a physical address (even a PO Box), a customer service email, and a phone number? Hiding this information makes you look shady.
• Trust Badges: Show logos of secure payment options like Visa, Mastercard, PayPal. Have clear policies for shipping and returns. Make the customer feel safe.

Go through your website as if you were a skeptical first-time customer. Would *you* feel comfortable entering your credit card details? If the answer is anything but a resounding 'yes', you have work to do.

To give you a clear, actionable path forward, here is a summary of my main recommendations:

This might all feel like a lot, and it is. Getting paid ads to work profitably involves getting a lot of different pieces right, from the technical setup of the campaign to the deep psychology of your customer and your offer. It's not just about pushing a few buttons on Facebook.

You've spent £48 and got a valuable lesson. Now it's about applying that lesson methodically. Working with an expert can obviously speed this process up dramatically, as we can often spot the biggest issue in minutes rather than weeks of testing. We've spent years running campaigns for all sorts of businesses, from eCommerce stores to B2B software companies, and we've seen these patterns play out time and time again.

If you'd like to get on a quick, completely free consultation call, we could take a look at your website and ad account together. I'm confident we could give you a handful of actionable steps to take right away that will make a real difference. It's a chance for you to get some expert advice with no strings attached.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh