Solved: Sudden Drop in Facebook Message Traffic After Budget Increase

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! Happy to give you some initial thoughts and guidance on your Facebook ads. What you're describing is a really common thing to see, so don't worry, you haven't broken anything. It's frustrating when something is working well and then just stops, especially when you try to give it more money.

I've put together a pretty detailed breakdown of what's likely happening, why it's happening, and what I'd do in your shoes. Hope it gives you a bit of clarity.

We'll need to look at what's really going on...

First off, the budget thing. When you increase the budget on an ad set, especially a big jump like doubling it from $5 to $10, you're essentially telling Facebook's algorithm to start over. It was happily finding you people for $5 a day in a specific, efficient little pond. When you said "here's $10", it panics a bit and has to go find a bigger pond to fish in. The people in this new, wider part of the audience might be more expensive to reach, or they might be less interested in tutoring services. The system needs a few days to figure this new reality out, and performance almost always dips during this 're-learning' phase. It's definately a pain.

Sometimes it recovers, sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes, counter-intuitively, a lower budget is actually more profitable because it forces the algorithm to be super efficient and only go after the lowest-hanging fruit. When you increase the spend, you force it to go after more expensive fruit further up the tree.

The first thing to do is to diagnose the problem properly. You need to look at your ad metrics from before and after the budget change. Don't just look at the number of messages. You need to see the 'why'.

You'll want to compare these key numbers:

• CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions): How much are you paying to show your ad 1,000 times? If this went up, you've entered a more competitive auction. The 'new' people you're reaching are also being targeted by other advertisers, driving the price up.
• CTR (Click-Through Rate): Of the people who see your ad, what percentage are clicking on it to start a message? If this went down, it means the new audience segment isn't as interested in your offer. Your ad isn't resonating with them as much. This is a very common outcome of a budget increase.
• CPC (Cost Per Click): How much does each click cost? This is a result of your CPM and CTR. If your CPM goes up or your CTR goes down, your CPC will almost certainly rise. This is probably the number that's hurting your results the most.

Here's a quick example of what you might be seeing. It's just an illustration, but it shows how the numbers interact.

Looking at these numbers will tell you whether the problem is the audience (low CTR) or the cost of reaching them (high CPM). My guess is it's a bit of both. This insight is what you need before you can fix it.

I'd say you need to scale differently...

So, instead of just cranking up the budget on a single ad set that's working, a better way to scale is often to go 'horizontally'. This means instead of one ad set at $10, you could run two seperate ad sets at $5 each. Or three at $5 each.

This approach has a few advantages:

• -> It lets you test different audiences against each other to see which one performs best.
• -> It keeps the budgets low on each, forcing the algorithm to stay efficient.
• -> It diversifies your efforts, so if one ad set starts performing poorly, you have others to pick up the slack.

This is all about building a proper testing structure. It sounds more complicated than it is. You'd have one single campaign, and inside that campaign, you create multiple 'ad sets'. Each ad set targets a different group of people. You give each ad set its own small budget (say, $5/day to start). Then, you let them run for a few days and see which one brings in the cheapest, most qualified messages. You turn off the losers and you can either give a bit more budget to the winners (in small steps!) or create new ad sets that are similar to the winners.

This is a much more stable and predictable way to grow your ad spend and client base than just putting all your eggs in one basket and hoping for the best when you increase the spend. I've seen this work time and time again. I remember working with a client in environmental controls, and by methodically testing audiences and ads on LinkedIn and Meta, we managed to reduce their cost per lead by 84%. It wasn't one single change; it was this process of continuous, structured testing.

You probably should think more about your ideal customer...

This leads to the next point: who are you actually targetting? If you've just been using broad targeting, you've probably only scratched the surface. For a tutoring service, your ideal customer is almost certainly a parent. But what kind of parent?

Think about building a few different customer 'personas' and then create an ad set for each one. For example:

Persona 1: The 'Primary School Parent'

• Targeting: Parents with children aged 6-12. You can layer this with interests like "Parenting" blogs, "Primary Education", or even competitor names if they're available (like Kumon, Sylvan Learning Center etc.).
• Messaging: Your ads could talk about building foundational skills, making learning fun, or helping with homework struggles.

Persona 2: The 'GCSE/A-Level Panic Parent'

• Targeting: Parents with teenagers aged 13-18. Interests could include "Secondary Education", specific subjects like "Mathematics" or "Chemistry", or pages related to university applications.
• Messaging: This would be more focused on exam prep, grade improvement, and reducing academic stress. The tone can be a bit more urgent.

Persona 3: The 'Local Parent'

• Targeting: You could just target a specific geographic radius around your area, maybe 5-10 miles. This is great for in-person tutoring but also works for online if people prefer someone 'local'. You'd layer this with the parent demographics.
• Messaging: Emphasise the local connection, your understanding of the local school system, and convenience.

When you start a new account or service, you always start with this kind of detailed interest/demographic targetting. It's how you gather your initial data. The key is to pick interests that are specific to your target audience. Don't just target "Education" because its too broad. Think about what pages these specific parents would follow, what magazines they read, what brands they like. The more specific you can be, the better your initial results will be.

Once you get enough data (like 100+ message conversations), you can start getting more advanced with audiences. You can create 'retargeting' audiences to show ads to people who have engaged with your page or a previous ad but didn't message you. These are warm leads. Even better are 'Lookalike' audiences. You can take a list of your past clients and ask Facebook to find millions of other people who are just like them. These audiences are often incredibly powerful. I remember one software client where we used this exact strategy and got their cost per registration down to just $2.38, which is brilliant for B2B. The same principle applies to your tutoring service.

You'll need ads that build trust quickly...

The ad itself is the final piece of the puzzle. For a service like tutoring, trust is everything. A parent isn't just buying a product; they're entrusting their child's education to you. Your ads need to reflect that. Tbh, a lot of small business ads I see are not very good.

Some ideas for your ad creatives and copy:

• Use a Proffesional, Friendly Photo of Yourself: People buy from people. A warm, approachable headshot can work wonders compared to a generic stock photo or logo.
• Try a Simple Video: It doesn't need to be a Hollywood production. Just you, talking to the camera for 60 seconds. Introduce yourself, explain who you help and what problem you solve (e.g., "Hi, I'm [Your Name], and I help students in [Your Town] conquer their fear of maths and boost their exam grades."). Videos often get cheaper reach and build trust faster. I've seen some of our SaaS clients get amazing results with simple user-generated style videos.
• Focus on the Benefit, Not the Feature: Parents aren't buying "one hour of tutoring". They're buying "confidence for my child", "an end to homework battles", or "a better chance at getting into their first-choice university". Your ad headlines and text should talk about these outcomes.
• Include a Clear Call to Action (CTA): Your ad should explicitly say "Tap 'Send Message' to ask a question or book a free 15-minute consultation". Tell people exactly what to do.

You should be testing different ads just like you test different audiences. Inside each of your ad sets, have 2-3 different ads. Maybe one is an image, one is a video. Maybe one has a headline about "Better Grades" and another has a headline about "Less Stress". Let Facebook figure out which combination of audience and ad works best. One campaign we worked on for a course provider saw a 447% Return on Ad Spend in just one week – not by finding one magic ad, but by testing lots of combinations to find the winners.

I've put a few copy ideas in a table below to give you a feel for it. These are just starting points to show the difference in tone.

This is the main advice I have for you:

So, to bring it all together, here is a summary of the actionable steps I'd recommend you take. This is a framework for moving forward that should give you much more stable and scalable results over time.

As you can see, there's a bit more to it than just setting an ad and changing the budget. It's a process of structured experimentation. Getting this right is the difference between an ad account that struggles and one that becomes a reliable source of new clients for your business.

It can feel like a lot to take on, especially when you're also busy actually running your business and tutoring students. This is usually where people decide they need expert help. Having someone who lives and breathes this stuff, who knows the benchmarks, and has run hundreds of campaigns can speed up the process immensely and help you avoid costly mistakes. We take over this entire optimisation process for our clients, from the strategy and audience research right through to the ad creation, monitoring, and scaling.

If you've found this helpful and would like to chat through your specific situation in more detail, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We could have a proper look at your ad account together and give you some more tailored advice.

Feel free to get in touch if that's something you'd be interested in.

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh