Solved: Facebook Ads Targeting the Wrong Audience

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I had a look over the issues you're facing with your Facebook ads, and it's a really common problem, so dont worry. Getting lots of the wrong kind of inquirys, especially for jobs, and people who just waste your time is incredibly frustrating when you're spending good money on ads. The good news is that this is almost always solvable. For instance, one client—a medical job matching platform—was struggling with a £100 cost per user acquisition. By completely overhauling their strategy on Meta and Google Ads, we brought that cost down to just £7. The solution is rarely just about tweaking an interest or two.

The root of the problem is usually a bit deeper. It's about fundamentally rethinking how we find high-value customers on a platform like Facebook, which isn't designed for straightforward wealth targeting. Below, I’ve outlined my initial thoughts and the exact process I'd go through to fix this. It's a bit of a deep dive, but I wanted to give you a proper, actionable plan rather than just a few quick tips.

We'll need to look at your ICP... (It’s a Nightmare, Not a Demographic)

Right, let's get the biggest myth out of the way first. The idea that you can reliably target people on Facebook based on their income is a fantasy. The platform's data on this is patchy at best, often self-reported, and most of the direct targeting options for this have been removed over the years for privacy reasons. So, anyone telling you to just target 'people who make over £100k' is giving you outdated, ineffective advice. It's a dead end, and it's probably why you're struggling.

The real way to find people who can afford your prices is to stop thinking about their bank balance and start thinking about their problems. Your ideal customer isn't a demographic; they're a person in a specific 'problem state'. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening nightmare.

For example, a marketing agency doesn't sell 'social media management'. They sell a solution to the CEO's nightmare of 'seeing our competitors everywhere online while our own brand is invisible, making us look like we're falling behind and costing us market share'. A financial advisor doesn't sell 'wealth management'; they sell a solution to the business owner's nightmare of 'I'm making great money but I have no idea if I'm set up to retire, and I'm terrified of messing it up for my family'.

When you define your customer by their pain, two things happen. First, your ad copy becomes a million times more powerful because you're speaking directly to their deepest anxieties. Second, you unlock a much smarter way to target them. People with expensive problems are actively looking for solutions, and they leave a trail of digital breadcrumbs we can follow. This is the shift you need to make, from hunting for a demographic to targeting a state of mind.

I'd say you need to map their digital footprint...

Once you've defined your customer by their nightmare, the next step is to figure out where they go online to find solutions or discuss their industry. This is how we build our new targeting. We're looking for *proxies*—interests and behaviours that are strongly correlated with your ideal customer but not with the general population. This is what seperates professional ad buyers from amateurs.

Here’s a breakdown of the kind of things I'd be looking for:

• -> Software & Tools: What software do they already pay for to do their job? For a B2B service, this is gold. Do they use HubSpot, Salesforce, Xero, Asana? People don't 'like' these tools for fun; an interest in them is a strong signal of professional intent. Targeting users of expensive, specialist software is one of the most reliable ways to find business decision-makers.
• -> Niche Media & Influencers: Forget broad interests like 'Business'. What specific newsletters do they read (e.g., The Hustle, Stratechery)? What podcasts do they listen to on their commute (e.g., Acquired, My First Million)? Who are the specific, maybe even slightly obscure, thought leaders in their industry they follow on Twitter or LinkedIn?
• -> Competitors & Adjacent Services: Who are your direct and indirect competitors? You can often target people who have shown an interest in their pages. You can also target users of services that are complementary to yours. If you sell high-end website design, you could target people interested in brand strategy consultancies.
• -> Professional Groups: What specific, niche Facebook or LinkedIn groups are they a member of? Avoid the huge, spammy ones. Look for the private groups with genuine discussion, like 'SaaS Growth Hacks' or 'eCommerce Scaling Secrets'.

The goal is to build several ad sets, each themed around a different type of proxy. One ad set might be built around software interests, another around media interests, and a third around influencers. Then you can test them against each other to see which 'proxy category' delivers the most qualified enquiries.

You probably should rethink your offer...

Even with perfect targeting, you can still get the wrong people if your offer is wrong. This is a massive stumbling block, and likely a big contributor to your problem. The classic 'Contact Us for a Quote' or 'Request a Demo' is one of the most arrogant and ineffective calls to action in marketing. It's high-friction (I have to book a meeting and get sold to) and low-value (I get nothing tangible out of it).

This kind of offer screams 'I am a commodity vendor', and it attracts people who are just price-shopping or, as you've discovered, people who completely misunderstand what you do. Serious, high-value clients are busy. They won't give you their time unless you first give them value.

Your offer's only job is to deliver an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It needs to be low-friction to engage with but deliver immediate, undeniable value. We need to replace 'Request a Demo' with something genuinely helpful.

Some examples of better, lower-friction offers:

• -> For a Service Business: A free, automated audit that shows them their top 3 strategic opportunities. A free 15-minute 'Growth Strategy' session where you solve one small problem for them on the call. A downloadable 'Financial Projection Template' for startups.
• -> For a SaaS Product: A completely free trial with no credit card required. A freemium plan. Let them experience the product's value firsthand. We've seen this work incredibly well; for one B2B SaaS client, we generated 1535 trials using Meta Ads by focusing the entire campaign on this low-friction offer.
• -> For a High-Ticket Product: A detailed, comprehensive buyer's guide. A free ROI calculator that shows them the potential return of your product. An invitation to an exclusive webinar with an industry expert.

Notice the pattern? You solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. This approach naturally pre-qualifies your audience. Time-wasters won't bother with a detailed guide, but a serious prospect will devour it. This is how you get them to raise their hand and say, "I'm interested," without having to force them into a sales call.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Now, let's talk about why you're getting aplications for jobs. This is a dead giveaway that your ad copy is too vague, too corporate, or just plain confusing. It's not clearly and powerfully articulating who you help and what problem you solve. If someone can mistake your ad for a job description, your message has failed.

To fix this, we use proven copywriting frameworks that are built around the customer's pain. This is how you grab the attention of the right person and repel everyone else.

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

This is perfect for service businesses. You state the problem, you poke the bruise to make them feel the pain of it, and then you present your service as the logical solution.

• Problem: Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?
• Agitate: Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round of funding?
• Solve: Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth.

2. Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

This works brilliantly for products or SaaS. You paint a picture of their current frustrating reality (Before), show them the ideal future state (After), and position your product as the bridge to get them there.

• Before: Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out.
• After: Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated.
• Bridge: Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today.

Using these frameworks forces you to be specific and customer-centric. It makes it imposible for someone to misinterpret your ad as a job offer and acts as a powerful filter, attracting only those who feel the pain you're describing.

We'll need to fix your campaign structure...

Now, let's talk about the technical side within the Facebook Ads manager. Your campaign objective is absolutly critical. If you tell Facebook to find you people for the lowest cost, it will do exactly that, but it will find people who are cheap to reach because no other advertiser wants them—because they don't click, engage, or buy anything.

Here’s the hard truth: if you are running campaigns with the objective set to 'Reach' or 'Brand Awareness', you are actively paying Facebook to find you the worst possible audience for your product. You MUST use an objective that aligns with your business goal, which is almost always 'Leads' or 'Sales' (Conversions). This tells the algorithm to go and find people within your targeting who have a history of actually filling out forms or buying things. This one change alone can massively improve the quality of your inquries.

Beyond the objective, we need a proper campaign structre that separates different stages of the customer journey. A common mistake is to lump everyone into one ad set. A better approach is to split it out:

• -> ToFu (Top of Funnel - Prospecting): This is where you find new people. You'd have one campaign, and inside it, multiple ad sets testing the different 'proxy' audiences we discussed earlier (one for software users, one for followers of influencers, etc.).
• -> MoFu/BoFu (Middle/Bottom of Funnel - Retargeting): This is for people who have already shown interest. You need a seperate campaign to target people who have visited your website, watched your videos, or engaged with your ads. These people are much 'warmer' and should be shown a different message, perhaps a direct call to book a meeting or a special offer to get them over the line.

By seperating these, you can control your budget and messaging far more effectively, ensuring you're not showing an introductory ad to someone who has already visited your pricing page five times.

I'd say you need to understand your numbers...

Finally, to confidently advertise and stop worrying about the cost of every single lead, you need to know what a customer is actually worth to your business. The question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead be?" but "How high a Cost Per Lead can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?" The answer is found by calculating your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

It sounds complicated, but the basic formula is straightforward. You need three numbers:

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?
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 you run a SaaS company where customers pay £200/month, your margin is 75%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month.

LTV = (£200 * 0.75) / 0.05 = £150 / 0.05 = £3,000.

Each customer is worth £3,000 in gross margin to your business. A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,000 to acquire a single customer. If you know that 1 in 10 qualified leads becomes a customer, you can afford to pay up to £100 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, a £40 lead from a hyper-targeted Facebook ad doesn't look expensive at all—it looks like a bargain. This is the maths that unlocks aggressive, intelligent scaling. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers.

I know this is a lot to take in, but moving away from basic targeting and towards this more strategic approach is the only reliable way to get the results you're after. I've detailed my main recommendations for you below as a final summary of the action plan.

Implementing all of this correctly—from the deep customer research to the technical campaign setup and ongoing optimisation—takes a significant amount of time and expertise. It's a full-time job to get it right and keep it performing.

If you'd like an expert hand in putting this plan into action, we offer a free, no-obligation consultation call. We can go through your specific situation in more detail and give you a clear sense of what it would take to turn your campaigns around. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds helpful.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh