Solved: Poor Facebook Ads Performance, ROAS at 0

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out about your Facebook campaign. I've had a look at what you described, and honestly, don't feel too bad about it. A 0 ROAS on a first attempt is incredibly common, probably more common than people like to admit. It’s not a sign that you've failed, but it is a very clear signal that some of the fundamental building blocks are missing.

The good news is that it’s almost certainly fixable. The bad news is that the solution isn't about finding one magic targeting option or a quick fix. You've stumbled into the most common traps for new advertisers: focusing on the wrong metrics (CPC), trusting the algorithm too much too soon (Advantage+), and pulling the plug way too early.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and a proper framework for how to approach this. It’s a bit of a reset, but it’s the only way to build a campaign that actually works and can be scaled predictably. Let's get into it.

First, let's talk about why you're asking the wrong questions...

You mentioned your CPC was 49% higher than your peers. My honest reaction to that is: so what? It's a vanity metric. It tells you almost nothing about the health of your business. I've run campaigns with sky-high CPCs that delivered a 10x return, and campaigns with dirt-cheap clicks that produced nothing but a big bill. The algorithm is charging you more because it's struggling to find people within your audience who are likely to engage with your ad. The high CPC is the final symptom, not the disease. The disease is a disconnect between your audience, your message, and your offer.

You also stopped the campaign after three days. I understand the panic when you see money going out and nothing coming in, but you essentially paid for Meta to start learning and then shut it down before it could apply any of that learning. The 'learning phase' is a real thing. It can take 7 days or more for the algorithm to figure out who responds best to your ads. By stopping early, you've just guaranteed that the money spent was wasted. You have to be prepared to invest a certain amount purely on data collection before you can expect a return.

We need to fix your targeting by defining who you're actually selling to...

You said you used Advantage+ and the age range was 18-65, which you knew was too broad. You were right, it was far too broad, but not for the reason you think. Advantage+ can be incredibly powerful, but only when it has enough data. On a new account, your pixel has no idea what a 'customer' looks like. You basically told Meta "show my ad to any adult in the country" and hoped for the best. That's not a strategy; it's a lottery ticket.

You'll never get traction with ads until you stop thinking in broad demographics. "Companies in the finance sector" or "Women aged 25-34" is useless. It leads to generic ads that speak to nobody. You need to define your customer by their pain. What is the specific, urgent, expensive nightmare that keeps them awake at night, that your product or service solves? Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state.

For one of our B2B SaaS clients, their ICP wasn't "HR Managers". It was "Heads of HR at tech scale-ups who are terrified of losing their best engineers because their onboarding process is a chaotic mess of spreadsheets and forgotten emails." See the difference? One is a job title; the other is a career-threatening nightmare.

Once you know their pain, you can figure out where they live online. What niche newsletters do they read? What podcasts do they listen to? What software tools do they already pay for? What specific industry leaders do they follow on LinkedIn or Twitter? This is the intelligence that fuels a winning targeting strategy.

I'd say you used the wrong campaign objective...

This is a bit of a guess, but it's a common mistake. If you set your campaign objective to "Traffic" or "Engagement," you told Meta's algorithm to do one thing: "Find me the cheapest clicks" or "Find me people who like and share things."

The algorithm is brutally literal. It does exactly what you ask. And the people who are cheapest to show ads to, and who mindlessly click on everything, are almost never the people who buy things. You are paying the world's most sophisticated advertising machine to actively find you the worst possible audience for your product. Awareness is a byproduct of making sales to the right people, not a pre-requisite for a new business.

You MUST use the "Sales" objective and optimise for a conversion event, like 'Purchase'. This commands the algorithm to hunt for users who have a history of buying things and who look like other people who have bought from you in the past. Yes, the clicks will be more expensive. But you're not paying for clicks; you're paying for customers. It's a critical distinction that most beginners miss.

You probably need to build an offer they can't ignore...

Even with the right targeting and objective, a campaign will fail if the offer is weak. A 0 ROAS suggests a major disconnect. Your ad needs to speak directly to the 'nightmare' we identified earlier. People don't buy products; they buy solutions to their problems. They buy a better version of themselves.

A framework we use constantly is the Before-After-Bridge.

• Before: You describe their current world. It's full of the pain, frustration, and problems you know they have. You paint a vivid picture of their nightmare.
• After: You describe the new world your product makes possible. One where the pain is gone, and they feel relief, confidence, or success.
• Bridge: You introduce your product as the simple, clear bridge that gets them from the 'Before' state to the 'After' state.

For example, for one of our eLearning clients selling a course on public speaking, we didn't sell "public speaking tips." We sold the transformation.

Before: "That feeling in your stomach when you're asked to present your ideas in a meeting. You know your stuff, but the words get stuck, and you see people start checking their phones."

After: "Imagine walking into that same meeting, feeling completely in control. You deliver your points with confidence, people are nodding along, and your boss pulls you aside afterwards to say 'great job'."

Bridge: "Our 7-Day Confident Speaker course is the bridge. We give you the exact framework to get there."

This approach transforms your ad from a boring product announcement into a compelling story where the customer is the hero. This is what gets clicks from the *right* people and makes them want what you're selling. I remember one campaign we worked on for an eLearning client which generated over $115k in revenue in just 1.5 months.

You'll need to understand the numbers that actually matter...

Right, let's get back to the money. To stop panicking about high CPCs, you need to know what a customer is actually worth to you. This is where most people guess, but we can calculate it. It's called Customer Lifetime Value (LTV).

The question isn't "How low can my Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) be?" but "How high a CPA can I afford to acquire a great customer?" Once you know your LTV, you know the answer.

Here’s the basic formula:

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

Let's say you sell a subscription box. The average customer pays £50 a month (ARPA), your gross margin is 70%, and you lose 5% of your customers each month (churn).
LTV = (£50 * 0.70) / 0.05
LTV = £35 / 0.05 = £700

Each customer is worth £700 in gross margin over their lifetime. A healthy business model aims for at least a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £233 to acquire a single customer (£700 / 3). Suddenly that £1.50 CPC doesn't seem so scary, does it? It looks like a bargain if it leads to a £700 customer.

Use the calculator below to find your own numbers. This is the single most important calculation you can do for your business. It's the math that unlocks intelligent, aggressive growth.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you below:

So, what does this all mean for your next campaign? It means a complete reset. Forget about what you've done and start fresh with a proper structure. This is the process we follow and the one I recomend you implement.

So why might you want to consider expert help?

You can absolutely take this framework and run with it, and you'll be in a much better position than you were a week ago. But the reality is that execution is everything. Knowing what to do is one thing; knowing how to interpret the data, when to scale a winning ad set, when to kill a loser, and how to write copy that truly connects is another. It's a skill built over thousands of campaigns and millions in ad spend.

We've worked with numerous businesses, from eCommerce stores to B2B software companies, and helped them navigate this exact journey. For instance, we took one SaaS client from a £100 CPA down to just £7, and for an eCommerce brand, we achieved a 1000% ROAS. This isn't about secret tricks; it's about rigorous application of these fundamental principles.

Getting this wrong can be very expensive, not just in wasted ad spend but in the opportunity cost of the customers you're failing to reach. Working with an expert can significantly shorten that learning curve and get you to profitability much faster.

If you'd like to have a more detailed chat, I'd be happy to offer you a free, no-obligation strategy session. We can go through your specific product, your website, and build a tailored plan of attack based on what we've discussed here. It's a chance for you to get some concrete, actionable advice directly related to your business.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh