Solved: Facebook Ads Campaign Setup Issue

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Read through your situation and your thinking is definitely on the right lines. It sounds incredibly frustrating to spend that money and see almost nothing back for it, but it's a common problem and thankfully, a fixable one.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance. Your instinct that the audience is too broad for the budget and you're not testing enough creative is spot on, but I think the issue might run a bit deeper than just the campaign setup. It likely starts with *who* you're talking to and *what* you're saying to them.

We'll need to look at your ICP, not your demographic...

This is probably the biggest shift in thinking you'll need to make, and it's where most advertising fails before a single penny is spent. You're targeting "parents with kids of certain demographics". This tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that get ignored, which is exactly what you're seeing.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Forget the sterile profile. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare.

Your ideal customer isn't just a "parent". She's a mum who feels a pang of guilt every time she hands her kid a tablet just to get an hour of peace. He's a dad who works long hours and is terrified he's missing his kids growing up, desperate for a simple way to reconnect. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state.

What is the real nightmare you solve?

• -> Is it the guilt of too much screen time?
• -> Is it the frustration of finding activities that the whole family actually enjoys?
• -> Is it the worry that their kids aren't developing key skills outside of school?
• -> Is it the exhaustion of constantly having to entertain bored children?

Once you've isolated that one, specific nightmare, your entire approach to targeting and messaging will change. You're no longer shouting into a crowd of 3 million "parents". You're whispering a solution into the ear of a specific person with a specific problem. That's how you get clicks.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know the pain, your ad's job is to reflect it back to them so powerfully that they feel seen and understood. The easiest way to structure this is with the Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) framework. You don't sell a "program for parents and kids"; you sell the end of guilt and the start of joyful connection.

Problem: State the nightmare directly.
"Tired of fighting the battle over screen time every single weekend?"

Agitate: Poke the bruise. Remind them why it's so painful.
"It feels like you're either the bad guy saying 'no' or you give in and feel that wave of guilt, watching another precious weekend slip by."

Solve: Introduce your program as the clear, simple solution. The bridge away from the pain.
"Introducing [Your Program Name]. A ridiculously fun [activity] you can do with your kids in just 20 minutes, no screens required. It's the simple way to create memories that'll last longer than any battery."

See the difference? We haven't listed features. We've sold a feeling of relief. This is what stops the scroll and earns you the click. Your ad creative (images/videos) should then visually represent that 'Solve' stage – showing happy, engaged parents and kids, not just a picture of a box or a logo.

You probably should rethink your campaign structure...

Okay, now we can talk tactics. Your plan to consolidate is absolutely the right one. With a $25/day budget, splitting it three ways gives the Facebook algorithm about $8 for each ad set, which is next to nothing. The system never gets enough data to properly 'learn' who your best customers are, so it just flounders around, wasting your money. Tbh it's one of the most common mistakes we see.

By putting the full $25 into a single ad set, you give the algorithm a much better chance to optimise and find pockets of users who are likely to convert. It can exit the 'learning phase' faster and start working for you, not against you.

Here’s the simple structure I would recommend you start with:

• -> 1 Campaign: Objective set to 'Sales'. Always optimise for the thing you actually want.
• -> 1 Ad Set: Budget of $25/day. Your targeting here should be based on the 'nightmare' we identified. Instead of just "parents", you could target parents who have shown interest in pages, brands, or topics related to 'screen time concerns', 'parenting blogs about activities', 'educational toys', etc. Make your interest targeting laser-focused on the problem. Your idea of a 50k-100k audience size is a decent starting point for this focused approach.
• -> 3-5 Ads: This is critical. Inside that one ad set, you need to be testing multiple creatives. This is how you find out what message actually works.
  • Ad 1: A video of a family using your program and having fun.
  • Ad 2: A simple, bold image ad with a headline that calls out the "Problem".
  • Ad 3: A carousel ad showcasing different aspects or benefits of the program.

After a few days, Meta will naturally start putting more of the budget behind the ad that's performing best (getting the most clicks/conversions). You can then turn off the losers and introduce new ones to test against the winner. This methodical testing is how you improve performance over time.

You'll need to diagnose the real problem...

Let's be brutally honest: spending $200 to get only 3 website clicks is a catastrophy. It's not a sign that you need more data; it's a sign that something is fundamentally broken with your ads. Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) must be incredibly low. This tells you that the people who are seeing your ad have absolutely no interest in it. It is not resonating at all.

This is why the messaging part we talked about earlier is so important. Before you even worry about conversion rates on your website, you have to fix the ad itself. The number one metric you should be obsessed with for the next week is your CTR. Once you get people clicking, then you can start worrying about whether they buy. You cant optimise a campaign that's getting no traffic.

The calculator above should give you a realistic picture. Even with a decent CPC and a standard 2% conversion rate, your cost per sale could be around $75. With a $25 daily budget, you might only expect one sale every three days—and that's *if* everything is working well. This isn't to discourage you, but to set realistic expectations. You need to be patient and methodical. The goal isn't to get rich overnight; it's to build a system that predictably acquires customers at a profitable cost.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this up, here are the exact steps I'd take if I were in your shoes, laid out in a simple table. This is a clear path to get you from where you are now to a campaign that actually has a chance of working.

This process takes discipline, but it's far more effective than what you're doing now. It's not just about tweaking settings; it's about a fundamental shift in how you approach advertising – from a technical exercise to a psychological one.

Getting this right can be tough, especialy when you're so close to the product. It often takes an outside perspective to see the blind spots and implement a strategy like this effectively. It's about understanding the audience, testing methodically, and knowing which levers to pull to drive down costs and increase sales.

If you'd like to have an expert pair of eyes on this and walk through a specific plan for your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can look at your ads and website together and give you some more tailored advice.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh