Solved: Meta Ads Failing in Madrid? (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your Meta ads stratgey. I see you're finding it tough going in Madrid and you're pointing to the city's "unique cultural and economic landscape" as the main problem. Tbh, in all my experience running campaigns across Europe, the specific city is almost never the real reason ads fail. It’s an easy thing to blame, for sure, but it's usually a distraction from the real issues.

The good news is that the actual problems are almost always things you have complete control over: how you define your customer, what you're offering them, and the message you're using to grab their attention. Once you get those right, you'll find your ads will work in Madrid, Manchester, or Milan. Let’s dig into how we can build a strategy that actually drives results for you.

We'll need to look at why 'Madrid' is the wrong problem to solve...

Right, let's get this out of the way first. When an ad campaign isn't working, it's natural to look for an external reason. The algorithm, the economy, the competition, or in your case, the unique culture of a city. But chasing 'cultural nuances' is often a wild goose chase. It leads you to make assumptions and create ads based on stereotypes rather than solid marketing principles.

The fundamental drivers of human behaviour are universal. People in Madrid, just like people everywhere else, are motivated by a desire to solve their problems, alleviate their pains, and achieve their goals. A business owner in Madrid is just as worried about cash flow as one in London. A young professional in Madrid feels the same pressure to advance in their career as one in Berlin. The language might be different, but the core 'nightmare' is the same.

Focusing on the city leads to lazy, demographic-based targeting. You end up telling Meta to find "women aged 25-40 in Madrid who like fashion". What does that really tell you? Nothing of value. And what does Meta do? It delivers on your command perfectly. It finds you the cheapest, largest possible audience that fits that vague description. You're effectively paying them to find the people who are least likely to engage and least likely to ever buy anything from you, because their attention is not in demand. It's the fastest way to burn your budget.

The path to failure is paved with good intentions but bad assumptions. The alternative is to ignore the geography for a moment and focus entirely on the psychology of your ideal buyer. This shift in perspective is everything.

I'd say you need to define your ICP by their nightmare, not their postcode...

So, let's completely forget the sterile, demographic-based profile you might have been using. "Companies in Madrid with 50-200 employees" tells you precisely nothing of value. It's a recipe for generic ads that speak to no one and are ignored by everyone. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

You need to become an absolute expert in their specific, urgent, expensive, and potentially career-threatening nightmare. Your customer isn't just a job title; she's a leader terrified of her best developers quitting because of a broken workflow. He's a Head of Sales staring at a flat pipeline and feeling the pressure from the board. This is what you need to uncover.

Ask yourself these questions about your best customers:

• What is the one problem that keeps them awake at 3 AM? Is it a fear of missing a critical deadline? The embarrassment of reporting bad numbers? The risk of being made redundant?
• What is the "expensive" part of their problem? Are they losing money, time, talent, or reputation? Quantify it. Is it a £10,000 a month problem? A £100,000 a month problem?
• What have they already tried to solve this problem that hasn't worked? Did they hire a junior person who failed? Did they try a cheap piece of software that didn't deliver? This tells you what they value and what they want to avoid.

Let's make this concrete. Imagine you sell a legal tech SaaS product. Your old ICP might have been "Law firms in Madrid". Your new ICP is "The partner at a mid-sized firm who lives in constant fear of a junior associate missing a critical filing deadline, exposing the firm to a multi-million euro malpractice suit." You're not selling 'document management'; you're selling 'career insurance'. See the difference? The emotion, the stakes, the urgency—it's all there.

Once you have isolated this nightmare, you can find them. Forget broad interests. Where does this person hang out online?

• What niche podcasts do they listen to on their commute? Probably not the top 10 business podcasts, but something specific to their industry.
• What industry newsletters do they *actually* open and read?
• What SaaS tools do they already pay for? If they use HubSpot, you know they care about marketing automation. If they use Salesforce, they're serious about sales process. You can target users of these tools.
• What online communities are they a part of? Are they in specific LinkedIn Groups or Subreddits?

This intelligence is the blueprint for your entire targeting strategy. Do this work first, or you have no business spending another euro on ads.

You probably should build an offer they can't refuse...

Now we get to the most common failure point in all of B2B advertising, and it's probaly just as true for B2C: the offer. Your offer has one job and one job only: to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution before they've even spoken to you.

The "Request a Demo" or "Book a Call" button is perhaps the most arrogant Call to Action ever conceived. It presumes your prospect, a busy and important person, has nothing better to do than schedule a meeting to be sold to. It's high-friction and low-value. It screams "I want to take up your time to tell you how great I am." It instantly positions you as a commoditised vendor, and it's why so many ad campaigns fail at the final hurdle. You drive clicks, but nobody converts because the ask is too big and the reward is too vague.

You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing. Your offer needs to be re-engineered around providing instant value.

Here are some examples of high-value, low-friction offers:

• For SaaS: The gold standard is a free trial (no credit card required) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product. Let them experience the transformation firsthand. When the product itself proves its value, the sale becomes a formality. We've worked with numerous SaaS clients, and the ones that scale fastest, like one who got over 4,600 registrations from a single campaign, almost always lead with a frictionless trial.
• For Agencies/Consultants: You must bottle your expertise. We do this with a free 20-minute ad account audit. For a marketing agency, it could be a free, automated SEO audit that reveals their top 3 keyword opportunities. For a data analytics platform, a free 'Data Health Check'.
• For a high-ticket service: A free, valuable resource. A corporate training company could offer a free 15-minute interactive video module on 'Handling Difficult Conversations'. This demonstrates expertise and builds trust.

To understand what you can afford to *give away* in your offer, you first need to understand what a customer is actually worth to you. This brings us to a critical calculation that most businesses neglect: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). Knowing your LTV frees you from the tyranny of chasing cheap, low-quality leads and allows you to invest confidently in acquiring high-quality customers.

You'll need a message they can't ignore...

Once you know your customer's nightmare and you have an irresistible offer, the ad copy almost writes itself. You stop shouting about your features and start whispering about their problems. Your ad needs to feel like you've been reading their diary. It should be so specific and so resonant that they feel compelled to click, not because of a flashy design, but because the words speak directly to their pain.

Here are two powerful frameworks we use with our clients to craft compelling ad copy:

1. Problem-Agitate-Solve (P-A-S): This is perfect for services or more complex B2B offerings.

• Problem: State the nightmare directly and in their own words. "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?"
• Agitate: Pour salt in the wound. Remind them of the consequences and the emotional toll. "Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round?"
• Solve: Introduce your offer as the clear, simple solution. "Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth."

2. Before-After-Bridge (B-A-B): This works brilliantly for SaaS products or anything that creates a clear transformation.

• Before: Paint a picture of their current world, their current state of frustration. "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month, and your engineers have no idea why. Another fire to put out."
• After: Describe the dream scenario, the world with their problem solved. "Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see where every dollar is going and waste is automatically eliminated."
• Bridge: Position your product as the bridge that gets them from the 'Before' to the 'After'. "Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first €1,000 in savings today."

Notice how none of this copy mentions "Madrid" or "Spanish culture". It doesn't need to. It speaks to a universal business pain. This is how you create ads that work anywhere.

I'd say you should restructure your campaigns for conversions...

With a clear ICP, a compelling offer, and sharp messaging, the final piece of the puzzle is the technical setup inside Meta Ads Manager. And this is another area where people often go wrong, especially when they're worried about 'brand awareness' in a new city.

Here is the uncomfortable truth: when you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you are giving the algorithm a very specific, and very dangerous, command: "Find me the largest number of people for the lowest possible price." The algorithm 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. You are actively paying Meta to find the worst possible audience for your product.

Unless you have a multi-million euro budget like Coca-Cola, you should almost never use these objectives. Your objective must be aligned with your business goal. If you want leads, your campaign objective should be 'Leads'. If you want sales, it should be 'Sales'. This tells the algorithm to go and find people within your target audience who have a history of taking that specific action. It costs more per impression, but the quality of the person you reach is infinitely higher.

To do this effectively, you need a proper campaign structure. We typically use a funnel-based approach: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): This is your 'cold' audience. People who have never heard of you before. Here, you'll use the detailed targeting you uncovered from your ICP research (interests in specific tools, newsletters, etc.) and lookalike audiences based on your best customers.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): This is for 'warm' audiences. People who have shown some interest but haven't taken a key action yet. This includes people who have visited your website, watched a percentage of your video ads, or engaged with your social media profiles. You retarget them with different ads, perhaps case studies or testimonials.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): This is for 'hot' audiences who are very close to converting. People who have added a product to their cart, initiated checkout, or visited your pricing page. You retarget them with ads that have a strong call to action, like a special offer or a reminder, to get them over the line.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it represents a significant shift from focusing on location to focusing on the fundamentals of great marketing. To make it easier, I've broken down the entire process into an actionable plan. This is the exact framework we use to turn struggling ad accounts into profitable growth engines for our clients.

Following this structured approach takes the guesswork out of paid advertising. It's not about finding a magic bullet for Madrid; it's about implementing a robust, customer-centric strategy that is proven to work. It requires more upfront thinking than simply boosting a post, but the results are worlds apart.

This is a lot of work, and making these shifts can be challenging, especially when you're busy running your business. It involves deep customer research, strategic thinking, creative development, and technical execution. Getting it wrong can mean wasted time and, more importantly, wasted money.

This is where expert help can make a huge difference. We specialise in implementing this exact framework for businesses, helping them avoid the costly trial-and-error phase and get to profitability much faster. If you'd like to discuss how we could apply this specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy session where we can audit your current campaigns and provide some more tailored advice.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh