Solved: Facebook Ads Reaching the Wrong Audience

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look over the issue you're having with your Facebook ads, and to be honest, it's an incredibly common problem. It's maddening when you've got creatives that you know work, but the platform seems determined to show them to absolutely everyone *except* the people who might actually buy something.

My initial thought is that this isn't just a recent glitch or a bit of bad luck. It points to a deeper issue in how you're instructing the Facebook algorithm. You're right that you're wasting ad spend, but the solution isn't just to tweak a few interests. You'll likely need to completly rethink your approach to audience targeting from the ground up, moving away from chasing cheap clicks and towards attracting high-quality, valuable customers, even if they cost a bit more to reach. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at why Facebook is finding you the wrong people...

Right, let's get one thing straight first. The problem you're describing – lots of cheap traffic, irrelevant calls, no purchases – is a classic symptom of telling the algorithm to do the wrong job. Here's a bit of a contrarian take for you: a lot of what people call "brand awareness" is just a fancy term for paying Facebook to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

When you set up a campaign with an objective like "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you give the system a very simple command: "Find me the most eyeballs for the least amount of money." And the algorithm is brilliant at that. It goes out and finds all the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and definately least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because their attention is cheap. No one else is bidding for them. You're actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find non-customers.

Now, you said you're running "sales campaigns," which is the right objective. But the same principle applies on a smaller scale. If your targeting is too broad, or based on weak signals (like generic interests), the algorithm will still default to the cheapest-to-reach segment *within that audience*. It finds people who might *look* like your customers on paper but have no real intent to buy. They click because they're bored, or because the ad is pretty, but they have zero commercial intent. This is why you're getting cheap traffic that doesn't convert. You're asking for sales from an audience pool that's mostly filled with window shoppers, and the algorithm is just dutifully serving your ad to the cheapest ones in the crowd.

The whole game is to give the algorithm better instructions. Your "proven winning creative" is only one part of the instruction. The other, more important part, is a crystal-clear map of exactly who to show it to. You have to feed it high-quality data and specific constraints so it's forced to ignore the cheap, low-quality traffic and hunt for the users who are more expensive to reach but are far more likely to actually become customers.

I'd say you need to define your customer by their nightmare, not their demographics...

So, how do we give the algorithm better instructions? We start by throwing out the old, lazy way of thinking about a target audience. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile like "companies with 50-200 employees" or "women aged 30-45 living in London". This tells you absolutely nothing of value and leads to the generic ads that get you the junk traffic you're seeing now. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain.

You need to become an obsessive expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare. Your ideal customer isn't just a job title; they're a person lying awake at 3 AM worrying about a problem that you can solve. Your entire advertising strategy has to be built around that single moment of pain.

Let’s make this real. If you're selling project management software, the demographic might be "tech managers". Useless. The nightmare is a Head of Engineering who is terrified her best developers are about to quit because they are completely burnt out from a chaotic, broken workflow. Your ads don't talk about 'Gantt charts'; they talk about 'shipping code without the chaos' and 'keeping your A-players happy'.

If you're selling high-end kitchen knives, your demographic isn't "home cooks". The nightmare is a passionate foodie who just spent £100 on beautiful ingredients only to butcher them with a dull, clumsy knife, ruining the meal and feeling like a failure in front of their dinner guests. Your ads don't talk about 'high-carbon steel'; they talk about 'effortless prep' and 'the confidence to create restaurant-quality dishes at home'.

Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. Once you've truly isolated that nightmare, everything else falls into place. Your next job is to figure out where people in that state of pain hang out online.

• -> What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute?
• -> What industry newsletters do they actually open and read?
• -> What software tools do they already pay for? (You can often target users of other software).
• -> What specific influencers or thought leaders do they follow on social media?
-> What private Facebook Groups or niche subreddits are they members of?

This intelligence is the blueprint for your targeting. For that Head of Engineering, you'd target interests like 'Y Combinator', followers of people like Jason Lemkin, or members of groups like 'SaaS Growth Hacks'. For the foodie, you'd target followers of specific chefs like Ottolenghi, interests like 'Michelin Guide', or people who like brands like Le Creuset. These are interests based on psychographics and intent, not just broad demographics.

This work is non-negotiable. If you don't do this, you have no business spending another pound on ads, because you're just guessing. You have to know your customer's pain so intimately that your ad feels less like an interruption and more like a solution they've been desperately searching for.

You probably should rethink your entire audience structure...

Alright, so you've defined your customer's nightmare and you have a list of hyper-specific interests to target. Now you need to structure your campaigns properly. Sending the same ad to a brand new person and someone who abandoned their shopping cart yesterday is just lazy, and it's another reason for wasted spend. I always structure accounts using a basic funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

Most people get this backwards and pour all their money into ToFu. You should start at the bottom, with the lowest-hanging fruit, and work your way up. This ensures you're capturing the most profitable traffic first.

BoFu (Bottom of Funnel) - The Money Makers

This is your highest priority. These are people who have shown extreme purchase intent. They know who you are and what you sell, and they were *this close* to buying. Your only job here is to get them over the line. These campaigns should get about 10-20% of your budget. The audiences are small but incredibly high-value.

• -> Highest Priority: Added Payment Method / Initiated Checkout (in last 7-14 days).
• -> High Priority: Added to Cart (in last 7-14 days).
• -> Also include: Viewed Cart / Visited Checkout page.

MoFu (Middle of Funnel) - The Warm-Up Act

These are people who have engaged with your brand but haven't shown direct purchase intent yet. They've visited your website, watched your videos, or liked a post. They're aware of you but need more convincing. This is your second priority, and might also get 10-20% of your budget. Your goal here is to build trust and educate them.

• -> All website visitors (last 30-90 days).
• -> People who watched 50% of your video ads (last 30-90 days).
• -> People who engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page (last 30-90 days).

ToFu (Top of Funnel) - Finding New People (Your Main Problem Area)

This is where you're currently struggling and where the bulk of your budget (60-80%) will go. This is about finding new people who have never heard of you before. This is where your 'ICP Nightmare' research becomes so important. You have two main weapons here:

1. Lookalike Audiences: This is you giving Meta a high-quality "seed" audience and asking it to find more people just like them. But the quality of the seed is everything. A lot of people make a lookalike of "all website visitors" and wonder why it performs poorly. Of course it does! It's full of junk traffic. You need to create lookalikes in order of value:

1. Lookalike of your highest-value customers (upload a customer list).
2. Lookalike of all purchasers.
3. Lookalike of people who Initiated Checkout.
4. Lookalike of people who Added to Cart.
5. ...and so on, down the list.

You need at least 100 people in a custom audience to create a lookalike, but honestly, it works much better once you have 1,000+. Start with a 1% lookalike in your primary countries, as it's the most accurate. I remember one software client we worked with, we built our campaigns around high-quality lookalikes from their existing user base and generated 4,622 new registrations at just $2.38 each. That's impossible if you're using weak seed audiences.

2. Detailed Targeting (Interest/Behaviour): This is where you use the list you made from the 'ICP Nightmare' exercise. Create seperate ad sets for different themes of interests. For example:

• -> Ad Set 1: Competitor Targeting (people who like your competitors' pages).
• -> Ad Set 2: Influencer Targeting (followers of key people in your niche).
• -> Ad Set 3: Software/Tools Targeting (users of related software).
• -> Ad Set 4: Publication Targeting (readers of niche blogs/magazines).

You'll need to know your numbers to afford the right audience...

Here's the bit that trips a lot of people up. The audiences I just described—especially the high-quality lookalikes and hyper-specific interest groups—are more expensive to reach. They are in higher demand, and other advertisers are bidding for their attention. Your complaint about "cheap traffic" is actually you identifying the core of the problem. You've been fishing in a pond with no fish because the bait is cheap. You need to be fishing in the expensive, private lake where all the prize-winning fish are.

The real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Click go?" but "How high a Cost Per Click can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer to that is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Most business owners don't know this number, so they operate in fear, trying to minimise all their costs. But once you know your LTV, you can advertise with confidence. Here's a simple way to calculate it:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's the average amount a customer pays you per month?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after costs of goods sold?
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month?

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

Let's say your service is £100/month (ARPA), your margin is 70%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month.
LTV = (£100 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £70 / 0.05 = £1,400

So, each customer you acquire is worth £1,400 in gross margin to your business. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £466 (£1400 / 3) to acquire a single new customer. Suddenly, paying £5 for a click or £50 for a lead from a hyper-targeted audience doesn't seem so scary, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth.

And finally, your offer might be the actual problem...

This is the last piece of the puzzle, and it's a bit of a tough one to hear. What if your targeting is only part of the issue? What if the ads *are* reaching the right people, but those people are seeing your offer and thinking, "So what?" A weak offer will kill even the best-targeted campaign. The number one reason I see campaigns fail, beyond targeting, is an offer that doesn't provide enough value or, worse, solves a problem nobody has.

Your offer's only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. A generic "10% Off Your First Order" is rarely it. It's boring and it positions you as a commodity.

Instead, your offer needs to be a direct solution to the 'nightmare' we talked about earlier.

• -> If you're selling high-end skincare, the nightmare is "I'm worried about aging and looking tired." The offer isn't just a moisturiser; it's a "Radiance Renewal Kit" with a clear promise.
• -> If you're a service business, the nightmare is uncertainty and risk. You don't just sell "consulting services"; you offer a "Predictable Growth Dashboard" or a "1-Day Filming Process." You productise your service to make it tangible and less risky for the buyer.

You need to look at your landing page and ask yourself honestly: does my headline speak directly to a burning pain? Does my offer feel like a compelling, irresistible solution to that pain? The ad copy framework I find works best for this is Problem-Agitate-Solve.

Problem: State the nightmare directly. "Are you getting cheap clicks and no sales from your Facebook ads?"
Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. "Every day, you're watching your ad spend burn with nothing to show for it but a list of irrelevant callers wasting your time."
Solve: Present your offer as the clear solution. "Our 3-step targeting system finds you customers, not just clicks."

If your ad creative and your landing page aren't built around this kind of powerful, pain-driven messaging, then you'll struggle to convert even the most perfect audience. It all has to work together.

This is the main advice I have for you:

To wrap this up, the frustration you're feeling is valid, but it's fixable. It requires a strategic shift away from what you're currently doing. You need to stop being a passive user of the ad platform and start giving it very specific, high-quality instructions. You need to move from chasing cheap traffic to investing in valuable audiences, from defining customers by demographics to understanding their deepest pains, and from making weak offers to presenting irresistible solutions. It's a lot of work, but it's the only way to build a profitable and scalable advertising system.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Implementing all of this correctly is a significant undertaking. It's not a 'set and forget' fix; it requires constant testing, analysis, and optimisation. This is often where working with a professional can make a huge difference, as we've been through this process hundreds of times and can help you avoid common pitfalls and accelerate your path to profitability.

If you'd like to go through your ad account together and map out a specific action plan based on your data, we offer a completely free, no-obligation initial strategy session. It might be helpful to have a second pair of expert eyes on it.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh