Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out!
I had a look over the situation you described with your Facebook ads. It's a really common problem, especially for niche products like yours, so don't feel like you're alone in this. Those bursts of success show you've got something that works, but the sharp drop-off and the dreaded 'Learning Limited' status is a classic sign of a structural issue, not a spending one. I've put together some detailed thoughts on what's likely happening and a more sustainable way to approach it.
TLDR;
- Your 'Learning Limited' issue isn't the cause of your problems, it's a symptom of audience saturation and creative fatigue. Simply spending more won't fix it.
- The bursts of success followed by a crash mean you're quickly burning through small pockets of high-intent buyers. You need a system to constantly find and warm up new audiences.
- The most important piece of advice is to stop focusing only on direct sales campaigns and build a proper marketing funnel (Top, Middle, Bottom) to create a sustainable flow of customers.
- You need to shift your ad messaging from just showing the book to selling the experience or solution it provides (e.g., better bedtime, a unique gift).
- This letter includes an interactive Break-Even ROAS calculator to help you understand your real profitability and a flowchart visualising the campaign structure I'm recommending.
We need to talk about "Learning Limited"...
First off, let's clear something up. "Learning Limited" isn't the enemy. It's a notification, a symptom. Facebook is telling you that the ad set isn't getting enough conversions (the 50 per week it wants) to properly optimise. Your instinct to just throw more money at it is understandable, but it's usually the wrong move. It's like revving a car that's stuck in the mud; you just dig a deeper hole.
What's actually happening is a two-pronged attack on your campaigns:
1. Audience Saturation: You've likely found a great, but small, audience pocket. Let's say it's "Mums who follow Author X and also like Pages related to early learning". Your ads show to the most likely buyers in this group first. They buy, you get a great 3:1 ROAS. But after a week or two, you've shown the ad to everyone in that pocket multiple times. The ones who were going to buy, have. The rest aren't interested. Your performance tanks.
2. Creative Fatigue: At the same time, the people in that audience are seeing the same ad over and over. It becomes invisible. They scroll right past it. Your Click-Through Rate (CTR) drops, your Cost Per Click (CPC) goes up, and your ROAS evaporates.
Your "bursts of success" are you striking gold on a new audience pocket. The subsequent crash is you mining it out completely. The constant reshuffling is you looking for the next vein of gold. It's exhausting and not scalable. The solution isn't to dig faster; it's to build a proper mining operation.
You're probably advertising upside down...
Right now, it sounds like you're only doing one thing: asking people to buy your book. This is called Bottom-of-Funnel (BoFu) advertising. It only works on people who are ready to buy *right now*. This is the smallest, most expensive audience to reach. To get sustainable results, you need to build a full funnel to guide people from not knowing you exist to becoming a customer.
It looks something like this:
Top of Funnel (ToFu): Awareness
Goal: Grab attention, not sales. Build an audience.
Audience: Broad interests (e.g., parents, children's books, parenting blogs).
Ad Type: Short video reading, animated page turns, author intro.
Middle of Funnel (MoFu): Consideration
Goal: Build trust and interest.
Audience: Retarget people who watched your ToFu videos.
Ad Type: Customer reviews, photos of kids enjoying the book, behind-the-scenes content.
Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): Conversion
Goal: Drive the sale.
Audience: Retarget website visitors, 'Add to Carts', and lookalikes of past buyers.
Ad Type: Direct offer ads - "Buy Now", "Shop on Amazon".
By building this structure, your ToFu campaign is constantly filling a pool of warm prospects for your MoFu and BoFu campaigns. This solves the audience saturation problem because you always have new, interested people to sell to. It also helps with the "Learning Limited" issue because your BoFu campaign is now targeting a higher-quality, more concentrated audience that is more likely to convert, helping you get the volume Meta needs to optimise.
I'd say you need to sell the experience, not the book...
Your current ads are probably just a picture of the book cover with a "Buy Now" button. That's not enough to cut through the noise. You need to connect with the parent's underlying motivation. No one wakes up thinking "I must buy a self-published children's book today". But they do think:
- "I feel guilty about not spending enough quality time with my kids."
- "Bedtime is a stressful nightmare, I wish it was a magical bonding moment."
- "I need a thoughtful birthday gift for my nephew that isn't more plastic junk."
Your ad copy needs to speak to these pains. This is where the Problem-Agitate-Solve framework comes in handy. For example:
Angle 1: The Bedtime Solution
"Tired of the same old bedtime stories? Worried you're missing out on those precious moments? Imagine turning bedtime into the most magical part of the day. Our book is designed to spark their imagination and bring you closer together. Create memories that last a lifetime."
Angle 2: The Perfect Gift
"Struggling to find a unique gift for a child's birthday? Want to give something more meaningful than another toy they'll forget in a week? Give the gift of adventure and imagination. It's a present they'll open again and again."
You need to test these different angles with different creatives. A short video of you reading an exciting page. A carousel ad showing 3-4 beautiful illustrations from the book. A photo of a parent and child reading it together (you can get friends to help with this!). This constant testing is what gives campaigns longevity.
You'll need to understand the maths that matters...
You mentioned a 3:1 ROAS is "totally profitable". That's great, but you need to know *exactly* what your break-even point is. ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) is a vanity metric if you don't understand the profit behind it. You need to know your Break-Even ROAS. This is the ROAS you need to achieve just to cover your ad spend and the cost of the book itself. Anything above this is profit.
I've built a simple calculator for you. Play around with it to understand your numbers. Once you know that, say, any ROAS above 1.8 is pure profit, you can make much smarter decisions about which ads to keep running, even if they're not hitting a magical 3.0.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
Putting this all together, the path to sustained success isn't about finding one magic ad that runs forever. It's about building a system. A system for warming up audiences, testing creatives, and understanding your numbers. Here's the plan I would put in place.
| Area | Recommendation | Why It Helps |
|---|---|---|
| Mindset Shift | Stop chasing short-term sales. Focus on building a sustainable customer acquisition system. | This avoids the boom-bust cycle you're stuck in and builds a long-term asset (your warm audience). |
| Campaign Structure | Implement seperate ToFu, MoFu, and BoFu campaigns as outlined in the funnel diagram above. | Prevents audience burnout, lowers overall acquisition cost, and provides the data Meta needs to optimise properly, helping you escape the "Learning Limited" trap. |
| Audience Strategy | Use broad interests for ToFu (Awareness). Retarget video viewers and page engagers for MoFu (Consideration). Use website visitors, add-to-carts, and purchaser lookalikes for BoFu (Sales). | This systematically moves a person from stranger to customer in a logical, cost-effective way. You're fishing in a stocked pond, not the open ocean. |
| Creative & Copy | Develop and test multiple ad angles (e.g., bedtime solution, unique gift) and formats (video, carousel, static images of the book in use). | This fights creative fatigue and helps you discover new, profitable ways to position your book. It gives you an arsenal of proven ads to rotate. |
| Metrics | Use the calculator to find your true Break-Even ROAS. Judge success on actual profit, not just a generic ROAS number. | This ensures you're making decisions based on real business impact. A 2.5 ROAS that's profitable is better than a 3.0 ROAS that's breaking even. |
I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a big shift from just trying to find winning ad sets. Building and managing a proper funnel like this takes expertise and constant attention. It involves analysing data, making strategic adjustments, and consistently producing new ad creatives to test. It's definitely a full-time job in itself.
This is where professional help can make a huge difference. We specialise in building these kinds of sustainable growth systems for clients, taking the guesswork and stress out of the equation so you can focus on writing your next book. We've helped many eCommerce brands achieve consistent returns. For instance, we ran a campaign for a subscription box client on Meta Ads that generated a 1000% return on ad spend.
If you'd like to have a chat, we offer a free, no-obligation consultation where we can take a proper look inside your ad account and map out a more detailed, tailored strategy for you.
Hope that helps!
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
