Solved: Meta Ads Inconsistency - Solution for Unstable Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I've had a look at your question about your Meta Ads being so up and down, and it's something I see all the time. One day you're getting results, the next it's crickets. It's incredibly frustrating and makes it impossible to plan or scale your business.

Happy to give you some of my thoughts on this. The short answer is that this inconsistency isn't random. It's not just "the algorithm having a bad day". It's almost always a symptom of a deeper strategic problem. The solution isn't about finding a magic button to press, but about building a proper, reliable system that turns strangers into customers consistently. It's about moving from just 'running ads' to building a real marketing funnel that doesn't rely on luck.

I've laid out the entire process below, from understanding who you're *really* selling to, to building a message they can't ignore, and structuring your campaigns for stable, predictable growth. It’s a bit of a read, but this is the stuff that actually works.

The Real Reason Your Ads Are So Volatile...

Let's be brutally honest. When performance tanks overnight, the easy thing to do is blame Meta's algorithm. "It's in the learning phase," "it's a bad day for traffic," "competition is high today." While these things can have a minor effect, they're not the root cause. Relying on them as an excuse is why so many businesses stay stuck in a cycle of boom and bust advertising.

The real problem is that your campaigns are likely built on a shaky foundation. You're probably running one or two campaigns aimed at a broad audience, hoping the algorithm will find you buyers. This is basically playing the lottery with your marketing budget. When it works, it's because you got lucky and the algorithm stumbled upon a pocket of buyers. When it stops working, it's because that pocket dried up, and the algorithm has no clear instructions on where to find the next one.

Inconsistent results are a direct consequence of an inconsistent strategy. You're likely missing one or more of these three fundamental pillars:

1. A Razor-Sharp Definition of Your Customer's Pain: Not their job title or age, but the career-threatening, sleep-depriving problem they are desperate to solve.
2. An Irresistible Offer and Message: An offer that doesn't just present a feature, but solves their pain so perfectly that the price becomes secondary.
3. A Structured Advertising Funnel: A deliberate system that nurtures potential customers from being completely unaware of you (Top of Funnel), to considering your solution (Middle of Funnel), to being ready to buy (Bottom of Funnel).

Without these, you're just throwing things at the wall and hoping something sticks. The rest of this letter is about how to build that wall, brick by brick, so you get predictable results every single day. Forget tweaking your daily budget by a few quid; we need to fix the engine, not just polish the bonnet.

Your ICP is a Nightmare, Not a Demographic

This is the single biggest mistake I see, and it's the foundational crack that causes entire ad accounts to crumble. You've probably been told to create an "Ideal Customer Profile" or an "avatar." So you write something like: "Sarah, 35-45, marketing manager at a tech company, earns £60k, likes coffee and yoga."

That's utterly useless. It tells you absolutely nothing of value and leads you to create generic, lifeless ads that 'Sarah' will scroll past without a second thought. Why? Because thousands of other advertisers are targeting the exact same generic demographic.

You have to stop defining your customer by who they *are* and start defining them by the *nightmare* they're living. Your ICP isn't a person; it's a problem state. It’s a specific, urgent, expensive, and often career-threatening problem.

Let's make this real.

• For a B2B SaaS that helps with project management, the nightmare isn't 'needing a better workflow'. It’s 'the CEO breathing down your neck because a critical product launch is two weeks behind schedule, and your best engineer is about to quit out of sheer frustration with the chaos.'
• For a service business selling fractional CFO services, the nightmare isn't 'needing financial advice'. It’s 'staring at the ceiling at 3 AM, terrified you won't make payroll next month while your competitors are on TechCrunch announcing their Series A funding round.'
• For an e-commerce brand selling high-quality kitchen knives, the nightmare isn't 'my old knife is a bit dull'. It's 'I'm trying to impress my friends with a beautiful home-cooked meal, but I'm butchering this expensive cut of beef and feel like a complete amateur.'

When you understand the nightmare, everything changes. Your ad copy writes itself. Your targeting becomes laser-focused. You're no longer selling a product; you're selling relief from a very specific pain.

So, how do you find this nightmare? You do the work that 99% of your competitors are too lazy to do. You talk to your customers. Not a survey, an actual conversation. Ask them: "Before you found us, what was the biggest frustration you were dealing with? What was the breaking point that made you search for a solution? What would have happened if you hadn't solved it?"

Read reviews for your competitors' products—especially the 1-star and 5-star ones. They are a goldmine of pain points and desired outcomes. Go into forums and communities where your ideal customers hang out. What are they complaining about? What questions are they asking over and over?

This work is the prerequisite to spending a single pound on advertising. Without it, you are simply guessing. And guessing is expensive.

A Message They Can't Ignore: From "What We Do" to "What We Fix"

Once you've isolated the nightmare, crafting your offer and your message becomes ten times easier. Your ad's only job is to reflect that nightmare back to the prospect so accurately that they feel like you've been reading their mind. They should stop scrolling and think, "How do they know?"

Most companies talk about themselves. Their ads are full of features, jargon, and self-congratulatory claims. "We are a leading provider of innovative cloud-based solutions." Nobody cares. You need to talk about the customer and their problem.

Two of the most powerful copywriting frameworks for this are Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS) and Before-After-Bridge (BAB).

Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS)

This is perfect for high-touch services or complex B2B sales. You grab them with the problem they're experiencing right now, you poke the bruise to make them feel the pain more acutely, and then you present your service as the logical solution.

• Problem: Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark?
• Agitate: Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis while your competitors are confidently raising their next round? Waking up in a cold sweat isn't a growth strategy.
• Solve: Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire. We build dashboards that turn uncertainty into predictable growth.

Before-After-Bridge (BAB)

This works brilliantly for SaaS products or anything that creates a clear transformation. You paint a picture of their current frustrating reality (Before), show them the dream scenario (After), and then position your product as the vehicle to get them there (Bridge).

• Before: 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: Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. You see exactly where every dollar is going, and waste is automatically eliminated.
• Bridge: Our FinOps platform is the bridge that gets you there. Start a free trial and find your first £1,000 in savings today.

Notice that none of these examples talk about features. They talk about outcomes, feelings, and the resolution of pain. This is how you stop traffic. This is how you get clicks from people who are actually likely to buy, which in turn feeds the Meta algorithm with high-quality data, leading to more stable and consistent performance.

This isn't just about ad copy either. It extends to your landing page and your core offer. The most common point of failure in B2B advertising is the "Request a Demo" button. It's an arrogant, high-friction call to action. It screams, "Give me 45 minutes of your time so my salesperson can pitch you." Nobody wants that.

Your offer's job is to provide undeniable value *before* you ask for a sale. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve the whole thing.

• For SaaS: The gold standard is a free trial or freemium plan (no credit card). Let the product do the selling.
• For Agencies/Consultants: A free, automated audit (like an SEO audit), a valuable resource (like a data-backed report), or a short, sharp strategy session where you give real advice. For our agency, we offer a free 20-minute ad account audit. It proves our expertise and builds trust.
• For eCommerce: A valuable guide ("5 Mistakes to Avoid When Choosing a Chef's Knife"), a quiz to help them find the perfect product, or a compelling first-time buyer discount.

A better offer instantly improves your ad performance because it lowers the barrier to entry and gives the algorithm more conversion data to work with. Better data leads to better optimisation, which leads to more stable results. It's all connected.

How to Pay Facebook to Find Non-Customers (And How to Stop)

This might be controversial, but it's one of the biggest leaks in most ad budgets. There's a common belief that you need to run "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaigns to "warm up" an audience before you ask for a sale. For 99% of businesses, this is a terrible idea.

Here's the uncomfortable truth. When you set your campaign objective to "Reach" or "Brand Awareness," you give the algorithm a very specific, and very literal, command: "Find me the largest number of people inside my targeting for the lowest possible price."

The algorithm, being an efficient machine, does exactly what you asked. It seeks out the users who are least likely to click, least likely to engage, and absolutely, positively least likely to ever pull out a credit card. Why? Because those users are not in demand. Their attention is cheap. There's no competition for it. You are actively paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the worst possible audience for your product.

You end up with impressive-looking vanity metrics like 'Reach' and 'Impressions', but your sales needle doesn't move. And because these users don't interact, the algorithm never learns what a *good* customer looks like, so your performance never improves.

The best form of brand awareness for a small or growing business is a competitor's customer switching to your product and raving about it. That only happens through a conversion. Awareness is a byproduct of having a great product that solves a real problem, not a prerequisite for making a sale.

The solution? Always optimise for an action as far down the funnel as possible. Even when targeting a completely cold audience (Top of Funnel), your objective should be 'Sales' or 'Leads'. This forces the algorithm to look for people who not only see your ad but are also historically likely to take the action you want. It might mean a higher initial CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions), but the quality of the traffic will be infinitely better. You are training the algorithm from day one to find you money, not just eyeballs. This single change can be the difference between volatile performance and steady, scalable growth.

Stop "Running Ads" and Start Building a Machine: The TOFU/MOFU/BOFU Funnel

This is where we tie everything together. Instead of running disjointed campaigns that start and stop, you need to build an always-on "machine" that systematically moves people from unaware prospects to loyal customers. This is the classic Top of Funnel (TOFU), Middle of Funnel (MOFU), and Bottom of Funnel (BOFU) structure. It's not just marketing theory; it's the practical blueprint for stable ad performance.

Why does this create stability? Because you're no longer reliant on a single cold audience. You're building your own audiences of engaged, interested people (MOFU and BOFU) that you can market to far more cheaply and effectively. This creates a flywheel effect: your TOFU campaigns feed your MOFU/BOFU audiences, which generate sales, which gives you more budget to put into TOFU. It's a self-sustaining system.

Here’s how you actually set it up:

Campaign 1: TOFU (Prospecting)

• Objective: Sales or Leads (always!)
• Audiences: This is where you test. Create separate ad sets for different audience hypotheses. One ad set for detailed targeting around interests that align with the 'nightmare' (e.g., targeting interests in competitor software, industry thought leaders, or tools your ICP uses). Another ad set for a 1% Lookalike Audience of your best customers. Another for a broader Lookalike of all website visitors.
• Creative: Use your PAS or BAB copy. The goal is to stop the scroll and get a click from the *right* person. Offer a low-friction piece of value—a free trial, a helpful guide, a webinar.
• Budget: This is where the bulk of your budget should go, usually 60-80%.

Campaign 2: MOFU (Nurturing)

• Objective: Sales or Leads.
• Audiences: Retargeting. Create one ad set targeting anyone who visited your website in the last 30 days (but exclude people who reached the 'thank you' page or added to cart). Another for people who watched 50% or more of your TOFU video ads.
• Creative: The message here is different. They know who you are, but they're not convinced yet. Show them case studies, customer testimonials, answer common objections, or show a different angle of your product. You're building trust and authority.
• Budget: Around 10-20% of your total spend.

Campaign 3: BOFU (Closing)

• Objective: Sales or Leads.
• Audiences: High-intent retargeting. This is your hottest audience. Target people who Added to Cart or Initiated Checkout in the last 7 days but didn't buy.
• Creative: This is a direct call to action. Remind them what they left behind. Maybe offer a small incentive like free shipping or a limited-time discount to get them over the line. Address any last-minute fears around trust or security.
• Budget: The remaining 10-20%. These audiences are small but convert at a very high rate, so your ROAS (Return On Ad Spend) here should be excellent.

This structure provides stability. If one of your TOFU audiences has a bad day, your MOFU and BOFU campaigns will still be running, converting the traffic you generated yesterday and the day before. You've created a buffer and diversified your risk away from a single point of failure.

The Math That Sets You Free: How to Calculate What You Can *Really* Afford to Pay

So many businesses get trapped in a cycle of chasing cheap leads. They obsess over a low Cost Per Lead (CPL) or Cost Per Click (CPC), and in doing so, they often sacrifice quality. This leads to inconsistent performance because they're feeding the algorithm low-quality data from people who will never buy.

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?" The answer to that question lies in understanding your Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

LTV is the total profit your business makes from an average customer over the entire time they remain a customer. Once you know this number, you can make much smarter, more aggressive decisions with your advertising.

Here’s the simple formula:

LTV = (Average Revenue Per Account Per Month * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Customer Churn Rate

Let's break it down with an example for a SaaS or subscription business:

• Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): You charge £100/month.
• Gross Margin %: After your costs to deliver the service (servers, support staff, etc.), you have an 80% profit margin.
• Monthly Churn Rate: You lose 5% of your customers each month.

The calculation would be:

LTV = (£100 * 0.80) / 0.05

LTV = £80 / 0.05 = £1,600

This means every customer you acquire is worth £1,600 in gross profit to your business. Now, everything looks different.

A healthy business model often aims for a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to a third of your LTV to acquire a customer. In this case, that's £1,600 / 3 = ~£533.

You can afford to spend £533 to get one new customer and still have a profitable, sustainable business. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads into a customer, that means you can afford to pay up to £53.30 per qualified lead.

Suddenly, that £30 lead from a perfectly targeted Meta campaign doesn't look expensive anymore. It looks like a bargain. This is the math that unlocks aggressive, intelligent growth and frees you from the tyranny of cheap clicks. It gives you the confidence to invest in higher-quality traffic, which will feed the algorithm better data and lead to—you guessed it—more consistent performance.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Putting it all together, moving from inconsistent results to predictable growth isn't about one magic fix. It's about a systematic shift in strategy. It's about building a robust machine instead of pulling a lottery lever every day. This table summarises the core problems and the actionable steps you can take to fix them, starting today.

I know this is a lot to take in, and it represents a significant shift from how most people approach Meta Ads. But this is the difference between a business that's constantly struggling with unreliable ads and one that has a predictable engine for growth.

Implementing a full-funnel strategy, defining your ICP correctly, and calculating your business metrics takes time and expertise. It can be a steep learning curve. If you want to accelerate the process and get it right the first time, this is exactly what we help businesses with every day.

We could hop on a quick, completely free 20-minute call. We can go through your current ad account together, I can point out the biggest areas for improvement based on what we've discussed here, and you'll leave the call with a clear, actionable plan. No sales pitch, just practical advice.

Let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh