Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at the situation with your first Facebook campaign. It’s completely normal to feel a bit desperate when sales start strong and then just drop off a cliff. A lot of people would tell you to just kill the campaign and test a new product, but that’s rarely the right move.
The good news is that getting sales on day one and two proves there's *some* demand. The bad news is that the drop-off points to a specific problem. It's not about how many days it takes for Facebook to find customers; it's about giving the algorithm the right signals to work with. Your CTR of 3.60% is actually pretty decent, which tells me your ad creative and initial targeting are probably grabbing attention. The real issue is almost certainly happening *after* the click, on your website. I’ll walk you through how to diagnose this properly instead of just guessing.
TLDR;
- Your early sales and good CTR (3.60%) suggest your ad creative is working. The problem is very likely on your website or with your offer, not the ad itself.
- Stop thinking about the "learning phase" in terms of days. The algorithm needs about 50 sales per week per ad set to learn effectively. With only 3 sales in 4 days, you're nowhere near giving it enough data.
- You need to diagnose your sales funnel step-by-step. Check your metrics in Ads Manager for Landing Page Views, Adds to Cart, and Initiated Checkouts to find out exactly where potential customers are dropping off.
- For a low-ticket ($20) product, your unit economics are tough. You need a high volume of sales to be profitable. Use the interactive calculators in this letter to figure out your breakeven point and Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
- The most important advice is to pause the campaign, fix your website's conversion issues, and then relaunch. Don't waste more money driving traffic to a leaky bucket.
You're asking the wrong question about the "Learning Phase"
Let's get the biggest myth out of the way first. You asked, "How many days took to facebook to find my ideal costumers?" This is how most people think about it, but it's fundamentally flawed. The algorithm doesn't work on a calendar; it works on data. Specifically, conversion data.
To exit the infamous "Learning Phase" and start performing optimally, an ad set typically needs to generate around 50 conversions within a 7-day period. You've had 3 sales in 4 days. At this rate, you'd get maybe 5-6 sales in a week. Your campaign will be stuck in "Learning Limited" forever, and performance will stay volatile and inefficient. It's not Facebook's fault it can't find your customers; you're not giving it enough successful examples (purchases) to learn from.
When you run a conversion campaign, you're telling Meta's algorithm: "Go find me people who are most likely to buy my product". The algorithm starts by showing your ad to a broad slice of your target audience. When someone buys, it analyses thousands of data points about that person and then tries to find more people just like them. But with only three sales, the data set is tiny and unreliable. The algorithm is basically guessing in the dark.
So, the real question isn't "how long?" but "how do I get to 50 sales a week?". The answer isn't to simply increase the budget. That's like pouring more water into a leaky bucket. First, we need to find the holes in your funnel.
We'll need to look at your funnel to find the leak
Since your Click-Through Rate (CTR) is 3.60%, we know people are seeing your ad and are interested enough to click. That's a great start and it means your ad image/video and copy are doing their job. The problem lies somewhere between the click and the "thank you for your purchase" page. We need to play detective and follow the data.
You can do this by customising your columns in Facebook Ads Manager. Add the following metrics to your report: Link Clicks, Landing Page Views, Adds to Cart, Checkouts Initiated, and Purchases. Now you can see exactly where people are disappearing.
Here's a more detailed breakdown of what to look for:
Leak 1: Between Click and Landing Page
If you have 100 link clicks but only 60 landing page views, it's a massive red flag. This almost always means your website is too slow to load. People on mobile are impatient; if your page doesn't load in 2-3 seconds, they're gone. Use Google's PageSpeed Insights tool to check your performance. A slow site kills conversions before they even have a chance.
Leak 2: Between Landing Page and Add to Cart (The Most Common Leak)
This is where I'd bet your problem lies. You get plenty of people to the product page, but they don't add the item to their cart. Why?
- Poor Product Images: For a physical product, photos are everything. Are they high-quality? Do they show the product from multiple angles? Is there a lifestyle photo showing it in use? For a $20 item, professional photos might seem like overkill, but they build perceived value and trust. I remember one client selling handcrafted jewellery whose sales tripled after they switched from tabletop photos to images with models wearing the pieces.
- Weak Product Description: Does your copy sell the benefit or just list features? Does it answer common questions? Does it create any desire? You need persuasive copy that makes the customer feel like they're making a great decision.
- Lack of Trust: You are a new, unknown brand. Why should anyone give you their credit card details? Your store needs to scream "trustworthy". This means having customer reviews or testimonials, clear shipping and return policies, trust badges (like secure payment logos), and a professional design. A cluttered or amateur-looking website will scare people away instantly.
- Price & Shipping: Is the price clear? More importantly, are you surprising them with high shipping costs on the next page? For a $20 product, a $7 shipping fee can feel like a deal-breaker. Be transparent about costs upfront.
Leak 3: Between Add to Cart and Purchase
If you see a lot of people adding to cart but not completing the purchase, the issue is with your checkout process.
- Forced Account Creation: Don't make people create an account to buy from you. Always offer a guest checkout option.
- Complicated Forms: Are you asking for too much information? Keep it to the absolute essentials: email, name, address, payment.
- Limited Payment Options: Do you offer options like PayPal, Apple Pay, or Google Pay? These one-click options can significantly increase conversion rates because they're easy and trusted.
My advice is to pause your ads right now. Dig into your Facebook Ads metrics, pinpoint the biggest drop-off point using the flowchart above, and then focus all your energy on fixing that specific part of your website. Relaunching the ads without fixing the leak is just setting your money on fire.
I'd say you need to understand the harsh economics of a $20 product
Running ads for low-ticket products is incredibly challenging because the profit margins are razor-thin. You don't have much room for error. You need to know your numbers inside and out to understand if you can ever be profitable.
Let's do some rough maths. Your daily ad spend is $45. Your product price is $20. You need to sell 3 products a day just to cover your ad spend, and that's before accounting for the cost of the product itself, shipping, transaction fees, etc. When you factor those in, your breakeven point is much higher.
Use this calculator to get a realistic picture of your situation. Adjust the sliders to match your own costs.
As you can see, the numbers are tough. You are averaging less than one sale per day, but you likely need 4, 5, or even more just to not lose money. This brings us to a much more important concept: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).
The only way to sustainably run ads for low-ticket products is if customers buy from you more than once. Acquiring the first sale might be unprofitable, but if that same customer comes back and buys two more times without you having to pay for another ad, your business model starts to work. The real question isn't "how much does one sale cost?" but "how much can I afford to spend to acquire a customer who will be worth X amount over their lifetime?".
For example, I remember one campaign we ran for a subscription box company. The initial cost to acquire a customer was a key metric, but focusing only on that would have been a mistake. We understood that the real value was in the lifetime of the subscriber, not just the first purchase. This perspective allowed us to scale their Meta Ads campaigns effectively, ultimately generating a 1000% return on their ad spend. Without understanding their LTV, they might have paused campaigns that were, in reality, incredibly profitable over the long term.
Think about your business:
- Do you have other products to sell to existing customers?
- Could you create a subscription model?
- Do you have an email list to encourage repeat purchases?
If the answer to all of these is "no," then you're playing on hard mode. You have to be profitable on every single transaction, which is almost impossible with paid ads for a $20 product.
You'll need a clear action plan
Okay, enough theory. Here is exactly what I would do if I were in your shoes. Don't just keep letting the campaign run and hope for the best. Be methodical.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Step | Action | Why You Should Do This |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Pause Campaign | Go into Ads Manager and pause your current campaign immediately. | Stop wasting money driving traffic to a website that isn't converting effectively. Every dollar you spend now is a sunk cost. |
| 2. Diagnose Funnel | Customise your columns in Ads Manager (Link Clicks, LP Views, ATC, IC, Purchases) and analyse the data from the last 4 days. Identify your biggest drop-off point. | This takes the guesswork out of the equation. You'll know exactly which part of your customer journey needs fixing (e.g., the product page, the checkout). |
| 3. Fix Your Website | Based on your diagnosis, overhaul that specific page. Improve images, rewrite copy, add reviews/testimonials, check your site speed, and clarify shipping costs. | This is the highest-leverage activity you can do. A 1% increase in your website's conversion rate is more powerful than any ad optimisation. |
| 4. Relaunch Simply | Once the website is fixed, duplicate your best-performing ad set into a new campaign. Reset the budget and launch it. Do not change the targeting or creative yet. | You want to test the impact of your website changes in isolation. Keeping the ad consistent gives you a clean before-and-after comparison. |
| 5. Optimise & Scale | If the relaunched campaign performs better and you start getting more consistent sales, then you can start testing. Test new creatives, then test new audiences (lookalikes, new interests). | Once your funnel is proven to work, you can pour fuel on the fire. But only then. Scaling a broken funnel just accelerates your losses. |
You probably should start thinking about your audience structure for the future
Once you've fixed the conversion issues and are ready to scale, you need a proper campaign structure. Don't just lump everyone into one ad set. You need to talk to people differently depending on how familiar they are with your brand. I usually structure accounts into three core campaign types: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).
Who: People who have never heard of you. Use interest-based targeting and Lookalike Audiences (once you have enough purchase data).
Who: People who visited your site, watched your videos, or engaged with your social media, but didn't add to cart.
Who: People who added to cart or initiated checkout but didn't buy. This is your lowest-hanging fruit.
Right now, you're only operating at the ToFu level. The real profit in e-commerce often comes from effective BoFu retargeting. Setting up a simple campaign to show ads to everyone who abandoned their cart in the last 7 days (maybe with a small discount code) can often be the most profitable campaign in an entire ad account.
This all might seem like a lot to take in, and honestly, it is. Getting paid ads right involves a lot more than just launching a campaign and watching the sales roll in. It's a constant process of diagnosing problems, testing solutions, and optimising every single step of the customer journey. Its a skill that takes years to develop.
When you're trying to do it all yourself—running the business, managing inventory, customer service, and marketing—it's easy to miss things. Having an expert pair of eyes can make a huge difference. We spend all day, every day, inside ad accounts, spotting patterns and fixing leaky funnels for our clients. We've seen these exact problems hundreds of times before and know the quickest way to solve them.
If you'd like to get on a quick, no-obligation call, we can pull up your actual ad account and website on a screenshare and I can give you some specific, actionable feedback right there and then. It's something we offer for free, and most people find it incredibly helpful. Just let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.
Hope this helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
