Solved: Inconsistent Message Flow Issues Fixed

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's a really common problem, having that flow of leads suddenly dry up. It can be incredibly frustrating when you think you've cracked it, only for the tap to turn off. I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts on what might be going on and how we'd typically approach diagnosing and fixing this sort of inconsistency. It almost always comes down to a handful of core issues that can be sorted with a more methodical approach.

We'll need to look at your offer... because it's probably the real problem

Before we even touch your ad account, we have to be brutally honest about what you're selling. I see this all the time. People come to me convinced their targeting is wrong or their ad copy needs a tweak. Nine times out of ten, the problem is much deeper: the offer is weak. A great ad campaign can't save a bad offer. It's like putting a rocket engine on a rusty bicycle.

The number one reason campaigns fail is a lack of demand, which stems from an offer that doesn't solve an urgent, expensive problem for a very specific group of people. I've seen founders spend years building what they think is the perfect product, only to launch to the sound of crickets because nobody actually feels a burning need for it.

So, how do we fix this? We stop thinking in terms of features and demographics and start thinking in terms of nightmares. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't "a company in the finance sector with 50-200 employees". That's useless. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one. Your ICP is a problem state. It's the Head of Sales who's terrified of missing her quarterly target. It's the small business owner who can't sleep because he's worried about making payroll. Your product or service needs to be the aspirin for their specific, career-threatening headache.

Think about it like this: a successful offer has three parts. First, it focuses on a specific audience. Not 'small businesses', but 'plumbing companies in the North West with 3-5 vans on the road'. Second, it identifies an urgent problem that audience has. For the plumbers, it isn't 'needing better marketing'; it's 'losing out on high-margin emergency call-out jobs to competitors who always show up first on Google'. This connection is what drives action. Third, it presents a clear solution. Not a vague 'marketing service', but a productised offer like 'The 24-Hour Emergency Job Getter' that guarantees top 3 Google placement for emergency keywords.

When you nail this, your ads almost write themselves. You're not selling a service; you're selling a solution to a deep frustration. That's how you create consistent demand. The inconsistency you're seeing in your message flow is often a symptom of an offer that is only appealing to a very small fraction of people you're reaching, and only at very specific times. A stronger, more focused offer creates a much larger, more stable pool of potential customers who are ready to act now.

I'd say you need to understand the maths behind your customer

Once your offer is solid, the next reason lead flow sputters out is because people get scared of the cost. They see a cost per lead of £50 or £100 and they panic, turning ads off. But the real question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Lead go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a fantastic customer?". The answer to that is Lifetime Value (LTV).

If you don't know this number, you're flying blind. You're making decisions based on fear and gut feeling instead of cold, hard data. Calculating your LTV frees you from the tyranny of cheap, low-quality leads. It tells you exactly how much you can, and should, be spending to outbid your competitors and maintain a consistent flow of high-quality prospects.

I remember one campaign for a B2B SaaS client in the recruitment space. Their initial Cost Per User Acquisition (CPA) was around £100, and they were constantly pausing their campaigns because it felt too expensive. After we optimised their campaigns, we managed to get that CPA down to just £7. The real shift in their mindset, however, came from understanding their numbers. Once they knew what a customer was truly worth, even the original £100 CPA started to look like a reasonable investment for the right kind of customer. This knowledge gave them the confidence to invest in their advertising consistently, which is key to ironing out those stop-start periods you're experiencing.

The maths is actually quite simple. You need three figures: your Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA) per month, your Gross Margin percentage, and your monthly customer Churn Rate. Let's walk through it.

LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. So if your LTV is £10,000, you can comfortably spend up to £3,333 to acquire a new customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a paying customer, you can afford to pay up to £333 for a single, high-quality lead. When you know your numbers, a £150 lead from LinkedIn doesn't seem expensive anymore; it looks like a profitable investment. This is the mindset that fuels consistent, predictable growth, not sporadic messages.

Use the calculator below to get a rough idea of your own LTV. Play around with the numbers. See how a small decrease in churn or an increase in average revenue can dramatically impact how much you can afford to spend on ads.

You probably should fix your ad targeting

Alright, so your offer is sharp and you know your numbers. The next place the wheels fall off is targeting. When I audit client accounts, it's amazing how many people are just throwing money at audiences that have no chance of converting. This is another major cause of inconsistent results. You might get lucky and hit a small pocket of buyers, but then the audience runs dry and your messages stop. A methodical approach to targetting is what builds a reliable pipeline.

For Meta ads (Facebook/Instagram), you need to think in terms of a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu). Audiences further down the funnel are 'warmer' and will almost always perform better. Your campaigns should reflect this structure.

Top of Funnel (ToFu): This is your cold audience. People who've never heard of you. For a new account, you'll start with detailed targeting (interests, behaviours). The trick here is to be specific. If you're selling project management software for construction firms, don't just target 'Project Management'. That's far too broad. You need to layer interests. Target people interested in 'Construction Management' AND software like 'Procore' or 'Autodesk'. Think about the niche magazines they read, the industry leaders they follow, the conferences they attend. Once your account has enough data, you can test broad targeting, but don't start there. You'll also build lookalike audiences from your best customers, but that comes later.

Middle of Funnel (MoFu): These are people who have shown some interest. They've engaged with you but haven't taken a key action yet. This is your retargeting pool. You should be targeting people who have visited your website, watched a certain percentage of your video ads (e.g., 50%), or engaged with your Facebook or Instagram page. You need to exclude people who have already converted. The goal here is to bring them back and move them to the next step.

Bottom of Funnel (BoFu): This is your hottest audience. These people are on the verge of converting. They've added a product to their cart, initiated checkout, or visited your pricing page. These are high-intent individuals and you should be hitting them with ads that overcome final objections, offer a reminder, or provide a small incentive to complete the purchase. This also includes previous customers who you can upsell or cross-sell to.

If you have a small budget, you can combine MoFu and BoFu into a single 'retargeting' ad set. But the principle remains the same: prioritise your budget on the warmest audiences first. They will give you the most consistent and profitable results. The mistake people make is spending all their money on ToFu, getting a few lucky conversions, and then wondering why it's not sustainable. You need a system. Test audiences methodically, starting with BoFu and working your way up. Turn off what doesn't work after it's spent 2-3x your target CPA. This discipline is what separates a stable lead flow from a rollercoaster.

You'll need to stop paying to reach non-customers

This might be the most controversial thing I say, but it's one of the biggest truths in paid advertising. If you're running "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns on Meta, you are actively paying the algorithm to find you the worst possible audience for your product. It's a mistake I see small businesses make over and over again, and it's a huge reason for poor, inconsistent performance.

Here's how it works. When you tell Facebook your objective is "Reach," you're giving it a simple command: "Show my ad to the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm is incredibly good at its job, so it goes and finds all the users in your target audience who are cheap to show ads to. Why are they cheap? Because no other advertiser wants them. They don't click, they don't engage, and they certainly don't buy anything. You are literally paying to advertise to people who are proven to ignore ads.

True brand awareness, for a business like yours, is a byproduct of performance. It comes from a competitor's customer switching to you and telling their friends how great you are. It comes from making sales and delivering an amazing experience. It does not come from forcing your logo in front of a million uninterested people.

The fix is simple, but it requires a leap of faith. You must switch your campaign objective to align with your actual business goal. If you want messages, you need to run a "Leads" or "Sales" campaign with a conversion optimisation. This tells the algorithm, "I don't care about cheap impressions. Go and find me the people within my audience who are most likely to fill out my form, send me a message, or pull out their credit card."

Yes, your CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) will go up. Your cost per click might go up. But your cost per actual message will plummet, and the quality of those messages will be far higher. The algorithm is smart. It knows who the shoppers are, who the form-fillers are, and who the chronic scrollers are. You have to tell it which group you want to find. When you do this, your ad spend starts working for you, not against you, leading to a much more predictable flow of leads. For one software client, we generated 4,622 registrations for their B2B platform at a cost of just $2.38 per registration. This was achieved by focusing their campaigns purely on a conversion objective, rather than wasting budget on reach. That's the power of telling the algorithm exactly what business result you want.

This is the main advice I have for you:

Pulling all of this together, getting a consistent flow of messages isn't about finding one magic bullet. It's about building a robust system where your offer, your targeting, your creative, and your campaign settings are all working in harmony. When one of these pillars is weak, the whole structure becomes unstable. Below is a summary of the main recommendations to diagnose and fix the inconsistency you're experiencing.

As you can see, there's quite a bit to it. This isn't a quick fix, but a strategic shift in how you approach advertising. Working through these steps methodically is what builds a predictable, scalable lead generation machine, rather than something that works one week and not the next.

This whole proces can feel overwhelming, especially when you're also trying to run your business. It takes time, expertise, and constant testing to get right. This is where getting professional help can make a huge difference. An expert can diagnose the issues much faster and implement a proven system to build that consistency you're looking for.

We do this for our clients every day, turning unpredictable campaigns into reliable growth engines. For example, as I mentioned earlier, we helped one client reduce their cost per acquisition from £100 down to just £7 by applying these exact principles.

If you'd like an expert pair of eyes on your specific situation, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can have a look at your campaigns together and give you some actionable advice you can implement right away. It's often the quickest way to find the root cause of the problem and get your message flow back on track.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh