Solved: Meta Ads Campaign Objective Mismatch

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on your Meta ads situation. It's a really common problem to run into, this whole 'Sales' vs 'Leads' objective thing, and it's essentially the root of why you're seeing inconsistent results and no useful data. Getting this right is the difference between burning cash and building a predictable way to get new members.

Let's get this sorted.

We'll need to look at why your 'Sales' campaign was broken...

Right, so the first and most important thing to understand about platforms like Meta is that they run on an incredibly powerful but very literal algorithm. You have to give it precise instructions. When you choose a campaign objective, you are telling the algorithm exactly what kind of person to find for you.

When you selected 'Sales', you told Meta: "Go and find people in my target audience who are most likely to complete a purchase on my website." The algorithm then goes to work, showing your ads to users who have a history of buying things online, clicking 'buy now' buttons, and completing checkouts. The problem is, that's not what you wanted. You want members for a channel, which is a completely different action.

This is why your pixel reported "no data". The pixel was waiting for a 'Purchase' event to happen, an event that was never going to be triggered because people weren't buying anything. So, from the algorithm's perspective, your campaign was a total failure. It was showing ads to people it thought were buyers, but none of them were buying. It had no positive feedback, no data on what a 'success' looked like, so it couldn't learn or optimise. The handful of members you did get were basically down to pure luck, not skill from the algorithm. You were essentially paying Meta to find you the wrong type of people. It's a bit like sending a postman to deliver a letter with the wrong address on it; he might wander around the right neighborhood, but he's never going to find the right letterbox.

I've put together a little diagram to show what was happening. Your sales campaign was working blind, just guessing who might be a good fit. A properly configured campaign gives the algorithm a clear target to aim for.

I'd say you MUST stick with the 'Leads' campaign...

So, to answer your main question: yes, you should absolutely continue with the new 'Leads' campaign. Do not go back to the 'Sales' campaign. This is the correct strategic move.

By choosing 'Leads' as your objective, you are now giving Meta the correct instruction: "Go and find people who are likely to sign up and become a member". Now, the final, critical piece of this puzzle is making sure your pixel is set up to confirm this action. Every single time a user successfully joins your channel, a 'Lead' event must fire from your pixel. This is usually done by placing the pixel code for the 'Lead' event on the 'thank you' or confirmation page that a user sees immediately after signing up.

Here's a simplified flow of what needs to happen:

Once this loop is closed, the algorithm will start to learn. It sees who is converting, and then it goes to find more people just like them. This is how you get consistent, predictable results and can actually scale your ad spend. Without this feedback loop, you are just gambling.

You'll need to know what a new member should cost...

Now that you're setting things up correctly, the next question is what you should expect to pay for each new member. This can vary massively, but we can make some educated guesses. The cost is basically a function of two things: how much it costs to get someone to click your ad (Cost Per Click, or CPC), and what percentage of those people then go on to become a member (Conversion Rate).

For a lead or signup type of objective, you can expect numbers roughly in these ranges:

• Developed Countries (UK, US, Canada, etc.): CPCs are often in the £0.50 - £1.50 range. A decent landing page might convert 10-30% of visitors. This gives you a Cost Per Lead (your Cost Per Member) of anywhere from £1.60 to £15.00.
• Developing Countries: CPCs are much lower, maybe £0.10 - £0.50. With similar conversion rates, your cost could be as low as £0.33, up to £5.00. Be careful though, the quality of members from these regions can sometimes be lower, with less engagement.

Your previous results of 10-50 members a day are quite varied. Once your new 'Leads' campaign has been running for a week or so, you should start to see a much more stable daily number and a clear average Cost Per Member. Anything around the £4 mark, for example, would be pretty normal for a developed country.

Here's a bar chart showing those ranges visually. As you can see, there's a big difference, which is why we often recommend running separate campaigns for different country groups if your budget allows.

To help you play around with your own numbers, I've built a small interactive calculator. You can adjust the sliders for your estimated CPC and your landing page's conversion rate to see what your potential Cost Per Member might be. This is a powerful tool for planning your ad budget.

You probably should start with the right audience...

With the technical side sorted, the next lever you can pull to improve performance is your audience targeting. A lot of people just throw a few random interests in and hope for the best, but a more structured approach works much better. We tend to think about audiences in three stages: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): These are new people who have never heard of you. You reach them using 'detailed targeting' - so, interests, behaviours, and demographics. This is where you will start. You need to feed your pixel data by getting your first 50-100 members from this group.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): These are people who have shown some interest but haven't joined yet. This includes people who have visited your landing page, or watched a percentage of your video ads. You 'retarget' these people with slightly different ads to encourage them to join.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): These are people who got very close to joining but didn't, or maybe your existing members who you want to upsell to. For your goal, this is less relevant right now.

For a new account like yours, the priority is simple: start with ToFu detailed targeting. Your entire job right now is to find interests that contain a high concentration of your ideal channel member. Think about it: what pages do they follow? What tools do they use? What topics are they obsessed with? Target those specific, niche interests first. Avoid very broad interests. Once you have a steady stream of members coming in and your pixel has gathered a few hundred 'Lead' events, you can start building MoFu retargeting audiences and also 'Lookalike' audiences, where you ask Meta to find people who are statistically similar to your existing members. That's when things can get really efficient.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a table below to make it as clear as possible.

Following this plan will put you in a much stronger position. You'll move from guesswork to a data-led approach, which is the only way to succeed with paid advertising long-term.

This covers the foundational stuff, and getting it right is a huge step. But the real work comes next: continuously testing new ad creatives, exploring different audiences, optimising the landing page copy, and scaling the budget without costs spiraling out of control. It can be a full-time job, and that's where having an expert eye can make a massive difference, helping you avoid costly mistakes and get to profitability faster.

If you'd like to have a chat and a look through your account together, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can see exactly how things are set up and give you some more specific advice on the spot.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh