Solved: Leads vs Traffic Campaigns for Car Sales

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I had a look at your question about Traffic vs. Leads campaigns and it's a really common situation to be in. It feels like a contradiction, right? One campaign gives you loads of messages but they're a bit rubbish, and the other gives you hardly any but the people seem more serious. It's a classic quantity vs quality puzzle.

Happy to give you some of my thoughts on this. The short answer is that you're seeing the Facebook algorithm do exactly what you've told it to do. It's just that what you've told it to do in each case is very, very different. We'll need to break down why this is happening and which path is actually going to make you more money in the long run, because that's what this is all about at the end of the day.

You're Paying Facebook to Find You the Wrong People...

Here’s the first bit of brutal honesty you need to hear. When you run a campaign with the objective set to 'Traffic', you are giving the world's most powerful advertising algorithm a very simple, direct command: "Find me the largest number of people, for the absolute lowest price, who are most likely to click a link."

The algorithm is incredibly good at its job, so it does exactly that. It scours its user base to find the people who click on everything. The serial link-clickers, the people bored on the bus, the ones who get distracted easily. These people are not in high demand from other advertisers who want to sell things, because they've proven time and again that they don't convert. Their attention is cheap. So, when you choose 'Traffic', you are actively paying Facebook to find you the worst possible audience for your business—an audience of people who will click and message, but who have almost no intention of ever buying a pre-owned car.

Think of it like this. A 'Traffic' campaign is like standing on a busy high street handing out flyers to every single person who walks past. You'll hand out hundreds, maybe thousands. You'll get loads of people glancing at it, maybe a few will ask a quick question out of curiosity, but 99% of them will throw it in the next bin because they weren't looking for a car in the first place. You got a lot of 'engagement', but it was all worthless.

Now, a 'Leads' campaign is different. With this objective, your instruction to the algorithm changes to: "Find me people who have a history of filling out forms and showing genuine commercial intent." This is a much harder task. The algorithm now has to ignore all the cheap clickers and find the much smaller, more valuable group of people who are actually in the market for something. These people's attention is expensive because every business wants to talk to them. The result? The cost to reach them is higher, so for the same budget, you get far fewer interactions. But these are the right interactions.

This is like setting up a stall at a specialist car show. You'll speak to far fewer people than you would on the high street, but every single person you talk to is there because they are interested in cars. The quality of conversation is on a completely different level. That's why your 5-10 enquiries from the Leads campaign are better quality. You're talking to people who are actually at the car show, not just random passers-by.

I'd say you need to stop thinking about customers as demographics...

So we've established we need to talk to the right people. But who are they? I see so many businesses, especially in the car trade, define their customer as something like "Males, aged 25-55, interested in cars". Tbh, that's completely useless. It tells you nothing of real value and leads to boring, generic ads that get ignored.

To stop burning your cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Their specific, urgent, expensive problem. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a nightmare you can solve.

What are the nightmares of someone buying a used car?

• The Fearful First-Time Parent: Their nightmare isn't 'needing a bigger car'. It's the terrifying thought of putting their new baby in an unsafe, unreliable rust bucket that could break down on the motorway. They need to feel secure. They're looking for safety ratings, reliability, and trust.
• The Squeezed Commuter: Their nightmare is the ever-increasing cost of fuel and surprise repair bills eating into their salary. They don't just want a 'fuel-efficient car'; they want predictable monthly outgoings and freedom from the anxiety of another unexpected garage bill.
• The Frustrated Enthusiast: Their nightmare is scrolling through endless listings of badly maintained, overpriced examples of the specific model they've always dreamed of. They're looking for a dealer who 'gets it', who knows the car's history, and who has priced it fairly.

Once you know the nightmare, your ads can stop being about the car and start being about the solution. Instead of "Ford Focus for sale, great price", your ad becomes:

For the Parent: "Is your current car safe enough for your family? This 5-star NCAP safety rated VW Passat has a full service history and comes with our 12-month 'peace of mind' warranty. Keep your most precious cargo safe."

For the Commuter: "Tired of the petrol station draining your bank account? Get over 60 MPG with this spotless Hyundai i20. Fixed, low-cost financing available to make your commute affordable again."

When you speak directly to their pain, you instantly filter out the time-wasters. The people who message you will be the ones who felt that ad in their gut. The quality of your leads will go up again, simply because your message is pre-qualifying them for you.

You probably should do the maths...

This is the most important part. Your feelings about which campaign is 'better' are irrelevant. The data holds the truth. The real question isn't "How many messages can I get?" but "Which campaign actually makes me more money?".

You need to calculate the actual Return on Investment for each campaign type. It's not as hard as it sounds. You just need to be honest about your numbers. Let's break it down:

1. Total Ad Spend: The amount you spent on each campaign (e.g., £500).
2. Number of Enquiries: The total messages or form fills from each campaign (e.g., 100 vs 10).
3. Enquiry-to-Sale Conversion Rate: This is the critical one. What percentage of those enquiries actually turned into a car sale? Be brutally honest. For the 100 traffic messages, maybe only 1 person bought a car (a 1% conversion rate). For the 10 lead forms, maybe 2 people bought a car (a 20% conversion rate).
4. Average Profit Per Car: What's the average gross profit you make on a single sale? Let's say it's £1,500 for this example.

With these numbers, you can see which campaign is truly profitable. I've built a simple calculator for you below. Play around with the sliders using your own real numbers. I suspect you'll see very clearly why getting 100 low-quality messages is actually costing you money compared to getting 10 high-quality ones.

You'll need to weed out the time-wasters automatically...

So, we're agreed: stick with the Leads campaign. The next step is to make those 5-10 leads even better. How do we do that? We increase the 'friction'. This sounds counter-intuitive, most marketing advice is about making things as easy as possible. But for high-value sales like a car, a little bit of friction is your best friend. It qualifies your buyer and saves your sales team from wasting hours on people who were never going to buy.

The easiest way to do this is with the Facebook Lead Form itself. Instead of just asking for Name, Email, and Phone Number, add one or two custom questions. These questions should be designed to make the person think for a second and prove they're serious.

Good examples for a car dealer would be:

• "What is your approximate budget for your next car?" (Multiple choice: e.g., £5k-£8k, £8k-£12k, £12k+)
• "When are you looking to purchase?" (Multiple choice: e.g., Within 1 week, Within 1 month, 1-3 months)
• "Do you have a vehicle to part-exchange?" (Multiple choice: Yes/No)

Just by adding one of these, you'll see a drop in the number of leads you get. Some people won't bother to answer. And that's fantastic! Those are the people who weren't serious anyway. The people who *do* fill it out have now given you incredibly valuable information that your sales team can use to have a much more productive first conversation. You've pre-qualified them. You've turned a cold lead into a warm one before you've even picked up the phone.

This simple change transforms your sales process. You go from chasing a long list of vague enquiries to having a short, prioritised list of people who have told you their budget, their timeline, and their current situation. It's a much more efficient way to work.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

To wrap this all up, you're on the right track by noticing the difference in quality. Now it's time to fully commit to the quality approach and optimise it for maximum profitability. Stop chasing the vanity metric of 'more messages' and start focusing on the metric that actually pays the bills: 'more profit'.

Trying to figure all this out on your own can be a real headache, and making the wrong moves can get very expensive very quickly. It's not just about picking the right campaign objective; it's about building an entire system where your targeting, ad creative, lead form, and sales process all work together to attract high-quality buyers efficiently.

This is where getting some expert help can make a massive difference. We've managed campaigns for many different B2C service businesses. I remember one campaign for a home cleaning company where we brought the cost down to just £5 per lead. For another client in the more competitive HVAC space, we were generating leads at around $60. While every industry is different, the core principles of targeting high-intent users and optimising for quality over quantity remain the same. We know how to navigate these platforms to avoid the common pitfalls and accelerate growth, ensuring every pound you spend on advertising is working as hard as possible to grow your dealership.

If you'd like to have a more in-depth chat about your specific situation, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could take a look at your account together and map out a clear plan of action. Feel free to get in touch if that sounds helpful.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh