Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out about the sudden drop in sales. It's a really common and frustrating situation, especially when you think you've made a positive change.
A drop from 14 sales to 1 is definitely alarming, but it's probably not as random as it seems. The two changes you mentioned – increasing your budget by 20% and changing your website copy from "Black Friday" to "Christmas Sales" – are very likely the direct culprits. I'll walk you through why this happens and what you can do about it.
TLDR;
- Don't Panic: A 20% budget increase almost certainly pushed your ad set back into the 'Learning Phase', causing temporary performance swings. The algorithm needs a few days to re-stabilise.
- Offer Psychology Matters: Changing "Black Friday" to "Christmas Sales" is a huge shift. You've swapped high-urgency, scarcity-driven messaging for a more general, less immediate offer. This has likely lowered your conversion rate, especially at checkout.
- Your Funnel is Leaking: An 85% cart abandonment rate (7 add-to-carts, 1 sale) is a major red flag. This is where the lack of urgency is probably hurting you most.
- The Fix: Hold your nerve and let the algorithm finish learning. Then, focus on re-introducing urgency into your "Christmas" offer and diagnosing the checkout drop-off.
- Helpful Tools Inside: I've included a couple of interactive calculators in this letter to help you analyse your funnel's performance and understand what you can truly afford to spend to get a customer.
We'll need to look at the 'Learning Phase' first...
Alright, so the first thing to understand is how Meta's algorithm works. When an ad set is performing well and you give it a significant budget increase (anything over 20-25% in a day is usually considered significant), you essentialy tell the algorithm "Right, the game has changed, go find me more people, but now with more money". This often kicks it back into what's called the 'Learning Phase'.
During this phase, the system has to re-explore your audience and figure out the most efficient way to spend the new budget to get you results. It's a period of testing and instability. Performance can go up, down, and all over the place for a few days. It's totally normal to see your Cost Per Purchase go up and your sales volume drop temporarily. Tbh, the worst thing you can do right now is make more drastic changes. You need to give it at least 3-5 days to settle down and exit the learning phase before you can properly judge the perfomance.
Think of it like this: you were driving a car perfectly at 50mph, then you suddenly floored it to 60mph. The car is going to lurch a bit before it finds a smooth cruising speed again. Your campaign is doing the same thing.
I'd say you've changed the offer more than you think...
The second, and probably more impactful issue, is the change in messaging. Swapping "Black Friday" for "Christmas Sales" isn't just changing a couple of words; you've fundamentally altered the psychology of your offer.
"Black Friday" implies:
- -> Urgency: This is for a limited time, maybe only a weekend.
- -> Scarcity: Stock might run out.
- -> Best Deal: This is perceived as the lowest price of the year. People wait for it.
"Christmas Sales" implies:
- -> General Discount: It's a seasonal offer, but not necessarily the best one.
- -> Longer Duration: These sales can run for weeks. There's no rush.
- -> Less Exclusivity: Every single retailer has a "Christmas Sale".
You went from a high-stakes, must-buy-now event to a casual, browse-and-maybe-buy-later situation. This directly impacts your conversion rate. People will still click because they're interested, but the motivation to complete the purchase *right now* has vanished. This is almost certainly why you're seeing a decent number of 'Add to Carts' but a huge drop-off before the final sale. They're adding it to the basket, thinking "I'll get it closer to Christmas," and then they forget or find something else. Black Friday makes them afraid to wait.
We've seen this with clients before. I remember one women's apparel brand we worked with whose entire Q4 strategy was built around a series of short, sharp, high-urgency sales rather than one long "festive season" discount. The result was a 691% return on ad spend because every promotion had a clear and immediate reason to buy.
You probably should analyse your funnel properly...
Let's look at the numbers you gave. 114 clicks, 7 adds to cart, 1 sale. This is a small data set, but it gives us a snapshot.
- Click-to-ATC Rate: 7 / 114 = 6.1%. This isn't too bad. People are interested enough in your ads and products to add them to their basket.
- Website Conversion Rate: 1 / 114 = 0.87%. This is quite low. For eCommerce, you'd ideally want to be in the 2-5% range, though it varies wildly by niche.
- Cart Abandonment Rate: (7 ATCs - 1 Sale) / 7 ATCs = 85.7%. This is the real problem. Almost 9 out of 10 people who add something to their cart are leaving without buying. This is where your profit is disappearing.
The lack of urgency is a big factor, but other things could be contributing. Are your shipping costs a surprise at checkout? Is the checkout process complicated? Is your site slow to load on the final pages? You need to investigate this part of your customer journey very carefully. Small frictions here can have a massive impact on sales.
Here's a little calculator to help you visualise how small changes in these rates can affect your daily sales. Pop in your numbers and see for yourself how improving that cart abandonment rate changes things.
You'll need a clear action plan...
Okay, so what do you actually do? It's tempting to start changing everything, but that'll just make things worse. You need a methodical approach.
I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:
| Step | Action | Why you should do this |
|---|---|---|
| Step 1: Wait | Do nothing to your add campaign for 3-5 days. | You must allow the campaign to exit the Learning Phase. Any more changes will just reset the clock and you'll never get stable data to make good decisions. |
| Step 2: Inject Urgency | Update website copy to create urgency. | The "Christmas Sale" messaging is too passive. Add banners like "Order by Dec 18th for Christmas Delivery" or "Limited Holiday Stock". This gives people a reason to buy now. |
| Step 3: Fix Checkout | Analyse and simplify your checkout process. | Go through the checkout yourself. Are shipping costs a surprise? Are there too many fields to fill out? Remove any friction. Set up cart abandonment emails immediatly. |
| Step 4: Test Systematically | Set up an A/B test in your campaign. | Once stable, duplicate your ad set. In one, test a new offer or creative. For example, test a "12 Days of Christmas" daily deal vs your standard sale. This is how you find new winners without breaking what's already working. |
And finally, you have to think long-term...
This whole situation highlights a bigger issue: relying on single campaign tweaks can be a fragile way to grow. The real goal is to build a resilient advertising system that can handle these bumps without derailing your business. This involves structuring your account properly with different campaigns for different stages of the customer journey (Top of Funnel for new audiences, Middle for engagement, Bottom for retargeting cart abandoners).
It also means understanding your numbers on a deeper level. For instance, do you know your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)? Knowing what a customer is worth to you over the long term is incredibly freeing. If you know a customer is worth £500 to you, suddenly paying £50 for a sale doesn't seem so bad. It stops you from making panicked decisions based on one bad day's results.
This is where professional help often makes a huge difference. An expert can build that resilient structure, run disciplined tests, and provide the strategic oversight to know when to hold steady and when to make a change. It's not just about setting up an ad; it's about building a predictable growth engine.
Hopefully, this gives you a much clearer picture of what's going on and a solid plan to get your sales back on track. It's a solvable problem, it just requires a bit of patience and a methodical approach.
If you'd like to have a chat and get a second pair of eyes on your account, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can go through your specific setup together.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
