Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at the situation you've described. It's a classic scenario and one I've seen play out many times, especially for accounts that are starting to spend seriously. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on what's likely happening and how you can get things back on track.
Tbh, the 'core setup' classification is almost certainly a red herring. The real issue is that the tactics that get you to your first level of success often break down completely when you try to scale to a budget like $1k a day. The good news is that this is a fixable problem, but it requires a more disciplined and strategic approach to your campaigns.
TLDR;
- The 'core setup' thing is a distraction. It's a backend Meta classification and almost certainly not the cause of your performance drop. Don't waste time on it.
- Your high CPL and drop in leads are classic symptoms of audience saturation and ad fatigue. This happens when you scale spend without refreshing your creative and targeting strategy.
- Stop thinking about your customer in broad demographic terms. You need to define your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) by their most urgent, expensive "nightmare" problem. This is the foundation for all effective advertising.
- Your campaign objective ('Maximise number of conversion leads') is correct. The problem isn't the setting; it's the inputs you're giving the algorithm (stale creative and exhausted audiences).
- This letter includes a fully functional LTV (Lifetime Value) calculator to help you understand what you can truly afford to pay for a lead, and a visual flowchart for structuring your audience testing.
We'll need to look at the real culprits: Ad Fatigue and Audience Saturation...
First things first, let's get the 'core setup' issue out of the way. It's highly unlikely this has anything to do with your performance drop. These are often internal Meta classifications that have little to no bearing on how the ad auction works for you. The support team's advice is, frankly, useless – telling you a campaign is "working because it's spending" is nonsense. Their job is to close tickets, not solve your business problems. The fact that your performance tanked right after the classification is almost certainly a coincidence, a correlation not a causation.
The real issue, especially at a $1k/day spend, is almost always a combination of two things: Ad Fatigue and Audience Saturation. Think of it like this: you found a great fishing spot (your audience) and a brilliant lure (your ad creative). For a while, you were catching fish easily. But now you're fishing that same small spot, with the same lure, every single day, for hours on end. The fish have seen the lure a dozen times; they're either bored of it, wary of it, or you've already caught all the ones that were ever going to bite. Your CPL goes up because you're spending more time and effort (money) for each fish you catch.
At $1k/day, you burn through audiences and creative far faster than you do at, say, $100/day. The algorithm is showing your ads to the same group of people over and over again. After a while, the Click-Through Rate (CTR) drops, Meta's algorithm sees people aren't engaging, and it starts charging you more to show the ad. This is the scalability plateau, and pushing past it means you can no longer rely on a single winning ad or audience. You have to build a system for continuous testing and iteration.
I'd say you need to define your customer by their pain, not their profile...
Before you can fix your ads, you have to get brutally honest about who you're talking to. Forget the vague, demographic-based profiles. "Small business owners" or "Marketing Managers in the UK" tells you absolutely nothing useful. This kind of broad targeting leads to generic, ignorable ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain.
You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. Your ideal customer isn't just a job title; they're a person staring at a problem that's costing them money, causing them stress, or threatening their job. For one of our B2B software clients, the ICP wasn't "HR Managers". It was "The overwhelmed HR Manager at a 100-person tech company who spends 15 hours a week manually processing holiday requests and is terrified of making a payroll error." See the difference? One is a label; the other is a story filled with pain.
What is the specific nightmare your service solves? Is it a sales director terrified of missing their quarterly target because their lead pipeline is dry? Is it a finance controller manually reconciling invoices at 10 PM on a Friday? Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you've isolated that nightmare, everything else becomes easier. You'll know what to say in your ads, what kind of content to create, and where to find these people.
This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire advertising strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending another pound on ads. You're just gambling.
You probably should refresh your creative to talk to that pain...
With a clear understanding of your customer's nightmare, you can now craft a message they physically can't ignore. Your current ads are likely stale and have stopped working. The goal now is to move away from feature-dumping and start talking about transformation. For lead generation using Instant Forms, the Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) framework is incredibly effective.
1. Problem: Hit them with the pain point you identified. Call it out directly in the first line of your ad copy. "Struggling to keep your sales pipeline full?"
2. Agitate: Pour salt on the wound. Remind them of the consequences of not solving the problem. "Are your reps wasting time on dead-end leads while your competitors are closing deals? Another missed forecast meeting is just around the corner."
3. Solve: Introduce your service as the clear, simple solution. This is where you present your Instant Form as the first step to relief. "Get 20+ qualified B2B leads delivered to your inbox every week, guaranteed. Fill out the form below to get our free guide on 'The 5-Step Pipeline Fix'."
This is a world away from a generic "We are a lead generation agency. Click here." The first ad speaks to a deep frustration; the second is just noise. People don't buy services; they buy outcomes. They buy a solution to a problem that's keeping them up at night.
Ad Copy Transformation: From Generic to Pain-Driven
| Framework Stage | Before: Generic & Stale ❌ | After: Problem-Agitate-Solve ✅ |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | Expert B2B Lead Generation | Sales Pipeline Running on Empty? |
| Primary Text | Our agency helps businesses find new customers. We use advanced strategies to deliver high-quality leads. Contact us to learn more about our services. | Tired of your sales team complaining about lead quality? It's a tough pill to swallow when you miss your quarterly target because the pipeline is full of dead ends. We help B2B service firms get in front of decision-makers who are ready to buy. |
| Call to Action | Learn More | Get 20+ Qualified Leads/Mo |
Notice how the 'After' version is entirely focused on the customer's world and their problems. We haven't even mentioned our company name. We've just shown that we understand their struggle and have a direct path to a solution. This is what gets clicks from the right people and pre-qualifies them before they even open your Instant Form, which in turn improves the quality of leads you recieve.
You'll need a structured way to test audiences...
Your creative is only half the battle. The other half is getting it in front of the right people. Relying on one or two audiences is a recipe for failure at scale. You need a structured approach to audience testing, organised by the marketing funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).
Here’s how I would prioritise testing audiences for a lead generation campaign:
- ToFu (Top of Funnel - Cold Audiences): This is where you find new people.
- -> Detailed Targeting: Start here. But be smart about it. Don't just target "Business". Target interests that your ideal customer would have. What software do they use (e.g., Salesforce, HubSpot)? What publications do they read (e.g., Harvard Business Review)? Who do they follow (e.g., specific industry influencers)? Layering these can be powerful.
- -> Lookalike Audiences: Once you have enough lead data (you need at least 100, but more is much better), create Lookalikes. The most powerful will be a Lookalike of your existing customers or highest-quality leads. This is literally telling Meta "go find me more people like my best customers". Prioritise lookalikes in this order: Previous Customers -> Submitted Lead Form -> People who opened the form but didn't submit -> Website Visitors.
- MoFu/BoFu (Middle/Bottom of Funnel - Warm/Hot Audiences): This is for retargeting. These people already know you.
- -> Lead Form Engagers: Target people who opened your Instant Form but didn't complete it. They were interested enough to click; they just need another nudge.
- -> Video Viewers: If you use video ads, retarget people who watched a significant portion (e.g., 50% or more). They're clearly engaged with your message.
- -> Website Visitors: If you have a website (even if it's not for conversions), retargeting visitors is a must. They've shown intent by checking you out.
- -> Previous Customers: Don't forget your existing client base. You can use ads to upsell them, cross-sell, or ask for referrals.
You should have separate campaigns for ToFu and MoFu/BoFu. The messaging needs to be different. You don't talk to a complete stranger (ToFu) the same way you talk to someone who almost filled out your form (BoFu). By structuring your account this way, you can control your budget, tailor your message, and systematically identify which audiences are driving profitable leads and which are just wasting money.
Priority 1: Detailed Targeting
Start here. Target specific interests, behaviors, job titles related to your ICP's pain points.
Priority 2: Lookalikes (of best customers)
Once you have data. Create 1% Lookalikes of your customer list or high-quality leads.
Priority 3: Broad Lookalikes
Test wider Lookalikes (3-5%) or Lookalikes of less valuable actions (e.g., website visitors).
Video Viewers
Retarget users who watched 50%+ of your video ads. They are engaged.
Social Engagers
People who liked, commented, or shared posts on your Facebook/Instagram page.
Lead Form Opens
Highest priority. Retarget people who opened your Instant Form but didn't submit.
Website Visitors
Retarget recent website visitors (last 30-90 days). A powerful signal of intent.
You'll need to know what a lead is actually worth...
Your CPL has "drastically increased," but this is only half the story. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" Without knowing this, you're flying blind. You might be panicking over a CPL of $80 when, in reality, you could profitably spend $300. The key to this is understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
LTV tells you the total profit you can expect to make from an average customer over the entire duration of your relationship. Once you know your LTV, you can determine your maximum allowable Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC), and from there, your maximum allowable CPL. Let's do the maths.
The formula is simpler than it sounds:
LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account Per Month * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate %
Let's take an example. Say you run a B2B service where clients pay you £1,000 per month, your gross margin is 70%, and you lose about 5% of your clients each month (your churn rate).
LTV = (£1,000 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £700 / 0.05 = £14,000
In this example, each new customer is worth £14,000 in gross profit to your business. A healthy LTV:CAC ratio is typically at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £14,000 / 3 = ~£4,666 to acquire a single customer. If your sales team converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £466 per qualified lead. Suddenly, that CPL of $80 (£63) doesn't look so drastic anymore, does it? It looks like a bargain.
This is the calculation that separates amateur advertisers from professional growth strategists. It frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to invest confidently in acquiring high-value customers.
Interactive LTV & Allowable CPL Calculator
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
To pull this all together, here is a clear, actionable plan to get your campaigns back to profitability and set them up for scalable growth. This moves you from a reactive state (panicking about CPL) to a proactive one (systematically improving performance).
| Area of Focus | The Problem | Recommended Action | Expected Outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mindset & Strategy | Blaming external factors ('core setup') and focusing on a single, misleading metric (raw CPL). | Ignore Meta classifications. Shift focus from "lowest CPL" to "maximum affordable CPL" by calculating your LTV and target CAC. | Make data-driven decisions based on profitability, not fear. Confidently invest in campaigns that acquire high-value customers. |
| Ad Creative | Ad fatigue. Your current ads have likely stopped resonating with your audience after repeated exposure at high spend. | Develop 3-5 new creative concepts based on your ICP's specific pain points using the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. Test different formats (Image, Video, Carousel). | Increased CTR and relevance scores. Lower CPLs as the algorithm rewards more engaging ads. Higher quality, pre-qualified leads. |
| Audience & Targeting | Audience saturation. You're showing the same ads to the same limited pool of people, leading to diminishing returns. | Implement a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu campaign structure. Systematically test new cold audiences (detailed targeting, high-quality lookalikes) and build out robust retargeting flows. | Discover new, profitable audiences to scale into. Improved overall ROAS by tailoring messages to audience temperature. Stable performance at high spend. |
| Testing & Optimisation | A "set and forget" approach that worked at low spend but is now failing at scale. No system for improvement. | Commit to a weekly or bi-weekly testing rhythm. Always have new creative and audience tests running in the background. Cut losers quickly and reallocate budget to winners. | Consistent, predictable lead flow. A resilient ad account that isn't dependent on a single "magic" ad or audience. Continuous improvement and lower CPL over time. |
Why you might want to consider expert help...
As you can probably see, fixing this isn't about flipping a single switch. It's about implementing a professional, repeatable system for growth. It involves in-depth customer research, strategic campaign architecture, compelling copywriting, and disciplined data analysis. This is a significant amount of work, and doing it effectively while also running your business is a real challenge.
This is where our expertise comes in. We've scaled numerous B2B and software campaigns past the exact plateau you're experiencing now. I remember one client with a medical job matching software who was struggling with a high Cost Per User Acquisition of £100. By implementing the kind of structured testing and optimisation process I've outlined, we reduced that cost all the way down to just £7. We handle the entire process for you – from defining the ICP and writing the pain-driven copy to building out the campaigns and managing the day-to-day optimisations. We can help you achieve your goals faster and more efficiently than going it alone.
I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful and gives you a clear path forward. If you'd like to discuss how we could apply a tailored strategy like this to your specific business, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation consultation call where we can go through your ad account together.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
