Solved: Is a larger audience needed for FB remarketing?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out regarding your Facebook remarketing ads not running and wanted to give you some initial thoughts. It's a really common problem, especially with all the changes from Apple and the slow death of the cookie. You're right to suspect that an audience of 300 people is at the heart of the issue, but the rabbit hole goes a lot deeper than just that number. The real solution isn't just about getting a bigger retargeting audience; it's about fundamentally rethinking how you get people into that audience in the first place.

It sounds like you're looking at the last step of the race without having run the first few laps. Let's walk through how to build a proper engine that not only makes your retargeting work, but actually brings in new customers consistently.

You're right, your audience is too small. But that's not the real problem...

Let's be brutally honest. An audience of 300 website visitors is tiny. It's not going to work. A few years ago, you might have gotten away with it, but not anymore. With the iOS14 update and other privacy changes, Meta's ability to match website visitors to Facebook profiles has taken a massive hit. Of your 300 visitors, the system might only be able to confidently identify half of them, if you're lucky. Then, out of that small group, it has to find people who are active on the platform *today* to show an ad to. The pool of available people shrinks to almost nothing pretty quick.

The algorithm is a machine that feeds on data. To learn, to optimise, and to find you customers, it needs thousands of data points. With 300 people, you're not giving it enough food to even start its engine. It can't find a pattern, it can't predict who might convert, so it just stalls and gives you zero impressions. You're essentialy asking it to find a needle in a haystack, but you've only given it a handful of hay.

But here’s the contrarian truth that most advertisers miss: obsessing over the size of your retargeting audience is looking at the problem from the wrong end. The real issue is the lack of *new, qualified traffic* coming to your website in the first place. Your retargeting audience is just a symptom of a weak top-of-funnel strategy. Retargeting is an amplifier, not a source. It takes the interest you've already generated and turns up the volume. Right now, you've got the volume knob turned up to 11, but the stereo isn't even plugged in. You have nothing to amplify.

So, the question we need to answer isn't "how do I get my retargeting ad to run?", it's "how do I build a sustainable flow of new, potential customers so that my retargeting audience is always full of people who are genuinely interested in what I offer?".

We'll need to look at how you're filling the funnel in the first place...

This is where we get into your prospecting, or Top of Funnel (ToFu), campaigns. This is your engine. This is how you reach people who have never heard of you before. And there's a huge, expensive mistake people make right here. They think they need to run an "awareness" campaign.

Here’s an uncomfortable truth: When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm, being the ruthlessly efficient machine it is, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users inside your targeting who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever buy anything. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

Forget awareness. Awareness is a byproduct of making sales and having a great product, not a prerequisite. For a business like yours, the best form of awareness is a sale. You need to tell Meta to find you buyers from day one.

That means you must use a conversion objective. If you're an eCommerce store, your objective is 'Sales'. If you're generating leads for a service, your objective is 'Leads'. This single choice changes everything. It tells the algorithm to ignore the cheap, passive users and instead analyse the behaviours of people who actually buy things or fill out forms, and then go find more people just like them. It costs more per impression, but you're fishing in a pond full of actual fish, not just muddy water.

This prospecting campaign is what will fill your website with visitors. These visitors then become your retargeting audience. By running a 'Sales' campaign, the visitors you get are already pre-qualified by the algorithm as being more likely to be interested in buying. This makes your future retargeting campaign much, much more potent. You're filling your bucket with clean water, not sludge.

I'd say you need to stop thinking about demographics and start thinking about nightmares...

Okay, so we're running a prospecting campaign with a 'Sales' objective. Now, who do we target? This is the next place where fortunes are wasted. Forget the sterile, demographic-based profile your last marketing hire made. "Women aged 25-45 who live in London" tells you nothing of value and leads to generic ads that speak to no one.

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

Let's imagine you sell high-end, ergonomic office chairs. Your ICP isn't "people working from home". That's way too broad. The nightmare is "My back is killing me by 3pm, I can't concentrate, I'm dreading another day in this awful dining chair, and I'm worried this is doing permanent damage." That person isn't just browsing; they are in active pain and looking for a solution.

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can figure out where these people hang out online. What do they read? What tools do they use? What brands do they admire? The person with the bad back probably follows physiotherapists on Instagram, reads articles on websites like 'Wirecutter' about the best home office gear, and might have interests in 'ergonomics' or 'wellness'. They might even be searching for competitors like 'Herman Miller'. These are the interests you target. They are a reflection of the problem, not a vague demographic.

This is why simply targeting a broad interest like "working from home" is a terrible strategy. It includes millions of people who are perfectly happy with their setup. You want to target the interests that are almost exclusively held by people experiencing the nightmare you solve. Your goal is to run an ad that makes the right person stop and say, "Wow, how did they know that's exactly what I'm struggling with?". You can't do that if you're targeting everyone.

You probably should re-think your ad copy completely...

Now that you're targeting the right people, who are in the right problem-state, and you're using the right campaign objective, you need to hit them with a message they can't ignore. Your ad creative and copy is the final, critical peice of this prospecting puzzle.

Most ads are boring. They list features and hope someone cares. "Our ergonomic chair has lumbar support and adjustable armrests." So what? Every chair does. You need to speak directly to the nightmare.

A simple but powerful framework for this is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: State the nightmare you identified. "Is your back screaming by the end of the workday?"
• Agitate: Pour salt on the wound. Make them feel the pain more acutely. "Chugging coffee just to stay focused while your cheap chair turns your spine into a question mark? You know it's not just discomfort, it's affecting your work and your health."
• Solve: Present your product as the clear, obvious solution. "Our chair is designed by physios to eliminate back pain and restore your focus. Stop surviving your workday and start thriving in it."

See the difference? We're not selling a chair; we're selling a pain-free, productive day. We're selling a solution to their nightmare. Another great framework is Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current world of pain. "Your day starts with a stiff back and ends with you slumped over your laptop, exhausted."
• After: Show them the dream scenario. "Imagine finishing your day with as much energy as you started, feeling supported, focused, and free from pain."
• Bridge: Position your product as the bridge to get them from Before to After. "Our chair is the bridge. Engineered for all-day comfort, it's the single best investment you can make in your productivity and well-being."

When you combine this kind of direct, empathetic copy with laser-focused 'nightmare' targeting, your ads will start to work. You'll get clicks from people who are genuinely in the market for a solution. Your website traffic will grow, and more importantly, the *quality* of that traffic will be a thousand times better. And *that* is what will build you a retargeting audience that's actually worth something.

You'll need to know your numbers, or you're just gambling...

Before you spend a single pound more, we need to talk about maths. The real question in advertising isn't "How low can my Cost Per Click go?" but "How high a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" The answer is found in your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

Without knowing this, you're flying blind. You might be turning off campaigns that are actually profitable in the long run. Let's do a simple eCommerce calculation:

1. Average Order Value (AOV): What's the average amount a customer spends in one purchase? Let's say it's £75.
2. Purchase Frequency (F): How many times does an average customer buy from you per year? Let's say it's 2.
3. Customer Lifetime (T): How many years does a customer typically stay with you? Let's say it's 3 years.
4. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue? Let's say it's 60%.

The calculation for LTV is: (AOV * F * T) = Customer Value. Then, Customer Value * Gross Margin % = LTV.

So: (£75 * 2 * 3) = £450. Then £450 * 0.60 = £270 LTV.

This number, £270, is your truth. It means that, on average, each new customer you acquire will generate £270 in pure profit for your business over their lifetime. Now you have a compass. A healthy LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio is typically 3:1. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to get a customer.

£270 / 3 = £90.

You can afford to pay up to £90 to acquire a new customer and still run a very healthy, profitable business. Suddenly, a £25 CPA from your prospecting campaign doesn't seem expensive, does it? It looks like an absolute bargain. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap clicks and pointless "awareness".

Knowing this also helps you understand what to expect. Here are some very rough ballparks for eCommerce sales campaigns in developed countries like the UK:

Your actual CPA will land somewhere in this range. If it's higher than your target of £90, you have work to do on your ads, targeting, or website. If it's lower, you have room to scale your budget aggressively. But without knowing your LTV, these numbers are meaningless.

Okay, so how do we put this all together into a proper structure?

Right, we've covered the theory. Let's make it practical. Here is the campaign structure that will solve your original problem by building a predictable system for growth. We'll use seperate campaigns for each stage of the funnel.

Campaign 1: PROSPECTING (Top of Funnel - ToFu)

• Objective: Sales
• Budget: Start with 70-80% of your total ad spend here. This is your growth engine.
• Ad Sets: You'll create multiple ad sets. Each ad set will target a different 'nightmare-based' interest group.
  • -> Ad Set 1: Interests like 'Herman Miller', 'Steelcase' (Competitors).
  • -> Ad Set 2: Interests like 'Ergonomics', 'Physiotherapy', 'Back Pain' (Problem-aware).
  • -> Ad Set 3: Interests like 'Wirecutter', 'TechCrunch' (Publications/Review sites your ICP trusts).
• Creatives: Inside each ad set, you will test 3-5 different ads. Use the PAS and BAB frameworks we discussed. Test different images and videos. Let the algorithm figure out which combination of audience and ad works best.

This campaign's only job is to find new customers and drive traffic to your website. It will constantly be filling up your retargeting pool with high-quality, pre-qualified visitors.

Campaign 2: RETARGETING (Middle/Bottom of Funnel - MoFu/BoFu)

• Objective: Sales
• Budget: The remaining 20-30% of your ad spend.
• Ad Sets: Here's where we target the audience you were originally trying to reach. Now it will be big enough to work, and full of the right people.
  • -> Ad Set 1 (MoFu - Warm Audience): Target 'All Website Visitors - Last 30 Days'. Exclude people who have already purchased. The ad copy here can be a gentle reminder, maybe showcasing a different benefit or a customer testimonial.
  • -> Ad Set 2 (BoFu - Hot Audience): Target 'Added to Cart - Last 14 Days' AND 'Initiated Checkout - Last 14 Days'. Exclude purchasers. The copy here should be more direct. Address potential barriers like shipping costs or offer a small incentive to complete the purchase. "Still thinking it over? Your cart is waiting for you."

This structureing does a few things. It separates your cold and warm audiences, allowing you to tailor your message and budget appropriately. It focuses the majority of your budget on growth (prospecting), which is essential. And most importantly, it creates a flywheel. The prospecting campaign feeds the retargeting campaign, which converts more users, giving the algorithm more sales data, which makes the prospecting campaign smarter. This is how you scale.

We've used this exact funnel logic for countless clients. I remember one women's apparel eCom store in particular. They were struggling with inconsistent sales. We built out this ToFu/BoFu structure, focusing their prospecting on the 'nightmare' of 'I have nothing to wear for this event', and their retargeting on reminding users about the specific items they'd viewed. Their ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) jumped to over 691%. It works because it's a logical system, not just random acts of advertising.

I know that's a lot to take in. It's a fundamental shift from "let's try to get a few more sales from website visitors" to "let's build a machine that generates customers". I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Getting this all set up, managed, and optimised correctly is a full-time job. It's easy to burn through cash if a single piece of the puzzle is off – the wrong targeting, weak copy, an incorrect pixel setup. One small mistake can invalidate the entire strategy.

This is why many businesses, once they see the complexity and potential, decide to work with an expert. It allows them to focus on running their business, confident that their advertising is being handled by someone who lives and breathes this stuff every single day.

If you'd like to chat through this strategy in more detail and have us take a look at your specific situation, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session. We can audit your current setup and provide a clear roadmap for what needs to be done. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds helpful.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh