Solved: Facebook Ads Newbie Struggling with No Sales

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look over your situation and it's a really common problem for new store owners, so don't feel too bad about it. The amount of conflicting advice on YouTube is a nightmare. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and a bit of a roadmap that should hopefully clear things up a bit.

The short answer is that the advice to "let Facebook do the work" with broad targeting is, frankly, terrible advice for a new account with no data. You're basically asking the algorithm to find a needle in a 200-million-person haystack, blindfolded. We need to give it a much better starting point.

We'll need to look at your targeting... because 'going broad' is burning your cash

Right, let's tackle the biggest issue first. The idea that "Facebook knows more than you" is only true when you've given it thousands of pounds worth of good data to learn from. When your pixel is brand new, it knows absolutely nothing. By going broad and targeting 200M people in the US, you've given the algorithm an impossible task.

When you set your objective to 'Purchases' but give it a massive, undefined audience, you're essentially paying Facebook to find the cheapest people to show your ad to within that massive pool. The algorithm's job is to spend your budget, and it'll find the easiest way to do that. Unfortunatly, the people who are cheapest to reach are almost never the ones who are ready to buy anything. They're often less engaged, less likely to click, and certainly less likely to purchase. You're actively paying to find non-customers.

So, what's the fix? You need to take control back and start by telling Facebook *exactly* who you think your ideal customer is. This is done through detailed interest targeting. We need to feed the pixel with initial, high-quality traffic so it can start learning what a real customer looks like. Only then, much later, can you experiment with going broad.

I always structure accounts based on the marketing funnel. Think of it as Top of Funnel (ToFu - cold audiences who've never heard of you), Middle of Funnel (MoFu - people who've shown some interest), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu - people who are close to buying). For a new store, you'll be focused almost entirely on ToFu.

Here’s how you should prioritise your audiences, starting from scratch:

1. Detailed Targeting (Interests, Behaviours): This is your starting point. You need to think deeply about your ideal customer. What magazines do they read? What brands do they love? Where do they shop? Who do they follow on Instagram? Be specific. If you sell handcrafted jewelry, don't just target 'Jewelry'. That's too broad. Target interests like 'Etsy', 'Handmade Marketplace', specific competitor brands, or magazines focused on artisan goods. Layering interests can work well too, e.g., people who like 'Etsy' AND 'Sustainable fashion'. The goal is to find interests that contain a high concentration of your ideal buyer persona.


2. Lookalike Audiences: Once you have at least 100 purchases (this will take time!), you can create a Lookalike audience. This is where you tell Facebook, "find me more people who look just like my existing customers." This is incredibly powerful, but you need that source data first. You can also create lookalikes from Add to Carts or even all website visitors, but a purchaser lookalike is the gold standard.


3. Retargeting (MoFu/BoFu): These are your warm audiences. You'll create audiences of people who have visited your website, watched your videos, or engaged with your Instagram page. These ad sets often have the highest return because you're talking to people already familiar with your brand. For a new store, this audience will be tiny, so you might combine them all into one ad set to begin with.

Here's a visual guide to how you might structure this in your account. You'd start with the 'ToFu' campaign and then build out the others as you gather more data and traffic.

I'd say you need to fix your creative... because clicks are everything

You mentioned you got 42 clicks from 2,900 people reached. That's a Click-Through Rate (CTR) of about 1.45%. It's not the worst I've ever seen, but it's not great either. It tells me that your ads aren't compelling enough to make people stop scrolling and take action. Changing the thumbnail is a start, but it's not enough. You need to test fundamentally different things.

Your ad has one job: to stop the scroll and get the right person to click. The ad copy and the creative (the image or video) work together to do this. You need a message that speaks directly to a problem or desire your ideal customer has.

Instead of just showing your product, think about the "Before-After-Bridge" framework.

• Before: What's the customer's life like *without* your product? What's their frustration? (e.g., "Tired of boring, mass-produced accessories?")
• After: What does life look like *with* your product? What's the ideal outcome? (e.g., "Imagine unique, handcrafted pieces that express your personality.")
• Bridge: Your product is the bridge that gets them from the Before to the After state. (e.g., "Discover our new collection...")

This approach forces you to sell the outcome, not just the features. People buy feelings and solutions, not just products. On the creative side, you need to test different formats. Static images are fine, but video often performs better. A simple video of you showing the products, or a model wearing them, can feel much more authentic and engaging than a plain product shot. Carousel ads are also great for eCommerce as you can showcase multiple products or different angles of one product.

I remember working on a campaign for a women's apparel brand where testing different ad formats was key. By finding the right creative approach, we generated a 691% return on their ad spend. The format makes a huge difference.

You probably should look at your website... because that's where the sale happens

Getting the click is only half the battle. You got 42 people to your site, which is a start. But none of them even added a product to their cart. This is a massive red flag that something is wrong on your website itself. When we see this pattern in a client's account, we immediately pause the ads and do a deep audit of their store.

Here’s a checklist of things that could be going wrong:

• Trust: This is the number one killer of online sales. Does your site look professional? Or does it look a bit thrown together? You need trust signals. Things like customer reviews, clear contact information (an address and phone number are great), a professional "About Us" page, and links to social media profiles all help. If I land on a store and it feels a bit amateurish, I'm definately not going to enter my credit card details.
• Product Pages: Are your product photos high-quality? Can you see the product from multiple angles? Are the descriptions compelling? You need to tell me more than just the material and dimensions. Sell the benefit. Why should I buy *this* product? A lack of good descriptions is a common mistake I see.
• Pricing & Shipping: Is your pricing clear? Is it competitive? The biggest conversion killer is often a surprise shipping cost at the final stage of checkout. Be upfront about shipping costs, or better yet, offer free shipping if you can factor it into your price.
• Mobile Experience: The vast majority of your traffic from Facebook will be on a mobile phone. Have you looked at your store on your own phone? Is it easy to navigate? Is the text readable? Is the 'Add to Cart' button easy to find and press? A clunky mobile site will destroy your conversion rate.

Before you spend another pound on ads, you need to go through your own checkout process as if you were a customer. Be brutally honest with yourself. Would *you* buy from your store? Get a friend or family member to do the same and give you honest feedback. Fixing these on-site issues will have a bigger impact than any ad optimisation you could possibly make.

You'll need a proper testing strategy... here's how to build one

Okay, so we've covered targeting, creative, and your website. The final peice of the puzzle is putting it all together into a structured plan so you're not just randomly changing things. You need a simple, repeatable testing methodology.

I would suggest starting with a single campaign using Campaign Budget Optimization (CBO). This lets Facebook distribute the budget to the best-performing ad set automatically, which is simpler for beginners. Inside that campaign, you'll create different ad sets to test your audiences.

Your first campaign should be a 'Cold Traffic' or 'ToFu' campaign. Inside it, create 3-4 different ad sets. Each ad set will target a different cluster of interests. For example:

• Ad Set 1: Competitor brands (e.g., people who like [Brand X] and [Brand Y])
• Ad Set 2: Related publications/influencers (e.g., people who like [Magazine A] or [Influencer B])
• Ad Set 3: Broader related interests (e.g., 'Sustainable fashion', 'Handmade goods')

Inside each ad set, you'll run 2-3 of your best ads (creatives). Let them run for at least 3-4 days before you make any decisions. Don't panic and turn things off after a few hours. You need to let the algorithm learn. After a few days, you can look at the data. Turn off the ad sets or ads that are clearly not working (e.g., very high cost per click, no add to carts) and reallocate the budget to the winners.

To give you an idea of the numbers, you can use this simple calculator to project some potential outcomes. It helps to understand how small changes in metrics like your website conversion rate can have a huge impact on your final cost per purchase.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a table below to give you a clear, actionable starting point. This is the exact process we'd begin with for a new eCommerce client.

I know this is a lot to take in, especially when you're just starting out. The key is to be methodical. Stop trying everything at once, focus on getting one part right at a time: first the targeting, then the creative, all while making sure your website is ready to convert the visitors you're paying for.

This process of testing, learning, and optimising is exactly what we do for our clients day in and day out. It takes experience to know which levers to pull and when, and to interpret the data correctly. Getting professional help can significantly shorten the learning curve and prevent you from wasting money on strategies that are doomed to fail.

If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a look at your store and ad account, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial consultation. It might help to have a second pair of expert eyes on it.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh