TLDR;
- Meta's ad policies are your biggest hurdle. You can't directly target "migraine" or make strong "cure" claims. Your ads will almost certainly be rejected, and your account could be flagged.
- Forget direct targeting. You need to build a profile of your customer based on their lifestyle and pain points. Think about adjacent interests like wellness, stress relief, and natural health, not the medical condition itself. -
- Your ad copy must focus on the benefits and the "after" state (e.g., "reclaiming your day") rather than making medical claims. Use customer stories or testimonials if you can, but be very careful with the wording.
- Start with a regular conversions campaign, not Advantage+ Shopping. You need control over your audience and creative testing at this early stage, especially with a sensitive product. ASC is for when you have a lot of data.
- This letter includes a detailed guide to building alternative audiences, a flowchart for diagnosing ad problems, and an interactive calculator to help you estimate your potential costs and returns.
Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your campaign. It's a common problem when you're in the health space, as Meta is very restrictive. But there are definitely ways to get around it and find your audience. The main thing isn't just about picking the right interests, it's about building a whole strategy that works within the rules while still reaching the right people.
I'll walk you through how I'd approach this.
We'll need to look at the biggest problem first: Meta's Ad Policies
Before we even get to audiences, we have to talk about the elephant in the room. The reason you can't find interests like "migraine" or "headache" is intentional. Meta heavily restricts advertising related to personal health conditions, especially when it involves making claims about cures. Their policy on 'Personal Health' is really strict, and an ad that says "cure migraine just in 20 days with guaranteed results" is, to be brutally honest, a speedrun to getting your ad account disabled. Permanently.
You're making a specific medical claim with a timeline and a guarantee. This is a massive red flag for their automated review system. The system will see "cure," "migraine," and "guaranteed" and likely reject the ad instantly. If you try to run it again, you risk getting your entire business manager account shut down. It's a nightmare you want to avoid.
So, the first and most important shift in strategy is to move away from making direct medical claims. You can't sell a "cure." Instead, you need to sell the *outcome* and the *feeling* of relief. It's a subtle but massive difference. You're not selling a herbal product; you're selling the ability for someone to get their day back, to not have to cancel plans, to live without the fear of the next attack. This reframing is essential for your entire strategy, from the ad copy to the landing page.
I'd say you need to redefine your customer, not just their interests
Since you can't target the condition directly, you have to build a proxy for your ideal customer. This means you stop thinking about "people with migraines" and start thinking, "What does the life of a person who frequently suffers from migraines look like? What are their habits, their other interests, their pain points?" Your customer isn't a demographic; they're in a specific 'problem state'.
Let's brainstorm this a bit. Someone who suffers from chronic migraines is likely proactive about their health. They're probably already exploring solutions beyond traditional medicine. This is your way in. They might be interested in:
- Stress & Wellness: Think about interests like 'Meditation', 'Yoga', 'Mindfulness', 'Stress relief', 'Well-being'. These are people actively trying to manage a core trigger for migraines.
- Natural & Alternative Health: This is a big one. Interests like 'Organic products', 'Natural medicine', 'Herbalism', 'Holistic health', or even specific practices like 'Aromatherapy' or 'Ayurveda'. Your product fits perfectly here.
- Diet & Nutrition: Many migraine sufferers manage their condition through diet. You could test interests like 'Clean eating', 'Gluten-free diet', 'Organic food', or followers of popular health food pages and personalities in Pakistan.
- Professional Demographics: What kind of jobs are high-stress? You could layer interests. For example, people interested in 'Well-being' who also work in demanding fields like 'IT', 'Finance', or are 'Small business owners'. This is more advanced, but it's a way to find people under pressure.
The goal is to build an audience that is highly likely to contain your ideal customer, even if you can't name the condition itself. You're fishing in a well-stocked pond rather than trying to find a specific fish in the ocean.
Here's a visual way to think about structuring your audience tests, from broad to specific. For a new account, you'll be starting at the top of the funnel with detailed targeting.
Start Here
2. Broad Targeting: Only use this after your Pixel has thousands of conversion events. Not for new accounts.
Engaged but haven't bought
Almost there
You probably should re-think your message completely
Once you have your audience proxy, your ad creative needs to speak their language. Again, no medical claims. Instead, use the 'Problem-Agitate-Solve' framework, focusing on the emotion of the problem.
Here’s a rough example of what that could look like:
Example Ad Copy Structure
Headline: Tired of Dark Rooms and Cancelled Plans?
Primary Text:
(Problem) -> That familiar pressure starts to build, and you know your day is about to be written off. Another plan you have to cancel, another day spent waiting for it to pass.
(Agitate) -> It's frustrating feeling like you're not in control of your own schedule, missing out on important moments with family and friends. You've probably tried everything to find some balance.
(Solve) -> What if there was a more natural way to support your body's well-being? Our traditional herbal blend is crafted with ingredients used for centuries to promote calm and balance. Discover how [Your Brand Name] helps people across Pakistan get back to living their lives.
Call to Action: Learn More
Notice the language. It's all about the experience, not the clinical cure. It talks about "balance," "well-being," and "calm"—words that are policy-safe but still resonate deeply with someone suffering from the problem. The call to action is 'Learn More', which is less aggressive than 'Shop Now' and is better for a product that requires a bit of education and trust-building before a purchase. I've had lots of success with this approach for clients in sensitive niches. It's about being clever with your words and showing empathy for the customer's situation.
You'll need to forget Advantage+ for now
Now, your question about Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC). For a new advertiser with a new product, I would strongly advise against it. Here's why:
ASC is essentially Meta's AI on full autopilot. You give it your products, a budget, and some creative, and it goes off to find customers. It works brilliantly for established eCommerce stores with a strong pixel history (thousands of purchases), a wide range of products, and a clear, easy-to-understand value proposition. Your business has none of these things yet.
- You have no data: The algorithm has no idea who your customer is. It needs that purchase data to learn. Running ASC from day one is like asking a brand new driver to win a Formula 1 race. It's just not going to work well.
- You lose control: With ASC, you have very little control over audience targeting. For a sensitive product like yours where you need to be very careful with your audience selection to stay policy-compliant and find the right niche, this is a massive disadvantage.
- It's not for testing: ASC is for scaling what already works. You're still in the testing phase. You need to run a standard 'Sales' campaign with the 'Conversions' objective. This allows you to create specific ad sets to test your different audience hypotheses (e.g., one ad set for the 'Wellness' interest group, another for the 'Natural Health' group). This is the only way you'll learn what works.
Once you've made a few hundred sales and your pixel is seasoned with data, then you can consider testing an ASC campaign. But for now, stick to a manual setup. It's more work, but it's the only way to build a solid foundation for your advertising.
Let's talk about what success looks like and what it'll cost
It's important to have realistic expectations, especially in a developing market like Pakistan. The good news is that advertising costs are generally much lower than in countries like the UK or US. However, conversion rates can also be more unpredictable. Based on my experience with campaigns in similar markets, here’s a rough idea of what you might expect.
You’re selling a product, so we’ll look at costs for sales. The cost per click (CPC) might be quite low, maybe in the £0.10 - £0.50 range. The big variable is your website's conversion rate (the percentage of visitors who actually buy). For a new store with a new product, a conversion rate of 2% would be a decent start. Many start much lower.
So, the maths would look something like this:
Low end: £0.10 CPC / 5% Conversion Rate = £2.00 Cost Per Purchase (CPA)
High end: £0.50 CPC / 2% Conversion Rate = £25.00 Cost Per Purchase (CPA)
Your actual CPA will likely fall somewhere in this range. The key is that your profit margin on the product needs to be higher than your CPA. If you're selling the product for £30 and your CPA is £25, you're barely making any money. This is why optimising your ads and landing page is so important. I've built a small calculator for you below to play around with these numbers. It'll help you understand how small changes in your click cost or website conversion rate can massively impact your profitability.
When you start running ads, you'll get data back. If you're getting lots of clicks but no one is buying, the problem isn't your ads, it's your website. Maybe the price is too high, the product description isn't convincing, or the site doesn't look trustworthy. If you're not even getting clicks, then your ad creative or your audience is wrong. It's a process of elimination.
This is the main advice I have for you:
Here's a summary table of the action plan I'd recomend for your first campaign. This is a structured approach that prioritises testing and learning while keeping your ad account safe.
| Area | Recommendation | Reason |
|---|---|---|
| Ad Policy | Remove all "cure" and "guarantee" claims from ads and your landing page. Rewrite everything to focus on benefits like "well-being" and "balance". | To avoid immediate ad rejection and protect your account from being disabled. This is non-negotiable. |
| Campaign Type | Use a 'Sales' campaign with the 'Conversions' objective. Do NOT use Advantage+ Shopping. | You need manual control over audience testing to find out who your customer is. ASC is for scaling, not for initial testing. |
| Audience Testing | Create 2-3 separate ad sets. Each ad set should target a different 'theme' of interests (e.g., Ad Set 1: Wellness, Ad Set 2: Natural Health). | To identify which customer profile responds best to your product without wasting money on audiences that don't work. |
| Creative & Copy | Test 2-3 different images/videos and 2 different ad copy angles in each ad set. Focus on the emotional pain point and the feeling of relief. | Creative is the biggest lever for performance. You need to find the combination of visuals and messaging that resonates. |
| Budget | Start with a small daily budget (£10-£20 per ad set) and let it run for 4-5 days before making decisions. | This gives the algorithm enough time to learn and gives you enough data to see which ad sets are performing without risking a large amount of money. |
As you can see, running a sucessful first campaign is about much more than just picking a few interests. It requires a careful strategy, a deep understanding of the platform's rules, and a methodical approach to testing. It can be a lot to handle when you're also trying to run your business.
This is where expert help can make a huge difference. An experienced paid ads specialist can help you navigate the tricky policy issues, build a robust testing strategy from day one, and interpret the data to scale your campaigns profitably. It's often the difference between a campaign that burns cash and one that becomes a reliable engine for growth.
If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your specific plans and give you some more tailored advice. It could be a really valuable 20 minutes for your business.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
