Hi there,
Thanks for reaching out! I've had a look at the situation you described. It's a classic problem and one I've seen quite a few times. Happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on how you might get out of this rut.
Honestly, you're fighting a losing battle against an algorithm that thinks it knows best, and in a way, it does based on what you've taught it. You've correctly identified the two likely culprits, but the solution isn't about tweaking a few settings. It's about a fundamental reset. Let's get into it.
Your biggest problem isn't your ads, it's your data
Right, let's be brutally honest. You're stuck. The reason your ads keep defaulting to men, or charge you a fortune to show to woman, is because you've spent a long time and a lot of money teaching the Meta pixel one thing: men buy your product. Every sale, every add to cart, every click from a man has been a little confirmation for the algorithm, reinforcing this bias over and over. You have thousands of data points that scream "men, men, men".
When you turn off all the automation options, you're essentially telling the algorithm, "ignore everything you've learned and find me women who will buy this thing you've only ever seen men buy". The algorithm responds by saying, "Alright, but this is going to be difficult and expensive. I have no idea who these women are. I have to start from scratch, and you're going to pay for my education." That's why your CPM goes through the roof. It's the price of forcing the system to go against its own heavily biased intelligence.
This is an uncomfortable truth about how these platforms work. You're paying Meta to find customers, and its main goal is to do that as efficiently as possible *based on the data it has*. Right now, the path of least resistance, the cheapest and fastest way for it to get you a conversion, leads directly to a man. You're trying to send it down a path that's completely overgrown and unmapped. You can't just trim the hedges with a settings change; you need to bulldoze a new path entirely.
We'll need to look at your new customer's "nightmare"
The second part of your question is probably more important: "is my product/ ad simply not appealing enough to women?". It very well might be. Swapping a male actor for a female one is just window dressing if the core message doesn't change.
You need to stop thinking about "men" and "women" as demographics. You need to think about their problem state, their "nightmare". The reason your male customers bought your product was to solve a specific, urgent, or expensive problem in their lives. What is the equivalent "nightmare" for your new female audience? It's almost certainly not the same. They might use the product for a different reason, value different features, or be motivated by a completely different emotional trigger.
Let's imagine you sell high-end, durable work boots.
The Man's Nightmare: His cheap boots fall apart after three months on the job site, he gets blisters, his feet hurt, and it costs him time and money to keep replacing them. He's frustrated with poor quality.
The Woman's Nightmare (Hypothetical): She can't find any work boots that are actually designed for a woman's foot, everything is just a smaller man's boot. They're uncomfortable, don't provide the right support, and make her feel like an afterthought in her own profession. She's frustrated with a lack of consideration and poor design.
See the difference? Your ads to men would talk about durability, toughness, and long-term value. Your ads to women would need to talk about superior fit, ergonomic design specifically for women, and feeling empowered and properly equipped. Just showing a woman wearing the same boot and talking about durability misses the point entirely. You need to define this new ICP not by their gender, but by their unique pain. Until you do that, even the best ad strategy in the world will probably struggle.
| Ad Copywriting Example: Problem-Agitate-Solve | |
|---|---|
|
Ad for Men (Existing Audience) Problem: Tired of work boots that fall apart before the season's out? Agitate: Don't let cheap materials and poor stitching cost you another trip to the store and another day with sore feet. Solve: Our boots are built to last a decade, not a single job. Invest in comfort and durability that pays for itself. |
Ad for Women (New Audience) Problem: Still stuck wearing smaller versions of men's work boots? Agitate: You know the feeling. The sloppy fit, the blisters, the feeling that you're an afterthought. Your gear should work as hard as you do. Solve: Introducing the first work boot engineered from the ground up for a woman's foot. Experience the difference proper fit and support makes. |
I'd say you need a radical solution: A Clean Slate
So what's the fix? You can't un-teach your current pixel. The data is polluted for your new objective. It's like trying to teach a dog that's been trained for years as a guard dog to suddenly be a gentle therapy animal overnight. It's confused, it'll revert to its old training, and it's going to be a messy process.
The solution is to get a new dog.
You need to create a brand new, completely separate Facebook Ad Account.
This is non-negotiable. A new ad account means a new pixel. A new pixel means a blank slate. No history. No bias. No data points screaming "men!". It's the only reliable way to give your new strategy a fair chance to work. You'll install this new, clean pixel on your website alongside the old one (that's fine, they can coexist) and you will run all your new campaigns targeting women from this new account ONLY.
This isolates the experiment. It allows the new pixel to learn, from scratch, exclusively about your new female audience. It will be slow at first. Your costs will be higher than your mature campaigns targeting men. That is normal and expected. But you will be building a valuable data asset that understands this new customer segment. Trying to do this within your old account is just throwing good money after bad.
You probably should rebuild your audience strategy from zero
With your new ad account and pixel, you have no data. This is a good thing. It forces you to be deliberate. Forget lookalikes for now. You need to start with cold, interest-based targeting to feed the pixel its first learnings. This is where most people go wrong.
You need to be specific. As I mentioned earlier, your new customer's "nightmare" is different. So their interests will be different. Don't just target broad interests like "shopping" or "fashion". Think about what your ideal female customer *actually* does and likes. What publications does she read? What brands does she admire (that aren't your direct competitors)? What influencers does she follow? What software or tools does she use? What events does she attend?
The goal is to find interests that have a high concentration of your ideal customer persona. For example, if you sell high-end kitchen knives, targeting "cooking" is too broad. It includes people who just watch Gordon Ramsay shout at people. But targeting interests like "Le Creuset", "Bon Appétit Magazine", or followers of specific celebrity chefs is much more likely to hit your target.
Here's how I would structure the initial testing phase in your new ad account. We're following a logical funnel, even though we're starting from scratch.
| Funnel Stage | Campaign Objective | Audience Strategy (Initial Tests) |
|---|---|---|
| ToFu (Top of Funnel) | Conversions (Purchase) |
Create 3-5 ad sets, each targeting a different "theme" of interests. Don't mix them. -> Ad Set 1 (Competitor Brands): Target followers of 3-5 non-direct competitor brands that your ideal female customer loves. -> Ad Set 2 (Media & Publications): Target readers of 3-5 specific magazines, blogs, or websites she follows. -> Ad Set 3 (Influencers & Personalities): Target followers of 3-5 key figures in her niche. -> Ad Set 4 (Related Hobbies/Activities): Target 3-5 interests directly related to the *use* of your product from her perspective. |
| MoFu/BoFu (Mid/Bottom Funnel) | Conversions (Purchase) |
Once you have 1000+ visitors from the ToFu campaigns, start retargeting. -> Ad Set 1 (Website Visitors): Retarget all website visitors from the new pixel in the last 30 days (exclude purchasers). -> Ad Set 2 (Video Viewers): If using video, retarget people who watched 50% of your ad. -> Ad Set 3 (Engagers): Retarget people who engaged with your new Facebook/Instagram page. (At the start, you can combine these into one ad set if your budget is small). |
You MUST run these with a conversion objective. Do not chicken out and switch to traffic or awareness campaigns. That's a trap. We are paying Facebook to find *buyers*, even if it's expensive at first. We need to feed the pixel purchase data. You have to be patient and let it spend enough to learn. Turning off an ad set after a day because it didn't get a sale is a mistake. Let it run until it has spent at least 1-2x your target Cost Per Acquisition.
You'll need to re-evaluate your potential costs and returns
Your concern about a "super high CPM" is valid, but it might be based on the wrong metric. A high CPM is irrelevant if you're getting a profitable Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) or a positive Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). You need to know what you can *afford* to spend to acquire these new customers.
This is where we need to do some basic maths on Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This single calculation will give you the confidence to weather the initial storm of high costs.
| Hypothetical LTV Calculation For Your Product | |
|---|---|
| Metric | Example Value |
| Average Order Value (AOV) | £100 |
| Purchase Frequency (per year) | 1.2 |
| Customer Lifetime (in years) | 3 |
| Gross Margin % | 60% |
| Simple LTV (Revenue) = AOV * Freq * Lifetime | £100 * 1.2 * 3 = £360 |
| LTV (Gross Margin) = Simple LTV * Gross Margin | £360 * 0.60 = £216 |
What does this mean? In this example, each new customer is worth £216 in gross margin to your business over their lifetime. A healthy business can often afford to spend 1/3 of this LTV to acquire that customer. That means your maximum allowable CPA is £72 (£216 / 3).
Suddenly, a high CPM doesn't seem so scary. If your initial CPA is £60, you're still profitable in the long run. This maths is what separates amateurs from professionals. Amateurs panic over high CPMs. Professionals focus on the LTV:CPA ratio.
I remember one of our clients, a women's apparel brand, was hesitant to expand into new audiences because of initial high costs. But once we established their LTV, they understood they could afford to be patient. We focused on the right targeting and creative, and eventually got them a 691% Return on Ad Spend. It started with understanding their numbers, not just the platform metrics.
This is the main advice I have for you:
This is a lot to take in, I know. It's not a quick fix. It's a strategic overhaul. To make it clearer, here is a summary of my primary recommendations for you to implement.
| Step | Action | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| 1. The Foundation | Create a brand new Facebook Ad Account for targeting women. Install the new pixel on your site. | To create a "clean slate" and eliminate the data bias from your historically male audience. This is the most critical step. |
| 2. The "Why" | Define your new female ICP based on their "nightmare" or pain point, not just their demographic. Rewrite your ad copy to reflect this. | A simple gender-swap in your creative is not enough. The core message must resonate with their unique motivations for buying. |
| 3. The Campaign | Launch a Conversion campaign (optimised for Purchases) in the new account. Do not use Traffic or Awareness objectives. | You must teach the new pixel what a buyer looks like from day one. This requires feeding it high-intent conversion data, even if it's more expensive initially. |
| 4. The Targeting | Start with 3-5 ad sets using highly specific, themed detailed targeting (interests). Avoid broad audiences. | You need to manually guide the new pixel to find the right pockets of potential customers. Specificity is your best tool here. |
| 5. The Numbers | Calculate your product's LTV and determine your maximum allowable CPA. Judge campaign success on this metric, not on CPM. | This provides the financial context to make smart decisions and gives you the confidence to invest properly in this new audience without panicking at early costs. |
| 6. The Patience | Allow ad sets to spend at least 1-2x your target CPA before making decisions. Let the pixel exit the "learning phase". | The algorithm needs time and money to learn. Killing things too early is a common and costly mistake that prevents you from ever finding winning audiences. |
Why this is harder than it looks
As you can see, launching successfully into a new audience segment isn't about flicking a switch. It's a methodical process of research, strategy, building a new data asset from scratch, and patient testing. It requires a different way of thinking about your advertising, moving from short-term tweaks to long-term strategic investment.
Doing this yourself is possible, but it can be a minefield of costly mistakes and slow progress. You're essentially funding the algorithm's education with your own money, and any wrong turns can set you back weeks and thousands of pounds. There's a lot of nuance in picking the right interests, writing copy that converts, structuring campaigns for effective learning, and interpreting the data correctly to make the right decisions.
This is where expert help can make a huge difference. An experienced hand can navigate this process much more efficiently, avoiding the common pitfalls and accelerating the path to profitability for this new audience. We've done this for numerous clients, from eCommerce brands to B2B software, and that experience allows us to build and scale these new audience initiatives much faster than going it alone.
If you'd like to chat through this in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can look at your specific product and goals and map out what a robust strategy would look like for you. It might be helpful to get a second set of eyes on it.
Hope this detailed breakdown helps you see the path forward.
Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh
