Solved: Facebook Ads Stuck in Account Restriction Limbo

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It sounds like you've hit the infamous Facebook 'new account nightmare'. It's incredibly frustrating, I know. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on how to get past this and actually start getting some results.

The account restriction is likely just a temporary thing while their systems verify you're legit, but honestly, it's a blessing in disguise. It's forcing you to pause before you potentially waste a lot of money. The real problem isn't getting an ad to *run*; the real problem is getting an ad to *work*. And that almost never has to do with the button-pushing in Ads Manager.

We'll need to look at your offer... because it's probably not the ads that are the problem.

This is the bit no one wants to hear, especially after you've just launched. But ninety-nine percent of the time, when ads fail, it's not because of the targeting, the creative, or a technical glitch. It's because the offer is weak. An offer that doesn’t connect with a real, urgent need is like trying to sell ice to eskimos. There's just no demand.

I see so many founders get excited about an idea, build a product or service, and then try to figure out who to sell it to. That's completely backwards and a recipe for burning cash. You need to flip that on its head. The entire foundation of a successful advertising campaign is built on an offer that solves a painful, urgent problem for a very specific group of people. If you haven't nailed this, you have no business spending a single pound on ads yet.

Successful offers all have a few things in common:

1. They are for a specific audience. They don't try to be for everyone. This focus makes their message incredibly relevent and powerful to that niche group. You can't be generic.
2. They solve an urgent problem. They don't just sell a feature; they sell a solution to a deep frustration. For example, a video production company doesn't sell a "brand film"; they sell a solution to the frustration of being a brilliant company that nobody's ever heard of. That emotional connection is what gets people to act.
3. They are crystal clear. They're easy to understand. A service might be turned into a product, like a "1-Day Strategy Sprint". It has a name, clear deliverables, and a defined timeline. This makes a complex service feel simple, tangible, and less risky for a buyer.

Before you even think about your next campaign, you need to go through this process. It's not the sexy part of marketing, but it's the only part that actually matters. Get this right, and the ads almost write themselves.

I'd say you need to define who you're *really* talking to...

Now that we've established the offer is everything, the next step is getting obsessive about who it's for. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profiles. "Women aged 25-45 who like yoga" is useless. "Companies in the tech sector with 50-100 employees" tells you nothing of value. This kind of targeting leads to generic ads that speak to no one and get ignored.

To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their *pain*. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

Let’s make this real. Imagine you sell a project management tool for creative agencies. Your ICP isn't "Creative Directors at agencies with 10-50 people". No. Your ICP is the Creative Director who just had a star designer quit because they were sick of chasing feedback over email and Slack, derailing a massive client project in the process. Her nightmare isn't 'needing better project management'; it's the fear of losing another key team member and damaging the agency's reputation.

Once you've identified that nightmare, your whole approach changes. You're not selling software anymore; you're selling a way to retain top talent and keep clients happy. The ad copy writes itself. The targeting becomes obvious.

So how do you find these people? You have to figure out where they live online. What do they *actually* consume?

• -> Niche Podcasts: What do they listen to on their commute? For that creative director, it might be 'The Futur' or '2Bobs'.
• -> Industry Newsletters: What emails do they actually open? Not the generic stuff, but newsletters like 'Creative Boom' or specific Substack writers.
• -> SaaS Tools: What software do they already pay for? They probably use Slack, Figma, Adobe Creative Cloud. These are all targetable interests on platforms like Meta.
• -> Online Communities: Are they in specific Slack channels, Facebook Groups like 'Dribbble Designers', or subreddits?
• -> Influencers: Who do they follow on LinkedIn or Twitter for industry insights? People like Chris Do in the design space.

This level of research is non-negotiable. It's the difference between shouting into the void and whispering directly into the ear of someone who desperately needs what you sell. Do this work first, or you are simply gambling with your money.

You probably should rethink your messaging... it needs to be a message they can't ignore.

Once you know the nightmare and who is having it, you can craft a message that hits them right between the eyes. Generic, feature-led copy gets scrolled past. Your ad needs to enter the conversation already happening in your prospect's head.

There are a few classic copywriting frameworks that just work. I'm not talking about clever taglines; I'm talking about structured arguments that build a case for your solution. Two of the best are Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) and Before-After-Bridge (BAB).

Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) is perfect for services. You don't sell the service; you sell the relief from the problem.

Before-After-Bridge (BAB) works brilliantly for products, especially SaaS. You're not selling the product; you're selling the transformation.

Let's look at some proper examples. Notice how they never lead with the solution. They always lead with the pain.

See the difference? The 'Good' examples aren't just selling a product or service. They are selling a specific, desirable future. They sell confidence, peace of mind, and a solution to a problem that's genuinely bothering someone. This is what you have to aim for.

You'll need to ditch 'Brand Awareness'... It's how you pay Facebook to find non-customers.

Here is one of the most common and costly mistakes I see new businesses make. They think they need to "build their brand" first, so they run campaigns with "Reach" or "Brand Awareness" as the objective. This sounds logical, but it's a trap.

When you set your campaign objective to "Brand Awareness," you are giving the Facebook algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people, inside my targeting, for the absolute lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being a ruthlessly efficient machine, does exactly what you asked. It goes out and finds all the users who are least likely to click an ad, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively, never going to pull out a credit card and buy something. Why? Because those people aren't in demand. No other advertiser wants them, so their attention is dirt cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your business. It's madness.

For a new business, awareness is a byproduct of making sales, not a prerequisite for it. The best form of brand awareness is a happy customer telling their friends about you. That only happens if you make a sale.

From day one, every single campaign you run must be optimised for a conversion. That could be a lead, a free trial signup, an appointment booking, or a purchase. When you tell the algorithm to find you "Purchasers," it completely changes its behaviour. It now ignores the cheap, passive users and instead focuses on people who have a history of buying things from ads. It costs more to reach them, of course, because every other advertiser wants them too. But this is the only audience that matters.

You have to trust the algorithm. Your job isn't to find customers. Your job is to give the algorithm a clear conversion goal, a strong offer, and compelling ad copy. The algorithm will find the customers for you. It's what it was built to do.

You'll want to structure your campaigns properly from the start.

Okay, so you've got a killer offer, you know who you're talking to, and you're committed to running conversion campaigns. Now we can finally talk about what to actually do in Ads Manager.

A big mistake is just throwing a bunch of different audiences into one campaign and hoping for the best. A structured approach will give you much clearer data and let you scale what's working. I usually think about it in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your prospecting. You're reaching people who have never heard of you before.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): These people have shown some interest but haven't taken a high-intent action yet. They've watched a video or visited your website.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): These are your hottest prospects. They've added a product to their cart or started a checkout.

For a brand new account with no data, you'll be spending almost all your time and money at the Top of Funnel. You don't have anyone to retarget yet. Here's how I'd prioritise your audience testing:

Phase 1: Detailed Targeting (Your First Month)

This is where you use the ICP research you did earlier. You'll create different ad sets, each targetting a 'theme' of related interests. Don't just lump them all together.

• -> Theme 1: Competitors. Target people who like your direct competitors' Facebook pages.
• -> Theme 2: Tools & Software. Target users interested in the SaaS tools your ICP uses (e.g., HubSpot, Salesforce, Figma).
• -> Theme 3: Influencers & Publications. Target followers of key industry figures or readers of niche magazines/blogs.
• -> Theme 4: Behaviours & Job Titles. Target based on things like "Small Business Owners" or job titles (this is better on LinkedIn but can sometimes work on Meta).

Run these as separate ad sets within a single ToFu campaign. After a few days (or after spending 2-3x your target cost per conversion), you'll start to see which themes are performing. Turn off the losers, and move budget to the winners.

Phase 2: Retargeting & Lookalikes (After 100+ Conversions)

Once your pixel has gathered enough data (you really need at least 100 purchases, or whatever your conversion event is), you can unlock Meta's most powerful tools.

• -> Retargeting (MoFu/BoFu): You'll create new campaigns to show different ads to people who have already visited your site but didn't convert. This is often your most profitable campaign. You'd have an ad set for 'All Website Visitors in 30 Days' and another for 'Added to Cart in 7 Days'.
• -> Lookalike Audiences (ToFu): This is the holy grail. You can tell Facebook, "Here is a list of my last 100 customers. Go find me 1 million other people in the UK who look and behave exactly like them." A 1% Lookalike of your purchasers is often the best cold audience you will ever find. You can create lookalikes from website visitors, video viewers, etc., but the ones based on actual customers are always the most potent.

This structured approach of Test -> Analyse -> Scale is the foundation of all successful media buying. It takes patience, but it's the only way to build a predictable customer acquisition machine.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers, or you're flying blind.

This is probably the most important, and most overlooked, piece of the puzzle. Most businesses are obsessed with getting the lowest possible Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Acquisition (CPA). They see a £50 lead and panic, without any context. The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I *afford* to acquire a great customer?"

The answer to that question is your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you cannot make intelligent decisions about your ad spend.

Here’s a simple way to calculate it. You need three bits of info:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a customer worth to you per month/year on average?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Be honest.
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of your customers do you lose each month?

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

Let's say you run a SaaS business charging £100/month. Your gross margin is 80%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month.

LTV = (£100 * 0.80) / 0.05

LTV = £80 / 0.05 = £1,600

In this example, each customer is worth £1,600 in gross profit to your business over their lifetime. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is at least 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to £533 (£1,600 / 3) to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 5 qualified leads, you can afford to pay up to £106 per lead.

Suddenly that £50 lead from Facebook doesn't look so scary, does it? It looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Without it, you're just guessing.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to pull all of this together, getting your ads out of limbo is just the very first, and easiest, step. The real work is in building a system that can reliably turn strangers into customers at a profit. Here are the main recommendations I'd make for your first three months.

As you can see, there's a lot more to it than just boosting a post. It's a proper discipline. Getting professional advice can make a huge difference, especially at the start. It's not just about setting up an ad; it's about understanding the audience, building the right strategy, optimising the targeting, creating compelling creative, and fine-tuning the entire funnel.

That's where working with someone with expertise in this area can save you a huge amount of time, money, and frustration. We've run campaigns for dozens of businesses, from B2B software companies to eCommerce stores, and we've seen what works and what doesn't. One campaign we worked on for a client reduced their cost per user acquisition from £100 down to just £7. For another software client, we generated over 5,000 trials using Meta Ads. This experience allows us to skip the common mistakes and get straight to building a strategy that's tailored to your specific business and goals.

I hope this has been genuinely helpful and given you a much clearer path forward. If you'd like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can review your plans and give you some more tailored advice.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh