Solved: Facebook ads not performing for SaaS free trials

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Thank you for your enquiry about the issues with your Facebook ads for your SaaS product. It’s a really common problem, so don't worry, you're not alone. What often happens is that the initial strategies that get you those lovely low-cost trials eventually hit a ceiling. Scaling requires a different approach. I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how you might be able to fix your campaign performance and start scaling again.

The short answer is it's not just about 'broad vs creatives'. The real issue is likely deeper in your strategy, your understanding of your customer, and how you structure your entire approach. Let's break it down.

Your Real Problem Isn't Just 'Facebook Ads Not Working'...

It sounds like you've hit a classic scaling plateau. The initial audiences and creatives that worked so well have probably been exhausted. Meta's algorithm has shown your ads to the most likely people within those interests, and now it's struggling to find more, hence the budget not spending or the costs going up. This is completely normal.

When you say some ads get landing page views but zero trials, that's a massive clue. It tells me there's a disconnect between what the ad promises (or who it attracts) and what the landing page delivers. The person clicking is interested enough to see more, but not convinced enough to sign up. This could be a targeting issue (right message, wrong person) or a messaging issue (right person, wrong message).

Simply switching to a broad audience or just making new creatives without a clear strategy is like throwing darts in the dark. You might hit something, but it's pure luck. To properly scale a SaaS product, you need to get much more methodical. It starts with truly understanding who you're selling to, not as a demographic, but as a person with a problem.

We'll need to look at your Ideal Customer's Nightmare...

Forget the sterile, demographic-based profiles. "Companies in the tech sector with 10-50 employees" or interests like "Software as a Service" tells you almost nothing useful. It leads to generic ads that get ignored because they speak to no one in particular. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain.

You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, and expensive nightmare. Your customer isn't just a job title; they're a person terrified of something going wrong. For a project management SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing to organise tasks'; it's 'the CEO asking for a project update in a meeting and you have no idea where anything stands'. For a financial analytics SaaS, the nightmare isn't 'needing better reports'; it's 'making a huge budget decision based on a spreadsheet error and costing the company thousands'.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you've isolated that nightmare, everything else becomes clearer. You can write ad copy that feels like you're reading their mind. You can pick interests that align with their professional world, not just their job title.

Here's a simple process to follow:

I'd say you need to calculate what you can *afford* to pay...

The real question isn't "How can I get back to a $1 cost per trial?" but "How high a cost per trial can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?". The answer is locked inside your business metrics, specifically your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

A $1 trial might feel good, but if those users are low quality, never convert to paid, and churn quickly, you're just filling a leaky bucket. I'd rather pay $20 for a trial from a user who has a 50% chance of converting to a £1,000/year plan than $1 for a user who will never pay. You need to do the maths to understand what a trial is actually worth to you.

Here’s the basic calculation:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What do you make per customer, per month?
• Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue?
• Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Once you know your LTV, you can decide on a target Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC). A healthy ratio is often 3:1 (LTV:CAC), meaning you can spend up to a third of your LTV to acquire a customer. From there, you can work backwards to figure out what you can afford to pay for a demo, and before that, a trial.

For example, if your LTV is £5,000, you can afford a CAC of around £1,666. If 1 in 10 paying customers book a demo first, you can afford £166 per demo. And if 1 in 5 trials books a demo, you can afford to pay up to £33 per trial. Suddenly, your old $1 CPT looks less like a goal and more like a limiter that was probably attracting the wrong kind of user.

Use this calculator to get a clearer picture for your own SaaS:

You probably should rethink your audience strategy...

With a clearer ICP and budget in mind, now you can address the audience question. Should you go broad? Eventually, yes. But not yet. You need a structured way to test and scale. I've had huge success with SaaS clients by structuring campaigns into a funnel: Top (ToFu), Middle (MoFu), and Bottom (BoFu).

Here's how I'd prioritise your audiences for testing. The idea is that audiences closer to the final conversion (a sale) will almost always perform better.

You need seperate campaigns for each stage of this funnel. ToFu is your scaling engine. MoFu and BoFu are your efficiency engines, making sure you convert the interest you've already generated. I remember one SaaS campaign where we managed to bring a £100 cost per acquisition down to just £7 by implementing this kind of structured approach and focusing on the right audiences at the right time.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Finally, let's talk creatives. The most beautiful ad in the world will fail if the message is wrong. For B2B SaaS, the best framework I've found is the Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Describe their current world. Agitate the 'nightmare' you identified earlier. Show them you understand their frustration.
• After: Paint a picture of the promised land. A world where that nightmare is gone, thanks to your solution.
• Bridge: Position your SaaS (and the free trial) as the clear, simple bridge to get from Before to After.

Don't just sell a "powerful analytics platform". Sell relief. For example:

This approach transforms your "Free Trial" from a simple offer into the solution for a painful problem. This is what gets the *right* people to click and convert.

Your actionable plan to fix this

This is a lot to take in, I know. But fixing stalled campaigns isn't about one magic button. It's about a systematic, strategic overhaul. Based on my experience with other SaaS clients, including one where we generated over 5,000 trials at around $7 each on Meta Ads for a competitive product, this methodical approach is what works.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing all of this correctly takes time and expertise. It's not just about knowing the theory but having the hands-on experience to see the patterns, interpret the data, and make the right adjustments quickly.

If you feel like this is a path you'd like to go down but would prefer some expert guidance, that's what we do. We help SaaS companies just like yours overcome these scaling plateaus and build profitable, scalable advertising systems. We could start with a free, no-obligation strategy session where we can look at your ad account together and I can give you some more specific pointers.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh