Solved: Facebook Ad Campaign struggles with $1,500 Spend

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out about your Facebook campaign. Seeing no leads after spending a good chunk of money is a frustrating place to be, and its a common problem I see a lot. It almost always comes down to a few core strategic mistakes rather than just pressing the wrong buttons in Ads Manager.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on what you've described. The good news is that the problem is almost certainly fixable. When a campaign with a decent budget completely fails to generate leads, it's usually not a small tweak that's needed, but a fundamental rethink of the campaign's objective and, more importantly, the offer itself. It sounds like you might be giving Facebook the wrong instructions and asking it to find people who will never become a lead.

We'll need to look at your campaign objective... because you're probably paying Facebook to find non-customers

This is the first and most critical thing to check. It's an uncomfortable truth about platforms like Meta, but when you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and likely wrong, command: "Find me the largest number of eyeballs for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being very good at its job, does exactly what you asked. It goes out and finds the users inside your target audience who are the least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever become a lead or customer. Why? Because those users are not in demand. No other advertiser wants them because they don't convert, so their attention is dirt cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your business.

I've seen so many people make this mistake. They think "I need more people to know about me first, then they'll become leads." For a huge company like Coca-Cola, that might be true. For a business that needs to see a return on £1,500 a month, it's a catastrophy. You need to understand that for a smaller business, awareness is a byproduct of getting customers, not a prerequisite for making a sale. The best form of brand awareness you can get is a competitor's customer switching to your service because you solved their problem better.

So, the first action is to go into your campaign settings. You must ensure your campaign objective is set to "Leads" or "Sales" (or "Conversions" in the old interface). This tells the algorithm "Find me people who are similar to others who have already filled out a form or made a purchase." It's a completely different instruction and will force the algorithm to seek out higher-quality, more expensive, but ultimately valuable users. You are no longer paying for cheap attention; you're paying for action.

I'd say your offer is the real problem... not your ads

Even with the right campaign objective, you can fail if what you're offering is wrong. The number one reason I see campaigns fail, time and time again, is a weak offer. An offer that doesn't provide enough value or, worse, an offer that's presented to an audience that has no urgent need for it. It's a fundamental lack of demand.

I see founders chase what they think are great ideas, build amazing features, and spend ages developing a perfect product, only to struggle to get traction because no one feels a burning need for it. Advertising can't create demand out of thin air; it can only capture and channel existing demand.

So what does a successful offer look like?

1. It focuses on a specific audience. You can't be everything to everyone. The more you niche down, the more relevant your message becomes. This is how you make your ads incredibly powerful and resonant to a specific group of people.

2. It identifies an urgent, expensive problem this audience has. People don't buy services; they buy solutions to their problems. They buy an end to their frustrations. You don't just sell "accounting software"; you sell "an end to the fear of a surprise tax audit." You don't sell a "brand film"; you sell a solution to the deep frustration of being a talented firm that struggles to get a customer base. This emotional connection is what drives action.

3. It presents a clear, tangible solution. You need to package your service so it feels simple, understandable, and less risky for a buyer. For example, a video production company we saw turned their service into a "1-Day Filming Process." It has a name, clear deliverables, and a defined timeline. This makes a complex service feel tangible and easy to buy.

This leads to the biggest mistake in B2B offers I see... the "Request a Demo" button. It is perhaps the most arrogant and ineffective Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, who is likely a busy decision-maker, has nothing better to do than book a meeting to be sold to. It is high-friction, low-value, and instantly positions you as just another commodity vendor begging for their time.

Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. For us, as a B2B advertising consultancy, it's a 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns completely free. We give away real value upfront.

What could this look like for you?

• -> If you're a marketing agency: A free, automated SEO audit that shows their top 3 keyword opportunities.
• -> If you're a data analytics platform: A free 'Data Health Check' that flags the top issues in their database.
• -> If you're a corporate training company: A free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations'.

This approach isn't about generating 'Marketing Qualified Leads' (MQLs) for a sales team to chase; it's about creating prospects who are already convinced of your expertise because you've already helped them. The sale becomes a formality.

You probably should define your customer by their nightmare, not their demographics

This all ties back to who you're actually trying to reach. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Companies in the finance sector with 50-200 employees" tells you absolutley nothing of value and leads to the generic, boring ads that get ignored.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

For example, your client isn't just a "Head of Engineering." She's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting out of pure frustration with a broken workflow. For a legal tech SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing document management'; it's 'a partner missing a critical filing deadline and exposing the entire firm to a malpractice suit.' You see the difference? One is a job title; the other is a story filled with emotion and high stakes.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can find where these people live online. This is the intelligence that becomes your targeting strategy.

• -> What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? (e.g., 'Acquired')
• -> What industry newsletters do they actually open and read? (e.g., 'Stratechery')
• -> What SaaS tools do they already pay for? (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce)
• -> What Facebook groups are they members of? (e.g., 'SaaS Growth Hacks')
• -> Who do they follow on Twitter/X? (e.g., Jason Lemkin)

This isn't just data; it's the blueprint for your targeting. Instead of targeting a broad interest like "Finance," you can target followers of a specific financial software, members of a group for accountants, or layer interests to find people who like 'Xero' AND are 'small business owners'. Do this work first, or you have no business spending another pound on ads.

You'll need a message they can't ignore

Once you know their nightmare, you can write copy that speaks directly to it. This is where most ad copy fails. It talks about features and services, not feelings and outcomes.

For a high-touch service business, you should use the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework. You don't sell "fractional CFO services"; you sell a good night's sleep. Your ad would say something like:
"Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? (Problem) Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? (Agitate) Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth. (Solve)"

For a B2B SaaS product, you use the Before-After-Bridge framework. You don't sell a "FinOps platform"; you sell the feeling of relief. The ad could look like this:
"Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out. (Before) Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated. (After) Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today. (Bridge)"

This kind of copy works because it enters the conversation already happening in your prospect's head. It shows you understand their world on a deep level, which builds instant trust and makes them feel seen.

We'll need to look at your targeting structure

Okay, let's get a bit more tactical. Assuming you've fixed your objective and your offer, how should you structure your campaigns on Meta? I often see accounts that are a mess of random ad sets, testing audiences that dont align with any real strategy.

A better way is to think in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu - cold audiences), Middle of Funnel (MoFu - warm audiences), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu - hot audiences). For a £1,500/month budget, you might start by combining MoFu and BoFu, but it's good to know the priority. The further down the funnel an audience is, the better it will perform.

Here's how I would usually prioritise audiences for testing. We'd create different long-term campaigns for each stage, then split-test audiences within them, turning off what doesn't work.

For a new account, you start at ToFu with detailed targeting to gather data. As soon as you have enough conversions (e.g. 100+ leads), you create a lookalike audience from those leads and a retargeting audience of website visitors. This systematic approach is how you find what works and scale it. We had one B2B software client who was struggling, and by implementing a proper structure and offer, we were getting them registrations for just $2.38 each on Meta.

I'd say you need to know your numbers to scale

This might seem advanced, but it's crucial for not getting scared by the cost of leads. The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead (CPL) go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Let's run through a quick example. You need three numbers:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a customer worth to you per month? Let's say £500.
• Gross Margin %: Your profit on that revenue. Let's say it's high, 80%.
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers you lose each month. Let's say 4%.

The calculation is simple:

In this example, each new customer is worth £10,000 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £3,333 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, a £50 CPL from a perfectly targeted Facebook ad doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap, worthless leads. Understanding this also tells you if your £1,500/month budget is realistic. If you can only afford £10 per lead, you need 150 leads a month. If you can afford £150 per lead, you only need 10 to make your budget work.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot of information, but your situation requires a strategic overhaul, not a quick fix. You're not just running ads; you're building a customer acquisition machine. Getting it right from the foundations is the only way to make it work long-term.

As you can see, it's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about deeply understanding your audience, crafting a compelling offer, creating ads that resonate, and fine-tuning the entire system based on real data. While the advice I've laid out here will give you a powerful new direction, the implementation and ongoing optimisation require a lot of expertise and hands-on management.

That's where professional help can make a huge difference. With years of experience and a deep understanding of this landscape, we can help you implement this entire strategy, avoiding common pitfalls and accelerating your path to getting high-quality leads consistently.

If you'd like to discuss this further, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can look at your specific business and ad account and give you a clear plan of action. It could be the most valuable 20 minutes you spend on your marketing this year.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh