Solved: Need Facebook Ads Expert for Optimization on a Budget

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I understand you're looking for an expert to take a look at your Facebook ads and help you optimise them for better performance. It's a common situation to be in, you get things running but then hit a wall trying to make them work better or scale them up.

I'm happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience running these sorts of campaigns for all kinds of businesses. It's often not just about tweaking a few settings in the ad account, but looking at the whole picture. I'll walk you through how I'd approach it, so you can get a clearer idea of what's likely needed. This might be a bit more detail than you were expecting for a 'quick look', but honestly, to do this properly, you need to go a bit deeper. There's no magic button, unfortunately.

I'll break down the main areas I'd look at. Hopefully this gives you some real, actionable stuff to think about.

We'll need to look at your funnel first...

Before I even touch a single ad creative or audience setting, the very first thing I'd want to understand is your entire customer journey, or 'funnel'. This is where most people go wrong. They spend ages perfecting their ads, but send all that expensive traffic to a website or landing page that just doesn't convert. It's like having the best-looking shop window on the high street but the door is locked.

So, the first questions are always about performance metrics. Where are people dropping off? We need to follow the money, or in this case, the clicks. I'd start by looking at your existing Facebook Ads Manager data:

-> Do you have really low Click-Through Rates (CTRs) and high Cost Per Clicks (CPCs)? If hardly anyone is clicking your ads, or if it's costing you a fortune for every click, the problem is almost certainly the ad itself. The image or video isn't grabbing attention, or the ad copy isn't persuasive enough. People are scrolling right past it. This tells us we need to work on the creative first.

-> Do you get lots of clicks to your website but very few people take the next step? Say you get a thousand visitors to your landing page but only ten people view a product or sign up for a newsletter. This tells me a different story. The ad is doing its job – it’s getting people interested enough to click. But something is breaking down the moment they land on your site. This could be a targeting problem (you're attracting the wrong kind of people who aren't actually interested in what you offer) or, more likely, a landing page problem. Maybe the page is slow to load, looks cluttered, doesn't match the promise of the ad, or it's just not clear what they're supposed to do next.

-> Do people get further, like adding a product to the cart, but then never complete the purchase? This is super common in eCommerce. A high 'add to cart' rate but a low purchase rate points to issues in the checkout process. Maybe the shipping costs are a nasty surprise, or you're asking for too much information, or the page doesn't look trustworthy enough for someone to enter their credit card details. This isn't an ad problem at all, it's a website problem.

You see how looking at these metrics tells us where to focus our effort? There's no point spending your budget on new ads if your website is the leak in the bucket. For any service business or eCommerce store, the website has to be your number one priority. With a poor website, you'll always struggle with low conversion rates, which means your cost to get a customer will be sky-high, and you'll probably conclude that "Facebook Ads don't work". In reality, the ads might be working fine, but your site is letting you down.

Think about your sales process. What is the one single action you want someone to take to become a lead or a customer? Is it to fill out a form? Schedule a call? Buy a product? Your entire landing page needs to be ruthlessly optimised for that single goal. Get rid of distracting links, menus, and anything that doesn't help persuade the visitor to take that action. Professional sales copy here can make a world of difference. It’s not just about describing what you do; it's about connecting with the visitor's problem and presenting your offer as the perfect solution. It's a specialised skill, and a good copywriter is worth their weight in gold.

I'd say you need to get your audience targeting right...

Right, once we're confident the landing page isn't the main issue, we can get into the ad account itself. This is where most of my time is spent when optimising for clients. When I audit new client accounts, the most common mistake I see is messy, illogical, or just plain wrong audience targeting. People are testing audiences that have no real connection to their ideal customer.

To do this properly, you need a structured approach. I usually prioritise audiences based on how 'warm' they are—meaning, how familiar they are with your brand. The closer they are to making a purchase, the better they will almost always perform. It's common sense really; it's easier to sell to someone who has already shown interest than a complete stranger.

I've built a kind of hierarchy for this over the years. This is for an eCommerce account, but the logic applies to pretty much any business, you just swap out the events (e.g., 'purchased' becomes 'lead' or 'signup').

For a new account, you start at the top with ToFu detailed targeting. You have to feed the pixel with data before you can do the clever stuff. You need at least 100 people in a custom audience to use it for retargeting or lookalikes, but honestly, you want way more than that for it to be effective.

The key with detailed targeting is to be specific. Think hard about your ideal customer. What magazines do they read? What brands do they love? What tools do they use? What public figures do they follow? You need to find interests that your target audience is much more likely to have than the general population. For instance, if you're selling a project management tool for small businesses, targeting the interest "Small Business Owners" is okay, but it's very broad. You could layer it with an interest in "Asana" or "Trello", as that narrows it down to people already using or interested in similar software. A much better approach would be to target interests like "Entrepreneur Magazine" or pages of specific business coaches. This is where experience and a bit of creativity comes in.

Once you've got some conversions—sales, leads, whatever your goal is—you can move down the priority list. Start building lookalike audiences from your best customers. These are often goldmines. Facebook's algorithm is incredibly powerful at finding more people who share characteristics with your existing customers. Then you set up retargeting campaigns for your MoFu and BoFu audiences. Someone who added to cart but didn't buy? Show them an ad with a reminder, maybe a small discount or a customer testimonial to nudge them over the line.

You probably should structure your campaigns properly...

This follows on from the audience strategy. Don't just chuck all your audiences into one campaign or ad set. A clean, logical campaign structure is so important for analysis and optimisation. If everything is jumbled together, you'll never know what's actually working.

I recommend setting up separate, long-term campaigns for each stage of the funnel:

-> Campaign 1: ToFu - Prospecting. This is where you test your cold audiences. Detailed targeting, broad targeting, lookalikes. The goal here is to find new customers and feed your pixel with data.

-> Campaign 2: MoFu/BoFu - Retargeting. This campaign targets all your warm and hot audiences—website visitors, video viewers, people who abandoned their cart, etc. If your budget is small, you can combine MoFu and BoFu into one campaign, maybe even one ad set to start with, just to ensure it gets enough delivery.

Within your Prospecting campaign, you would have different ad sets, each targeting one specific audience or a tight group of similar audiences. For example, one ad set for a lookalike of purchasers, another for an interest group related to your competitors, and a third for an interest group related to industry magazines. This way, you can clearly see which audience is performing best and allocate more budget to it.

Then you need to be disciplined about testing. Let the ad sets run for a few days to gather enough data. How long depends on your budget and how much a conversion is worth to you. A good rule of thumb is to let an ad set spend about 2-3 times your target Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) before you make a decision. If it's spent £60 without a single sale and your other ad sets are getting sales for £20, it's probably a dud. Turn it off and test something new. Advertising is all about this constant cycle of testing, learning, and optimising. I remember working on a campaign for an outdoor equipment brand where just restructuring their account this way allowed us to properly see what worked and scale up to driving 18,000 website visitors from the winning audiences.

You'll need to improve your ad creatives and copy...

Let's assume your funnel is solid and your targeting is structured. The next lever to pull is the ad creative itself. This is what people actually see in their feed, and it has a massive impact on performance.

You must split test your creatives. Don't just run one ad and hope for the best. Test different formats against each other. For some of our SaaS clients, we've found that raw, authentic-looking User-Generated Content (UGC) videos outperform slick, professionally produced ads by a huge margin. For an eCommerce client selling women's apparel, we found that Pinterest-style static images worked wonders, and that campaign delivered a 691% return.

Here’s a basic testing structure:

-> Test different formats: Image vs. Video vs. Carousel. See what resonates with your audience.

-> Test different hooks: The first 3 seconds of a video or the headline of an image ad are everything. Test different opening lines or questions to see what stops the scroll.

-> Test different messaging angles: You can sell the same product by highlighting different benefits. Is it about saving time? Saving money? The luxury feel? The convenience? Create ads that speak to these different motivations. For example, for a cleaning product we worked with, one ad focused on the eco-friendly aspect, another on its powerful cleaning ability. Both worked, but for different audience segments.

And then there's the copy. The words you use in your ad are just as important as the visual. The copy needs to be persuasive, clear, and lead to a strong call to action. It should match the audience's temperature. You wouldn't talk to a complete stranger (ToFu) the same way you'd talk to someone about to buy (BoFu).

Let's imagine you sell high-quality leather wallets. Here's how the copy might change:

It's a subtle difference, but it makes a big impact on how the ad is received.

We should look at what results are realistic...

This is a really important one, especially given you mentioned a 'budget-friendly' project. What you should expect to pay for a conversion isn't a simple answer. It depends massively on your industry, your target country, your conversion goal, and the level of competition. I remember running ads for a home cleaning company which got a cost of £5/lead, and I'm currently working with an HVAC company in a competitive area where leads are costing them around $60. Both campaigns are successful because the value of a customer is completely different.

To give you a very rough idea, here are some ballpark figures based on thousands of campaigns we've run. This is for leads/signups, something a user can do quickly.

Now, if your goal is an actual sale from an eCommerce store, the numbers change dramatically because the conversion rates are much lower.

These are just averages, and your results could be better or worse. But it gives you a realistic benchmark. If your current CPA is within these ranges, you might be doing okay. If it's way higher, there's definitely room for improvement by applying the things I've talked about: better targeting, better creatives, and a better landing page.

My main recommendations for you

So, to pull this all together, a "quick optimization" really involves a systematic review of your entire process. A good expert won't just tweak your bids; they'll look at the whole system to find the real points of leverage. Here is the main advice I have for you, summarised in a table:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's probably more involved than you were hoping for. But this is what it takes to get real, sustainable results from paid advertising. It's not just about setting up an ad and hoping for the best. It's about understanding your audience, optimising your targeting, creating compelling ads, and fine-tuning your landing page.

That's where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. With years of experience and a deep understanding of the advertising landscape, we can help you identify the best strategies to drive down your costs and increase your conversions. We can provide insights that you might not have thought of and take over the implementation of the entire optimisation process for you, ensuring that every pound you spend is working as hard as possible to grow your business.

If you'd like to go through your account together in more detail, I'd be happy to offer you a free initial consultation call. We could share screens, I can have a proper look at your campaigns and website, and give you some more specific feedback. There's no obligation at all, of course.

Hope this helps give you a clearer path forward.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh