Solved: Ads Traffic Not Converting? (The Real Reason)

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I've had a look at your situation. Getting lots of ad traffic that doesn't convert into sales is an incredibly common problem, but also one of the most frustrating. It feels like you're burning money for nothing. The good news is that it's almost always solvable. The issue is rarely the amount of traffic, but rather the quality of that traffic and, more importantly, what happens to those people once they click your ad. You've got a leak somewhere in the process, and we just need to find it.

I'm happy to give you some of my initial thoughts and guidance on this. The solution isn't about getting more clicks from Conventry; it's about getting the right clicks from the right people and guiding them through a process that makes them want to buy from you.

We'll need to look at who you're actually reaching...

First things first, let's be brutally honest. Traffic for the sake of traffic is a vanity metric. It does nothing for your bank balance. The single biggest mistake I see is businesses targeting broad, generic audiences and then wondering why nobody buys. You mentioned you're getting traffic from Coventry. That's a location, not a customer.

You need to stop thinking in demographics ("people aged 25-45 in Coventry") and start thinking about their nightmare. What is the specific, urgent, expensive problem that your product or service solves? Your ideal customer isn't just a person; they're a person in a state of pain or need. Your Head of Sales client isn't just a job title; he's a leader terrified of missing his quarterly target. Your homeowner client isn't just looking for a plumber; she's panicking because a pipe just burst and is flooding her kitchen. Once you define the problem, you can find the person.

This directly impacts your ad platform and your targeting choices:

If you're using Google Ads: You're targeting intent. But what kind of intent? Are your keywords broad and informational like "what is data enrichment" or are they commercial and specific like "apollo.io alternative" or "buy contact data for sales team"? If you're an electrician in Coventry, targeting "electrical safety tips" will get you traffic, but targeting "emergency electrician coventry" will get you customers. The first person is researching, the second has a problem that costs them money every minute they don't solve it. You need to focus on keywords that show someone is ready to buy, not just browse. It's better to get 10 clicks from a high-intent keyword than 1,000 clicks from a vague one.

If you're using Meta (Facebook/Instagram) Ads: This is where things get really dangerous if you don't know what you're doing. A lot of people choose the "Brand Awareness" or "Reach" campaign objective. This is a trap. You are literally paying Facebook to find the people in your audience who are cheapest to show ads to, which means they are the least likely to click, engage, or buy anything. Their attention is cheap for a reason. You are actively optimising for non-customers.

You MUST optimise for conversions (sales, leads, whatever your goal is). This tells the algorithm to find people who have a history of taking that action. Then, your interest targting needs to be sharp. If you sell high-end kitchenware, targeting "Food" is a waste of money. Everyone likes food. But targeting people who follow "Le Creuset", "Great British Bake Off", and magazines like "Good Food" is much more specific. You're targeting the problem/hobby, not the person's location.

To illustrate this, consider a few scenarios:

I'd say you need to diagnose the drop-off...

Okay, so let's assume you've got the right people clicking the ad. If they're still not buying, the problem lies on your website or landing page. Your ad makes a promise, and your website has to deliver on it instantly. This is a simple diagnostic process. You need to look at your analytics – not just ad metrics, but website analytics like Google Analytics.

Here's where people typically drop off:

• Problem 1: Low Click-Through Rate (CTR) and High Cost Per Click (CPC).
  If people aren't even clicking your ad, the ad itself is the problem. Your image is boring, your headline is weak, or your copy doesn't speak to their 'nightmare'. Your message isn't resonating with the audience you're targeting. It's irrelevant to them. You need to test different images, videos, and headlines. For a service business, a simple UGC-style video can outperform a slick corporate ad. I remember one campaign for a medical job matching SaaS where we reduced the cost per user acquisition from £100 to just £7. Part of this success came from testing different creative formats, including user-generated videos, which often outperform polished corporate ads.


• Problem 2: High CTR, but people leave the landing page immediately (High Bounce Rate).
  You got them to click, but your landing page scared them away. This is usually due to a few culprits. A) The page is too slow to load. People are impatient. B) The page looks unprofessional or untrustworthy. C) The message on the landing page doesn't match the message in the ad. If your ad promised a "50% off sale" and the landing page doesn't show that immediately, they're gone. Your website has to be your best salesperson, and right now it might be letting you down.


• Problem 3: People view products but don't add to cart.
  This is a classic e-commerce issue. They're on the right page, looking at the right thing, but something stops them. The problem is with the product presentation. Are your product photos high quality? I've seen stores for handcrafted goods using poor, dark photos – you'd get much better results with proper photography, maybe even a video of you making or using the product. Are your product descripions persuasive? Do they explain the benefits, not just the features? Is the price clear? Is it competitive? Maybe they're just not ready to buy right now, which is where long-term retargeting comes in.


• Problem 4: People add to cart but don't complete the purchase (High Cart Abandonment).
  This is the most painful one. They were *so* close. This almost always comes down to two things: trust and friction. Are you surprising them with high shipping costs at the last minute? Is your checkout process long and complicated, asking for too much information? Does your site look trustworth? A lack of trust badges, customer reviews, or a clear returns policy can kill a sale at the final hurdle. I've seen many businesses significantly increase sales just by simplifying their checkout to a single page.

Your website isn't just a digital brochure; it's the entire environment where the sale happens. If it's cluttered, slow, and confusing, it's like trying to sell a luxury car out of a dirty garage. It just doesn't work.

You probably should rethink your offer...

This is the big one. More important than your audience and your website is your offer. I've seen perfectly targeted campaigns sent to beautiful websites fail because the offer was weak. The number one reason campaigns fail is a lack of demand for the offer you're presenting.

What are you actually asking people to do?

If you're a B2B business, please, for the love of god, delete the "Request a Demo" button. It is the most arrogant, high-friction call to action in marketing. It presumes a busy decision-maker has time to sit through your sales pitch. It screams "I'm going to be comoditised and compared to five other vendors." It provides zero value to them upfront.

Your offer's only job is to provide an "aha!" moment of undeniable value. You must solve a small, real problem for free to earn the right to solve their bigger problems for money.

• For a SaaS business: The offer should be a free trial (no card details required) or a freemium plan. Let them use the actual product and see its value for themselves. We worked with a B2B SaaS client selling accounting software. Their initial offer was a demo. It failed. They had no free trial, and their messaging was all about "privacy," which businesses don't care about as much as reliability and features. We advised them to switch to a free trial model. Their signups skyrocketed. For one software client, we generated 1535 trials using this approach on Meta ads.


• For a service business: You need to bottle your expertise. Don't sell "marketing consulting." Offer a "Free SEO audit that uncovers your top 3 keyword opportunities." We do this ourselves – our offer is a free 20-minute strategy session where we audit failing ad campaigns. It provides immense value and demonstrates our expertise, which makes the sale much easier. For an electrician, the offer is "24/7 Emergency Callout" – it's pure problem-solving.

Even your ad copy needs to reflect this problem-centric offer. Don't just list features. Frame it in a way they can't ignore:

Bad Copy: "We offer fractional CFO services."
Good Copy (Problem-Agitate-Solve): "Are your cash flow projections just a shot in the dark? Are you one bad month away from a payroll crisis? Get expert financial strategy for a fraction of a full-time hire."

Bad Copy: "Our FinOps platform has real-time cost analysis."
Good Copy (Before-After-Bridge): "Your AWS bill just arrived. It’s 30% higher than last month. Imagine opening your cloud bill and smiling. Our platform is the bridge that gets you there. Find your first £1,000 in savings today."

If your offer isn't compelling, no amount of ad spend will save it.

You'll need to understand the numbers behind the clicks...

Traffic that doesn't convert often means there's a disconnect between what you're spending and what a customer is actually worth to you. You're probably focused on lowering your Cost Per Click, when you should be focused on how high a Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) you can afford.

This comes down to one metric: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you don't know this number, you are flying blind. Let's do a quick caluclation. You need three pieces of data:

1. Average Revenue Per Account (ARPA): What's a customer worth per month? Let's say it's £200.
2. Gross Margin %: Your profit on that revenue. Let's say it's 75%.
3. Monthly Churn Rate: What percentage of customers do you lose each month? Let's say it's 5%.

The calculation is: LTV = (ARPA * Gross Margin %) / Monthly Churn Rate

So, LTV = (£200 * 0.75) / 0.05
LTV = £150 / 0.05 = £3,000

In this example, each new customer is worth £3,000 in gross margin to your business. A healthy business model can often sustain a 3:1 LTV to Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) ratio. This means you can afford to spend up to £1,000 to acquire a single customer. If your sales process converts 1 in 10 qualified leads, you can afford to pay up to £100 per lead. Suddenly that "expensive" traffic doesn't seem so bad, does it?

This maths changes everything. It tells you how aggressive you can be. It also helps you set realistic expectations. Here are some very rough ballpark figures we see for costs in developed countries like the UK:

If your costs are way outside these ranges, something is seriously broken in your audience, creative, or landing page. But if you're in the range and still not profitable, your LTV might not be high enough to support paid acquisition yet.

Finally, we'll need to structure your campaigns for sales, not clicks...

A common mistake is to lump all your audiences together in one campaign. This is messy and makes it impossible to know what's working. You need to structure your account to mirror a customer's journey.

For Meta ads, I always priortise audiences in this order:

1. Bottom of Funnel (BoFu) - The Hottest Audience: These are people who have shown strong intent to buy. Retargeting people who Added to Cart, Initiated Checkout, etc., but didn't purchase. This is your lowest-hanging fruit and should be your first priority.
2. Middle of Funnel (MoFu) - The Warm Audience: People who have engaged with you but aren't as close to buying. This includes all website visitors, people who watched a significant portion of your videos, or engaged with your social media profiles.
3. Top of Funnel (ToFu) - The Cold Audience: People who have never heard of you. This is where you use your detailed interest/behaviour targeting and Lookalike Audiences (e.g., a lookalike of your past purchasers is incredibly powerful).

You should have separate campaigns for these different funnel stages. The ad copy and offer might even be different for each. A BoFu ad can be very direct ("Still thinking about it? Here's 10% off to complete your order"). A ToFu ad needs to be more focused on introducing the problem and your solution.

By structuring it this way, you can allocate your budget intelligently, starting with the audiences most likely to convert and then scaling out to colder traffic once you've maximised your returns from the warmer audiences.

I know this is a lot to take in, but turning traffic into sales is a systematic process, not a guessing game. You have to be a detective and follow the data to find where the process is breaking down.

I've detailed my main recommendations for you in a table below to summarise:

As you can see, fixing this isn't just about tweaking an ad setting. It requires a deep look at your entire strategy, from the core of your offer to the nitty-gritty of your campaign structure and website performance. Getting this right is the difference between an ad budget that's an expense and one that's an investment with a predictable return.

If you'd like to go through your specific ads and website in more detail, we offer a completely free, no-obligation 20-minute strategy call where we can do just that. It often helps to have an expert pair of eyes look over things to spot the issues you might be too close to see.

Hope this helps!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh