Solved: Help Needed with Facebook Ads for Supplement Business

Hi there,

Thanks for getting in touch about your supplement business. I saw your post and thought I'd give you some of my initial thoughts and a bit of guidance based on our experience. It's a tough market to crack on Facebook, especially with something like a natural testosterone booster, because of the policies and the competition. But it’s definately not impossible if you get the strategy right from the start.

Honestly, most people who fail with Facebook Ads in the supplement space make a few common mistakes, mainly around who they're talking to and what they're saying. I'll walk you through how we'd approach it.

I'd say you need to nail your audience targeting first...

This is without a doubt the most important piece of the puzzle. You can have the best product in the world and amazing ads, but if you show them to the wrong people, you're just burning money. For a product like yours, going broad is a surefire way to get a high ad spend with very little to show for it.

Your target customer isn't just any guy. He's likely a specific age, probably 30-55, and has specific interests and behaviours. You need to get inside his head. What does he do? What does he read? Who does he follow?

We need to go beyond just targeting an interest like 'Fitness' or 'Bodybuilding'. Think about how many millions of people fall into that bucket who have zero interest in a testosterone booster. Instead, we need to layer interests to create a much more accurate picture of your ideal customer. This is about finding the crossover between different interests that, when combined, strongly signal we've found our guy.

Here's a quick example of what that might look like in practice:

By telling Facebook to only show ads to people who match an interest in Layer 1 AND Layer 2, you filter out a huge amount of irrelevant people. This gets your cost per click down and your conversion rate up.

Once you have some data, the next step is Lookalike Audiences. These are incredibly powerful. You can give Facebook a list of your existing customers (if you have any), or people who've added your product to their cart, and it will go and find millions of other people who share similar characteristics. I often see people making a Lookalike of 'all website visitors', which is okay, but it's not great. A visitor is very different to a buyer. A buyer has parted with cash. That's a much stronger signal. We'd always prioritise building Lookalikes from the highest-value actions first: purchasers, then people who initiated checkout, then people who added to cart. That hierarchy is really important.

You probably should rethink your creative and messaging...

Supplements are a wierd one on Facebook. You're walking a fine line with their advertising policies. You can't make direct health claims or promise specific results, so a lot of the typical marketing angles are out. You can't say "This will boost your testosterone by 50%!". But you can say something like "Supports your body's natural hormone production" or "Formulated to aid vitality and performance". It's a subtle but important difference that keeps you from getting your ad account shut down.

Your creative—the actual images and videos—needs to build trust and resonate with the audience we just defined. Generic stock photos of muscular guys won't cut it. It looks cheap and untrustworthy.

The best performing creative we see in this space, by far, is user-generated content (UGC). This means real videos and photos from real customers. It feels authentic because it is. A simple video of a customer in their 40s talking to their phone camera about how your product fits into their routine and makes them feel is a thousand times more persuasive than a slick, professional ad. It builds social proof and makes the purchase feel less risky.

You need to be constantly testing. Test different hooks in your copy. Test different visuals – a video of the product, a customer testimonial, a graphic explaining the (compliant) benefits. You'll quickly see what your audience responds to.

We'll need to look at your entire sales funnel...

Ads are just one part of the journey. You can have perfect targeting and amazing ads, but if your website isn't up to scratch, you'll still fail. You have to look at the data to see where people are dropping off. It tells a story.

-> Low Click-Through Rate (CTR)? If people are seeing your ad but not clicking, the problem is the ad itself. The creative or the copy isn't grabbing their attention or it isn't resonating with them.

-> Lots of clicks, but few 'Add to Carts'? This points to a problem with your product page. Is the price too high? Is the product information unclear? Does the page load slowly? Is it missing key trust signals?

-> Lots of 'Add to Carts' but few purchases? The issue is in your checkout process. Are there unexpected shipping costs? Is it too complicated? Are you not offering the right payment options?

For a new supplement brand, trust is everything. Your website needs to scream 'legitimacy'. This means professional (but not stocky) product photos, clear information about the ingredients, links to any scientific backing (if you have it), customer reviews with photos, a clear returns policy, and an easy way to contact you. People are understandably sceptical of new supplement brands, so you have to go above and beyond to prove your trustworthyness.

I remember one eCommerce client where we focused on trust and clarity with a simple redesign, their conversion rate tripled almost overnight, and their ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) went through the roof. I also recall a subscription box client where we hit a 1000% ROAS once the whole funnel was working together, which shows how important it is to have all aspects of the funnel working together.

You'll need a solid, simple campaign structure...

Don't overcomplicate things. We usually run a simple but effective structure that separates cold audiences from warm audiences (retargeting).

1. Top of Funnel (TOFU) Campaigns: This is for reaching new people who have never heard of you. Here, you'll test your layered interest audiences and your Lookalike audiences. The goal is to introduce them to your brand and product and get them to your website.

2. Middle/Bottom of Funnel (MOFU/BOFU) Campaigns: This is for retargeting. You'll show different, more direct ads to people who have already visited your website, watched your videos, or added a product to their cart but didn't buy. The message here is different. It might be a reminder, a small discount to nudge them over the line, or showing them a customer testimonial to overcome their final hesitation. You have to treat these people differently because they're already familiar with you. Combining these seperate audiences into a single retargeting campaign can be very effective if your budget is smaller.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

As you can probably tell, there's a lot to it. It's not just about boosting a post. Getting this right takes time, a clear methodology, and experience, especially in a competitive niche like supplements. Doing it yourself can lead to a lot of wasted money and frustration while you learn the ropes.

This is just a brief overview, but hopefully it gives you a much clearer idea of the right way to approach this. If you'd like to go over this in more detail and see how we could apply this specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation where we can really dig into your strategy.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh