Solved: Meta Ads in Madrid not working? (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your situation with Meta ads in Madrid. It's a common frustration to feel like you're just guessing when it comes to ad creative, especially in a specific local market.

The honest truth is, your problem likely isn't about finding the right "creative best practices". That's a myth that keeps businesses small. The real issue, and the solution, is almost always deeper—it's about fundamentally misunderstanding who you're selling to and what you're actually offering them. We need to fix the strategy first, then the creative will practically write itself. Let's get into it.

We'll need to look at why 'best practices' are a trap...

First things first, let's delete the idea of "Meta ads creative best practices" from your brain. It's a complete dead end. Why? Because any advice that generic is, by definition, not specific to your business, your customer, or the unique culture of Madrid. Following a generic checklist—'use bright colours!', 'put a person's face in the ad!', 'keep video under 15 seconds!'—is how you end up with ads that look like every other ad, say nothing of value, and get scrolled past without a second thought. It's a receipe for blending in, not standing out.

You see this all the time. A local 'gestoría' runs an ad with a stock photo of smiling business people and the headline "Expert Accounting Services in Madrid." It's technically following 'best practices'. It's also completely invisible. Who is it for? What specific problem does it solve? Why should anyone care? It's shouting into a void. The algorithm might show it to a lot of people for a low cost, but these are the wrong people—the ones least likely to ever become a customer. As I always say, you're just paying Facebook to find you non-customers at that point.

The real work, the stuff that actually makes campaigns profitable, happens long before you even open Canva or think about what photo to use. It's about strategy. It's about deep, almost obsessive, understanding of your customer. Your creative isn't the starting point; it's the final expression of a rock-solid strategy. Without the strategy, you're just decorating a broken machine. So, our first job isn't to make your ads prettier. It's to make them matter. And that starts with understanding who you're actually talking to.

I'd say you need to define your Ideal Customer Profile by their pain...

Right now, you probably define your customer as something like "women aged 25-45 living in the Community of Madrid" or "small business owners in the Chamberí district." This is utterly useless for creating effective ads. It tells you nothing about their motivations, their fears, their frustrations. It's a demographic, not a customer.

To stop burning cash, you must define your customer by their pain. By their specific, urgent, expensive, career-threatening, or life-disrupting nightmare. Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. Let's make this real for Madrid.

Imagine you run a high-end physiotherapy clinic near the financial district (AZCA). Your demographic ICP is "professionals aged 30-50." Your *nightmare* ICP is "the 45-year-old consultant who's training for the Madrid Marathon but has a nagging Achilles pain. His nightmare isn't just the pain; it's the terror of not being able to run the race he's told all his colleagues about, of feeling old and broken, and of wasting the hundreds of euros he's already spent on gear and entry fees." See the difference? Now you're not selling "physiotherapy." You're selling the finish line. You're selling the relief from failure.

Or, say you're a local software agency. Your demographic ICP is "restaurants in Madrid." Your nightmare ICP is "the owner of a popular tapas bar in La Latina whose phone rings off the hook from 8 PM to 10 PM with reservation requests they can't manage, leading to double bookings, angry customers, and lost revenue every single weekend. Her nightmare is the chaos, the stress, and watching potential profit walk out the door." You're not selling a "booking system." You're selling a calm, profitable Saturday night.

This is the level of specificty you need. You have to become an expert in their personal hell. What keeps them up at night? What are they secretly afraid of? What's the expensive, recurring problem they've just accepted as 'the cost of doing business' or 'just how things are'?

Do this work first. Talk to your existing best customers. Ask them what was going on in their life or business right before they came to you. What was the final straw that made them search for a solution? Map it out. Your entire advertising strategy hinges on this insight. Without it, you're just guessing.

You probably should focus on a message they can't ignore...

Once you've isolated that nightmare, you can finally start thinking about the message. Your ad copy's only job is to reflect that pain back at them so clearly that they feel like you've been reading their mind. This is where copywriting frameworks come in. They aren't magic formulas, they are just structured ways of telling a story that resonates with a person in pain. The two most powerful for most businesses are Problem-Agitate-Solve (P-A-S) and Before-After-Bridge (B-A-B).

Let's stick with our tapas bar owner in La Latina. A generic ad would say: "Efficient Restaurant Booking System. Manage your reservations easily. Learn More." It's boring, forgettable, and focused on the tool's features.

A P-A-S ad would sound like this:

• Problem: Tired of losing customers and dealing with booking chaos every weekend?
• Agitate: The phone won't stop ringing, scribbled notes get lost, and double bookings create angry customers who leave bad reviews. You're losing hundreds of euros in revenue every night.
• Solve: Our system automates your bookings online, ends double bookings, and lets you focus on what you do best: serving amazing tapas. Get your Saturday nights back.

For a product, like a locally made, high-quality olive oil, you might use Before-After-Bridge:

• Before: Your 'pan con tomate' is good, but it's missing that 'wow' factor. You're using the same generic supermarket olive oil as everyone else.
• After: Imagine customers raving about your breakfast, asking what secret ingredient you use. Your simple tostada becomes a signature dish people talk about.
• Bridge: That bridge is our single-origin Picual olive oil, sourced from a family farm just outside Madrid. Its bold, peppery finish transforms simple dishes into something unforgettable. Try the difference.

Notice how neither of these examples talks about "features" or "best practices." They talk about transformation. They describe a painful reality and present a compelling vision of a better one. Your creative—the image, the video, the headline—should all serve this core message. For the tapas bar, a short, frantic video showing a ringing phone, crossed-out notes, and a stressed-out owner, followed by a calm scene of happy diners, would be far more powerful than a sterile screenshot of the software. For the olive oil, a close-up video of the rich, green oil being drizzled over a perfect tostada is all you need. The message dictates the creative, not the other way around. Your job isn't to sell a product or service; it's to sell the 'After' state.

You'll need an offer that actually delivers value...

This brings us to the most common failure point in all local business advertising: the offer. The "Learn More" button is the enemy of profit. It's a lazy, high-friction, low-value Call to Action. It asks your potential customer, who is busy and sceptical, to do work. It asks them to click, read a bunch of stuff on your website, and try to figure out for themselves if you're worth their time and money. It's an instant conversion killer.

Your offer’s only job is to deliver a moment of undeniable value—an "aha!" moment that makes the prospect sell themselves on your solution. It needs to be so good that they feel a bit silly saying no. It must solve a small, real problem for free (or for a very low cost) to earn you the right to solve their whole problem later.

What does this look like for a local business in Madrid?

• For a service business (e.g., a plumber, an electrician, a consultant): Instead of "Request a Quote," offer a "Free 15-Minute Leaky Tap Diagnosis via WhatsApp Video" or a "Free Home Electrical Safety Check (5-Point Inspection)." This provides immediate value, demonstrates expertise, and builds trust before you ever talk about money.
• For a restaurant or café: Don't just say "See Our Menu." Offer a "Free Croqueta with Your First Caña When You Show This Ad" or "2-for-1 on Coffee This Tuesday Morning." This gets people through the door. The product experience then does the selling for you.
• For a retail shop (e.g., a boutique, a bookstore): Instead of "Shop Now," offer an "Exclusive 15% Discount For Our Neighbours in Malasaña (Show This Ad)" or a "Free Personalised Book Recommendation Based on Your Favourite Movie." This creates a sense of community and provides a tangible reason to visit.
• For a SaaS or software business: The gold standard is a free trial with no credit card required. Let them use the actual product. For our tapas bar booking system, it would be a "Free 30-Day Trial - Get Set Up in 10 Minutes." Let them experience a calm Saturday night on you. The product becomes the salesperson. We have seen this work for so many of our SaaS clients; a free trial just works best to get people in the door.

Your offer is a critical part of your creative. The button, the headline, the ad copy—they should all be driving towards this moment of value exchange. A weak offer will kill a brilliant ad, every single time. A strong offer can make even a mediocre ad profitable. It is that important.

Let's work out how much you can actually afford to spend...

So many business owners get obsessed with the wrong metrics. They panic about a high Cost Per Click (CPC) or a £20 Cost Per Lead (CPL). The real question isn't "How low can my CPL go?" but "How high a CPL can I afford to acquire a truly great customer?" If you don't know the answer to this, you are flying blind and will always make decisions based on fear rather than data.

The answer lies in a metric called Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). This is the total profit you can expect to make from an average customer over the entire course of their relationship with you. Once you know this number, everything changes.

The calculation is simpler than you think. You just need three numbers:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): How much does a typical customer spend with you per month (or year, just be consistent)?
2. Gross Margin %: What's your profit margin on that revenue after deducting the direct costs of goods or services?
3. Monthly Churn Rate %: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? (If they are one-off purchases, you might need to estimate repeat purchase rate instead, but for this example, let's assume a recurring model).

The formula is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

Let's imagine you run a subscription box for Spanish wines, based in Madrid. Your box costs €50/month (ARPA). Your gross margin is 60% (after the cost of wine, packaging, etc.). And you've worked out that you lose about 5% of your subscribers each month (Churn Rate).

LTV = (€50 * 0.60) / 0.05

LTV = €30 / 0.05 = €600

So, each customer you acquire is worth €600 in gross margin to your business. Now we can work backwards. A healthy, sustainable business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to €200 to acquire a single new subscriber (€600 / 3). Suddenly, that €15 lead from a Meta ad doesn't look so expensive, does it? If you know that 1 in 10 leads becomes a customer, you can afford to pay up to €20 per lead and still be wildly profitable. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth. Use the calculator below to get a feel for your own numbers. It might just change your entire perspective on your ad budget.

Now, let's build the actual ad creative...

You see? We've done all this work, and only now are we ready to talk about the actual creative. But by this point, it's so much easier. You know exactly who you're talking to, what their biggest problem is, what you need to say to them, and what you want them to do. The creative is just the packaging for this powerful strategic core.

So, what does this mean for your images and videos in Madrid?

1. Authenticity Over Polish: Forget glossy, perfect stock photos. They scream "ADVERTISEMENT" and people have become blind to them. Use real photos of your business, your team, and your customers (with permission, of course). A slightly grainy, authentic iPhone video of you talking passionately about how you solve your customer's nightmare will outperform a slick, corporate video nine times out of ten. I remember one of our SaaS clients who saw really good results with simple User-Generated Content (UGC) videos. It feels real and builds trust.
2. Show, Don't Just Tell: Your creative should visualise the "After" state. For the physio clinic, show a smiling runner crossing the Madrid Marathon finish line, not a picture of your clinic's door. For the tapas bar, show a video of a calm, happy owner chatting with customers in a full restaurant, not a screenshot of the software's backend. Visualise the relief, the success, the happiness that your product or service provides.
3. Localise Genuinely: Since you're targeting Madrid, lean into it. But do it subtly. Don't just slap a picture of the Plaza Mayor on your ad. Instead, maybe film a customer testimonial in the Parque del Retiro. Mention a local frustration, like trying to find parking in Malasaña on a Saturday. Reference a shared cultural moment. This shows you're not some faceless national brand; you're part of the fabric of the city. This is something the big brands can't easily replicate.
4. Test Relentlessly: Your first idea is rarely your best one. The whole point of this strategic approach is that it gives you a framework for testing. Test different hooks in your copy (all based on the P-A-S framework). Test different images that visualise the "After" state. Test a simple image ad against a short video ad. Test a carousel ad showcasing different aspects of the transformation. With a clear strategy, your testing becomes purposeful, not just random guessing. You're not testing to find what 'works'; you're testing to find the best way to communicate your core message.

This is how you create effective ads. It's not a checklist of "best practices." It's a process of deep customer empathy, strategic messaging, and valuable offers, all wrapped in authentic, relevant creative. It's more work upfront, for sure. But it's the only way to build a predictable, profitable customer acquisition machine instead of just playing the lottery on the Meta ads platform.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

As you can probably tell, this is a very different way of thinking about advertising. It requires a shift from being a tactician worried about button colours to being a strategist obsessed with customer psychology. It's a proces that can feel overwhelming, but it's the only reliable path I've seen to creating campaigns that don't just get clicks, but that actually build a sustainable business.

If you'd like to go through this process for your specific business and map out a clear, actionable plan for your Madrid campaigns, that's exactly what we help businesses do. We often start with a free, no-obligation consultation where we can take a look at what you've been doing and give you some concrete advice on these strategic pillars. It might be helpful to have an expert eye on it.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh