Solved: Seeking Guidance to Improve ROAS on Facebook Ads

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! I've had a look over the situation with your Meta ads and wanted to give you some initial thoughts and guidance based on my experience. It sounds like you're in a great position, being dominant in your niche and manufacturing your own products. That gives you a lot of strong angles to work with.

A ROAS of 1 after the first week is honestly not unusual, especially when you're just starting out with new campaigns. You're essentially breaking even on ad spend, which is a solid baseline. The good news is, there's a huge amount of room for improvement here, and getting to a ROAS of 2+, especially with the B2B side in mind, is a very realistic goal. You just need a more refined approach than letting Advantage+ do all the heavy lifting.

I've run a lot of campaigns for eCommerce brands, including some in the sports and outdoor equipment space, and the patterns are often quite similar. Let's walk through how I'd typically approach this.

We'll need to look at your account structure...

Okay, so the first thing that jumps out is the reliance on two broad Advantage+ campaigns. While Meta pushes these hard, they can be a bit of a black box. They can work well for accounts with a ton of conversion data, but when you're looking to scale and really understand what's working, you need more control. You're essentially putting all your budget into one big pot and hoping for the best, which makes it very difficult to diagnose issues or double down on what's actually driving results.

Instead, I'd build out a proper full-funnel structure. This means creating seperate campaigns designed to talk to people at different stages of their buying journey. It might sound more complex, but it's how you acheive consistent results and scale effectively. Think of it like a real sales process: you don't use the same pitch on someone who's never heard of you as you do on someone who's about to buy.

Here’s what that looks like in practice:

-> Top of Funnel (ToFu) - Prospecting: This is for reaching new people who've likely never heard of your brand. Your current Advantage+ campaigns are basically ToFu campaigns. But we can be much more deliberate. The goal here is to introduce your brand and products to a cold, but highly relevant, audience. The messaging is about capturing attention and highlighting your core value proposition (e.g., "The top choice for [your niche] athletes," "Built to last, manufactured by us").

-> Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - Retargeting Warm Audiences: This is where you re-engage people who've shown some interest but haven't gone deep into your site. This includes people who have visited your website, watched a percentage of your video ads, or engaged with your Facebook/Instagram page. The messaging here is a bit more detailed, maybe showcasing different product features, customer testimonials, or user-generated content (UGC).

-> Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - Retargeting Hot Audiences: This is your money-maker. These are people who are very close to buying. They've added products to their cart, initiated checkout, or spent a lot of time on specific product pages. The ads here need to be direct and overcome any final hesitation. Think scarcity ("Limited stock available"), urgency ("Offer ends soon"), or a reminder of the specific product they were looking at, maybe with a small incentive if needed.

Running campaigns with this structure gives you immense clarity. If your ToFu campaigns have a low click-through rate, you know your initial creative or targeting is off. If MoFu isn't converting visitors to cart adds, maybe your website or product pages need work. If BoFu has a high drop-off rate, you might have an issue with shipping costs or your checkout process. You can't get this level of insight from a single broad campaign.

Here’s a simplified table of how I might structure this initially. It looks like more work, but this kind of organisation is what seperates a 1 ROAS account from a 5+ ROAS account.

You probably should rethink your audience targeting...

Right, let's talk about who you're showing these ads to. "English Speaking Areas" and "German Speaking Areas" is a starting point, but it's incredibly broad. You're a dominant brand in a *specific* niche. Your targeting should reflect that specificity. You're wasting a significant chunk of your budget showing ads to millions of people in the US or Germany who have zero interest in your sport.

The key is to move from demographic targeting (where they live, what language they speak) to psychographic and behavioral targeting (what they're interested in, what they do). This is where you'll see your ROAS start to climb.

1. Go Deeper with Detailed Targeting:
Instead of just a country, think about the *interests* that define your ideal customer.

• -> What other brands do they buy? (Target fans of your direct and indirect competitors).
• -> What magazines or websites do they read? (Target interests in niche sports publications).
• -> What events do they attend? (Target interests in major competitions or trade shows in your niche).
• -> Who are the big influencers or athletes in your space? (Target people who follow them).

I usually group these into themes. So you might have one ad set targeting competitor brands, another targeting media/publications, and a third targeting general niche activities. Test them against each other and see which one performs. The goal is to find pockets of users who are much more likely to convert than the general population. Targeting "Shopify" because you want to reach eCommerce owners is a classic mistake; you get millions of shoppers. You need to target interests that *only* your ideal customer would have.

2. Build High-Quality Lookalike Audiences:
This will be your most powerful tool. A Lookalike Audience is when you give Meta a list of your existing customers (a "source audience"), and it finds millions of other users who share similar characteristics. But the quality of the source audience is everything.

Don't just use "all website visitors." Prioritise your sources based on value, just like in the funnel structure:

1. Previous Customers: The absolute best source. Export a list of your customer emails and upload it to Meta. Create a 1% Lookalike audience from this list. These are people who look just like those who have already bought from you.
2. Added to Cart / Initiated Checkout: The next best thing. These are people who showed strong intent. Create Lookalikes from these pixel events once you have enough data (at least a few hundred).
3. High-Engagement Users: People who watch 75%+ of your videos or spend the most time on your site. These are also good signals of interest.

Start with a 1% Lookalike in your target countries. This is the most concentrated, highest-quality audience. Once that's proven to work, you can test expanding to 1-3% or 3-5% to increase your reach.

3. Seperate Your Countries:
Lumping the US, UK, AUS, and NL together is not ideal. User behaviour, purchasing power, and ad costs (CPC/CPM) vary massively between these regions. A ROAS of 2 in the US might be fantastic, but in the Netherlands, it might be underperforming. Seperating them into their own campaigns or ad sets allows you to allocate budget more effectively and tailor creatives if needed. For example, a US audience might respond better to a more aggressive sales message, while a UK audience might prefer something more subtle. You can't know this if they're all bundled together.

Just to give you a rough idea of how costs can differ, based on what we see across many accounts (these are just ballpark figures for lead-style conversions, but the principle applies to sales too):

As you can see, you might be able to acquire customers much cheaper in some countries. By splitting them out, you can give more budget to the areas with the best ROAS.

I'd say you need to get your creatives and messaging right...

You're absolutely right to be worried about this. It's probably the single biggest lever you have for improving performance, especially in a visually-driven niche like sports. A "current guide" is tricky because what works is constant testing. But there are definately best practices.

Your creative needs to do one thing: stop the scroll. Your product needs to look dynamic and exciting. Your copy needs to connect with the user's ambition and solve their problem.

Creative Formats to Test:

• High-Quality Video: This is non-negotiable for sports. Don't just show the product; show it *in use*. Show athletes at the top of their game using your gear. Show the manufacturing process to highlight your quality control. User-generated content (UGC) is gold here – get videos from your actual customers and B2B partners. One campaign we worked on saw really good results with UGC videos, and for a physical product like yours, it's even more powerful. It's authentic and builds instant trust.
• Dynamic Image Ads: Static, white-background product shots have their place on the product page, but not in the ad feed. Your images need to show action, lifestyle, and context. Use high-energy photos of your products being used in their intended environment.
• Carousel Ads: These are massively underutilised. They are perfect for you.
  • Showcase your top 3-5 primary sellers in one ad.
  • Tell a story: Card 1 shows the problem, Card 2 shows your product as the solution, Card 3 shows the result (e.g., winning).
  • Show a primary product on the first card, and its most common spare parts on the following cards. This is a brilliant way to upsell and show the depth of your product ecosystem.

Headline & Primary Text:
The copy is what turns a view into a click. You need to test different angles to see what resonates. Since you manufacture your own product and are dominant, you have some powerful angles to play with.

• The "Pro" Angle: Speak directly to serious users. Focus on performance, competitive edge, and why the best in the sport choose you.
• The "Quality/Durability" Angle: Lean into the "we manufacture it ourselves" point. Talk about materials, craftsmanship, and longevity. This builds trust and justifies a premium price.
• The "Problem/Solution" Angle: Identify a common frustration in your niche (e.g., "Tired of your gear failing mid-competition?") and position your product as the definitive solution.

Here's a quick example of how you could test these angles for one of your main products. Let's imagine you sell a high-performance sports racket.

You would run these different ad copies with your best creatives and let the data decide which message works best for which audience.

You'll need to seperate your B2C and B2B approach...

This is a critical point that's likely being missed in your current setup. You mentioned that a lot of your ads "trickle down" to B2B customers. That's passive. We want to be active. Treating your B2B and B2C audiences the same is a huge missed opportunity. They have completely different needs and buying processes.

Your B2C Funnel: This is the eCommerce funnel we've been discussing. The goal is a direct online sale. The audience is the end-user. The metrics are ROAS, Cost Per Purchase, and Average Order Value.

Your B2B Funnel: This is a completely different beast. The goal is not an immediate online purchase. It's to generate a qualified lead for your sales team. The audience is a distributor, a retail store owner, or a team coach/manager.

Here's how you should approach B2B on Meta:

• Objective: Don't use the "Purchase" objective. Use the "Lead Generation" objective. This lets you capture their details directly on Facebook with a lead form, which is very low friction.
• Targeting: This is where it gets interesting. You can't just target "English Speaking Areas." You need to get specific. Upload a list of your existing or desired B2B partners as a Custom Audience, then create a Lookalike from that. You can also use Meta's detailed targeting to find people with job titles like "Owner," "Buyer," or "Manager," and layer that with interests related to your sports retail niche and "Facebook page admins".
• The Offer: You're not selling a single product for £100. You're selling a partnership worth thousands. Your ad shouldn't say "Buy Now." It should say "Become a Stockist," "Get Our Wholesale Catalogue," or "Book a Call with a Rep." The lead form would ask for their name, company, email, and phone number.
• Creative: The ad creative should speak to a business owner. Show a display of your products in a retail setting. Use copy like, "Stock the brand your customers are asking for." Talk about profit margins, demand, and partnership benefits.

Running a seperate B2B lead generation campaign allows you to track your cost per B2B lead directly. You might find you can get a qualified wholesale lead for £50. If just one of those leads turns into a partner with a £5,000 opening order, the ROAS is astronomical. This is much more effective than just hoping they see your B2C ad and decide to get in touch.

While Meta is great for this, for high-ticket B2B you might eventually want to explore LinkedIn Ads aswell. I remember one campaign we ran for a B2B software client and we were getting highly qualified decision-makers for a $22 CPL. The principles are the same: right audience, right message, right offer.

By implementing all of this, you move from just 'running ads' to building a sophisticated customer acquisition machine. A ROAS of 2 is your floor, not your ceiling. We've worked with eCommerce brands that hit 600-1000% ROAS once their funnels are properly optimised. For an app in the sports space, we managed to get over 45,000 signups for under £2 each by using a similar multi-platform, full-funnel strategy.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, so I've put the key recommendations into a table to summarise the path from where you are now to where you want to be.

Implementing a strategy like this is a significant undertaking. It's not a 'set and forget' fix; it requires continuous testing, analysis, and optimisation. You need to be constantly looking at the data, turning off losing ads and audiences, and scaling the winners.

This is where working with a specialist can make a huge difference. An experienced freelancer or agency can build this structure for you, manage the day-to-day optimisation, and apply learnings from hundreds of other accounts to get you results much faster. It lets you focus on what you do best—manufacturing and distributing a dominant product.

I hope this detailed breakdown has been genuinely helpful and gives you a clear path forward. If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have a look at your ad account together, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation call. It's a good way to get a second pair of expert eyes on things.

Either way, wish you the best of luck with it!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh