Solved: Traffic Ads Beat Conversion Ads. Why?

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out! It's not every day you hear about a traffic campaign blowing a conversion campaign out of the water, especially by that kind of margin. It's the sort of thing that makes you question everything you thought you knew about the Meta algorithm, right?

Honestly, I'm not surprised this is happening, and it points to a much bigger (and more profitable) opportunity for you than just saving a couple of grand on ad spend. You've accidentally stumbled upon a weakness in the way most people run ads, and a powerful way to scale your streetwear brand if you understand what's really going on under the hood.

I've put together some detailed thoughts for you below on why this is working, how to turn this lucky break into a deliberate, scalable strategy, and what your next steps should be. It's a bit of a read, but I reckon it'll be worth your time.

We'll need to look at why your 'mistake' is making you money...

Right, let's get into the nitty-gritty. The reason your traffic campaign is outperforming your conversion campaign isn't some glitch in the Matrix. It's a logical outcome of how you command the Facebook algorithm. When you choose a campaign objective, you're giving Meta a very specific instruction. It's a bit like telling a delivery driver to either "find the fastest route" or "find the cheapest route". You'll get to the destination, but the journey will be completely different.

Conversion Objective: You tell Meta, "Go find me people inside my target audience who, based on their past behaviour, are most likely to make a purchase. I don't care how much it costs to reach them, just find me the buyers." The algorithm dutifully goes and finds those people. The problem is, after a while, it gets really good at finding the *same type* of people. This pool is often small and in high demand from other advertisers, which means the cost to reach them (your CPMs) goes through the roof. You were likely paying a premium for a shrinking, over-targeted slice of your potential audience. This is called audience fatigue, and it's a silent killer of ROAS.

Traffic Objective: You tell Meta, "Go find me the largest number of people inside my target audience who are most likely to click on my ad, for the lowest possible price." You've completely changed the success metric. The algorithm now hunts for 'clicky' people, not 'shoppy' people. These users are far more abundant and their attention is much, much cheaper. You saw this yourself with £0.16 clicks - that's dirt cheap.

You essentially broke the feedback loop. Your conversion campaign was stuck fishing in an expensive, overfished pond. The traffic campaign took your boat to a massive, fresh lake full of fish no one else was bothering with. Because your Instagram profile is strong (good content, social proof, clear product showcases), it's doing the heavy lifting of converting this cheap, fresh traffic. You've turned your IG profile into your landing page, and it's clearly working.

Here’s a simple breakdown of what you've instructed the algorithm to do in each case:

I'd say you need to turn this luck into a system...

This is brilliant, but it's not a long-term strategy. Relying on this alone is risky. What happens when Instagram changes its layout? What if the algorithm shifts? You're relying on one specific user behaviour that could change overnight. The real opportunity here is to take what you've learned and build a proper, robust, full-funnel advertising machine.

Forget "traffic OR conversion." The professional approach is "traffic AND conversion." You need to structure your campaigns to mirror a customer's actual journey. No one wakes up and decides to buy from a streetwear brand they've never heard of. They discover you, they get familiar with your vibe, they check out your stuff, and *then* they buy.

Your ad account should reflect this journey. We structure this using a ToFu/MoFu/BoFu model:

• ToFu (Top of Funnel): Awareness & Discovery. This is exactly what your traffic campaign is doing. The goal here isn't sales. It's to get your brand in front of a massive, new, relevant audience for as cheap as possible. You build audiences here.
• MoFu (Middle of Funnel): Consideration & Engagement. This is where you talk to people who now know who you are but haven't bought anything. You retarget them. You show them different ads - maybe customer reviews, user-generated content (people wearing your clothes), or a behind-the-scenes look at a design. You build trust.
• BoFu (Bottom of Funnel): Conversion & Purchase. This is for the hot leads. People who have visited your website, added an item to their cart, or initiated checkout. Here, and only here, you run your expensive conversion campaigns. The audience is small, but they are primed to buy, so the high cost is justified.

This structure allows you to controll the customer journey and scale your spend intelligently. When you want more sales, you don't just crank up the budget on one campaign; you pour more money into the top of the funnel (ToFu) to feed the rest of the machine. It's a system, not a gamble.

Here’s a flowchart of what that system looks like in practice:

You probably should understand your numbers to scale...

Scaling from £50/day to £500/day or more requires a solid understanding of your business metrics. The fact you're seeing the same revenue on £2000 less spend is fantastic, it means your Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) has gone through the roof. This is the number that matters more than anything. If you're putting £1 in and getting £5 out, you'd do that all day long, wouldn't you?

You need to know what a good ROAS is for your bussiness. For eCommerce, a 4x ROAS (meaning for every £1 spent on ads, you generate £4 in revenue) is generally considered a good benchmark, but this depends entirely on your profit margins. If you have high margins, you might be profitable at a 2x ROAS. If you have thin margins, you might need a 6x ROAS or higher.

I've run campaigns for lots of eCommerce brands. One campaign we worked on for a women's apparel client hit a 691% return (6.9x ROAS), and another for a cleaning products brand saw a 633% return. These numbers are achievable, but only with a proper structure and relentless testing.

Before you spend another pound, you need to know your numbers. Use the calculator below to get a feel for how changes in your spend and revenue impact your ROAS. This will help you set realistic targets for your new campaigns.

You'll need a concrete action plan...

Okay, theory is great, but what should you actually *do* tomorrow? You shouldn't just turn your conversion campaign back on. And you shouldn't rely solely on the traffic campaign. You need to build the funnel.

This is the main advice I have for you:

This is just a starting point, of course. You'd need to constantly test new creatives, experiment with different audiences in your ToFu campaigns, and adjust budgets based on what's performing. But this structure gives you a solid foundation to build on. It turns advertising from a guessing game into a predictable system for generating customers.

What you've discovered is powerful. You've proven that there's a huge, untapped audience out there for your brand that can be reached cheaply. Now it's time to stop treating it like a fluke and start engineering that success deliberately and at scale. It requires more management than just having one campaign running, but the payoff is control, scalability, and a much more resilient bussiness.

Building and optimising a system like this is complex and time-consuming. It's where deep expertise can make a massive difference, turning a good ROAS into a great one and identifying growth opportunities that aren't obvious on the surface. If you'd like to chat through this in more detail and have us take a look at your account, we offer a free, no-obligation initial consultation. We can walk through your specific setup and give you some more tailored advice.

Hope this helps clear things up!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh