Solved: Optimizing Facebook Ads for High-Value Product Conversions

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out. I've had a look at your question about optimising for conversions for your high-ticket e-commerce business. It's a really common problem when you're dealing with expensive products and multiple ways for customers to get in touch. Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience.

Selling things like boats and Sea-Doos isn't like selling a t-shirt, the sales cycle is longer and the customer needs a lot more information before they're ready to commit. So how you setup your ads is massively important.

I'd say you shouldn't combine all your conversions...

First off, your gut feeling is spot on. Combining all those different conversion events – quote forms, contact forms, calls, chats – into a single custom conversion for Meta's AI to optimise for is a bad idea. You're completely right that it dilutes the signal and the AI won't be able to optimise in an optimal way.

Think about it from the algorithm's perspective. It's trying to find more people who will perform a specific action. If that action is a mix of someone making a quick phone call to ask about opening hours, another person starting a live chat to ask about colour options, and a third person filling out a detailed 10-field quote request form for a £75,000 boat, the AI has no idea which of these is actually valuable. It just sees three "conversions." It'll likely start optimising for the easiest, cheapest action to get, which is probably the low-quality call or chat, not the high-intent quote form submission. You end up spending money to get lots of low-quality interactions that never turn into a sale. A real waste of budget.

I remember working with a client who sold high-ticket industrial products, machinery that cost upwards of £250k. Their sales cycle was incredibly long, often over 6 months. Initially, they were tracking every single interaction as a "lead". Their cost per lead looked great on paper, but their sales team were tearing their hair out chasing people who had just downloaded a brochure with no real intent to buy. It was a classic case of optimising for volume over value. Once we refocused their campaigns, things changed, but it took a while to clean up the data and retrain the algorithm.

We'll need to look at what conversion event to prioritise...

So, what's the solution? You need to pick one, high-quality conversion event to be your North Star. This is the primary action you tell Meta to go and find more of. For your type of business, I would definitly recommend prioritising the 'Quote Form Completion' as your primary conversion event.

Why? Because it represents the highest level of intent. A person who takes the time to fill out a detailed form, providing their contact information and specifying the exact vehicle they're interested in, is a much more qualified and serious prospect than someone who just clicks a 'call now' button. They've done their research, they're further down the buying funnel, and they are actively asking for a price. This is a clear, powerful signal to send to Meta's algorithm. You're telling it: "ignore the tyre-kickers, find me more people like *this*."

By focusing on this single, high-value action, you give the AI a clear objective. It will then learn the characteristics of people who submit quote forms and get better and better at finding more of them at a lower cost over time. Your lead quality will go up, your sales team will be happier, and your return on ad spend will improve. The other actions like calls and chats are still valuable, of course, but I'd treat them as secondary, 'micro-conversions' rather than the main goal of your campaign optimisation.

You probably should test different conversion goals properly...

Now, this doesn't mean you should ignore calls forever. Once you've established a solid baseline performance with your campaigns optimising for quote forms, you can start to intelligently test other objectives. The way to do this isn't to lump them all together, but to run them in seperate, dedicated campaigns.

Here's how I would structure it:

-> Campaign 1 (Primary): Set this campaign to optimise for 'Quote Form Completions'. This will be your main, always-on campaign. The majority of your budget should go here, as it's focused on generating your highest quality leads.

-> Campaign 2 (Test): Set up a second, seperate campaign that optimises purely for 'Calls' (you'll need proper call tracking installed for this to work, of course). Allocate a smaller, fixed test budget to this campaign.

Run both campaigns for a decent amount of time – I'd say at least a month – to gather enough data. Then you need to do a proper analysis. Don't just look at the Cost Per Lead (CPL) from Facebook. That's a vanity metric here. You need to look at the Cost Per *Qualified* Lead (CPQL) and, ultimately, the final Return On Ad Spend (ROAS). You might find that the 'Calls' campaign generates leads for £30 each, while the 'Quote Form' campaign leads cost £80 each. On the surface, the calls look better. But if it takes 20 of those calls to get one serious buyer, and only 5 of the quote forms to get one, the quote forms are actually far more cost-effective. It's a pain to track, I know, but it's the only way to really know what's working for your specific business.

I remember running ads for an HVAC company currently in a competitive area, and their CPL was around $60. For a home cleaning company we worked with, it was just £5. For your products, with a £50k+ price tag, a CPL of several hundred pounds could be incredibly profitable if the lead quality is high. It's all relative to the final value of the sale.

You'll need a multi-platform approach...

While you asked specifically about Facebook, and it can be great for building awareness and reaching people who might be passively interested, for high-ticket items like yours, you absolutely cannot ignore people who are *actively searching* for what you sell. This is where Google Ads comes in.

Someone typing "Sea-Doo dealer near me" or "buy [specific boat model]" into Google has a very high level of commercial intent. They are problem-aware and solution-aware; they've decided they want something and are now looking for where to buy it. Not being there when they search is like having your showroom doors locked during opening hours. It's a massive missed opportunity.

I would strongly advise running Google Search campaigns alongside your Meta ads. You can target very specific keywords that your ideal customers are searching for:

-> "buy sea doo [your city]"
-> "[brand name] boat dealers"
-> "vtt financing options"
-> "emergency boat repair" (if you offer services)

By using both platforms, you create a powerful combination. Meta Ads can generate the initial interest and put your brand in front of potential buyers who weren't yet searching, while Google Ads captures the demand from those who are ready to take the next step. The two channels complement each other perfectly for this kind of business.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

Putting all of this into practice – setting up the tracking correctly, structuring the campaigns, writing the ads, managing the budgets, and analysing the data properly – takes a lot of time and expertise. For a business with high-value sales, getting the advertising strategy right from the start can be the difference between burning through cash and building a predictable pipeline of profitable customers.

This is where working with a specialist can be invaluable. If you'd like to go over your current setup and discuss how these strategies could be implemented for your specific business in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could have a proper look at your account and map out a plan together.

Hope this helps give you a clearer direction.

Regards,
Team @ Lukas Holschuh