Solved: Facebook Ads Campaign Performance Drop After Few Days

Hi there,

Thanks for reaching out!

I had a look over the situation you described. It's a really common problem, probably one of the most frequent issues we see with people managing their own ads. You get a flash of success, things look great, and then it all falls off a cliff. It's frustrating, and your solution of just starting over feels logical, but I'm afraid it's actually doing more harm than good.

Happy to give you some initial thoughts on what's likely going on and how you can build something more sustainable. The goal isn't to create campaigns that last for two days, it's to build an advertising system that consistently brings in sales over the long term. It's a completely different mindset, but it's how you actually grow a business with paid ads.

Let's first address why restarting your campaign is burning your money...

I know it feels like you're taking action, like you're fixing the problem by hitting the reset button. But what you're actually doing is trapping yourself in a cycle and telling Facebook's algorithm to never get smart on your behalf. Every time you launch a campaign, it enters what's called the "learning phase". During this period, the system is actively trying to figure out who in that massive audience of yours is most likely to actually do what you want them to do (in this case, buy something).

It tests different pockets of people, analyses the results, and gradually gets more efficient at finding customers. It needs data and time to do this. When you shut it down after two days because the results dipped, you yank it out of the learning phase before it's even had a chance to properly optimise. You're essentially forcing it to start from scratch every single time. This means you're constantly paying for the most expensive, least efficient part of a campaign's life, over and over again.

The drop in performance isn't a signal to restart. It's a symptom of a deeper issue with your strategy. By restarting, you're just putting a plaster on a wound that needs stitches. You're ignoring the real reasons the campaign failed in the first place, which are almost certainly your audience and your creative.

The real problem is almost certainly ad fatigue...

So what is that deeper issue? It sounds like a classic case of ad fatigue, combined with a flawed initial targeting strategy. Let's break that down.

Ad fatigue is simple: the people in your audience have seen your ad. They either bought, or they decided they weren't interested. After a few days of seeing the same ad, the ones who haven't acted are now actively ignoring it. It becomes background noise. Their eyes glaze over it. This is why your Click-Through Rate (CTR) plummets and your Cost Per Click (CPC) skyrockets. Facebook has to show the ad to more and more people to get a single click, and it charges you for those impressions. The well of interested people has run dry, for that specific ad.

But why did it run dry so fast? Because of your targeting. You said you targeted everyone aged 13-65 in a country. This is what I call "hopeful targeting". You're hoping the algorithm can sort through tens of millions of people and find your customers. To its credit, it tried. It found you some quick, cheap sales right at the start. These were the "low-hanging fruit" – the small slice of that huge audience who were, for whatever reason, ready to buy your product at that exact moment.

The problem is, you've given the algorithm a command to find you the *cheapest* possible people to show your ad to. And that's exactly what it did. But cheap doesn't mean *good*. This is a trap many people fall into. They see a low CPC and think the campaign is amazing. But you were paying the world's most powerful advertising machine to find you the audience segment that no one else wants, because they are the least likely to engage or convert. You found the few exceptions, and then you were left showing your ads to the vast majority who were never going to buy. You weren't running a sales campaign; you were running a campaign to find the tiny handful of buyers hidden amongst an ocean of non-buyers.

You'll need to think about your customer's nightmare, not their demographic...

To fix this, we need to fundamentally change how you think about your audience. "13-65 female and male" is a demographic. It tells you nothing of value. It leads to generic ads that speak to no one. To stop burning cash, you have to define your customer by their pain, their desire, their problem. You need to become an expert in their specific, urgent, expensive nightmare.

Your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) isn't a person; it's a problem state. What situation is someone in when they realise they need your product? What frustration are they feeling? What are they trying to achieve?

Let's imagine you sell high-quality, ethically sourced coffee beans.
Bad ICP: "Men and women aged 25-55 who drink coffee." (This is what you're doing now).
Good ICP: "Someone who is fed up with the bitter, stale taste of supermarket coffee. They just bought a new coffee machine and are disappointed the results still taste mediocre. They value quality and are looking for that 'coffee shop experience' at home, but don't know where to start. They are frustrated by the waste and ethical ambiguity of big brands."

See the difference? The second one is a story. It’s a pain point. It’s a "nightmare" (a small one, but still). Now, instead of targeting "coffee", you can get clever. You can target people interested in specific high-end coffee machine brands (Sage, La Marzocco), people who follow famous baristas or speciality coffee publications, people interested in 'Fair Trade' or 'Single Origin Coffee'. You're targeting the *problem*, not the demographic.

This work is the absolute foundation. If you don't do this, you have no business spending another pound on ads. You need to sit down and write out, in detail, who your customer is based on their struggles and goals. Only then can you build audiences that have a chance of working long-term.

We'll need to build a proper campaign structure that actually works...

Once you know who you're talking to, you need to structure your campaigns in a way that makes sense. A single campaign for everyone is inefficient. A professional approach separates audiences based on how familiar they are with your brand. We call this a funnel: Top of Funnel (ToFu), Middle of Funnel (MoFu), and Bottom of Funnel (BoFu).

This sounds complicated, but the logic is simple. You speak differently to a stranger than you do to someone who has visited your shop three times. Your ad campaigns should do the same.

ToFu: Prospecting (Finding New People)
This is your campaign for cold audiences – people who have never heard of you. The goal here is to introduce them to your brand and get them to your website. The audiences here will be built from the ICP work you just did. -> Objective: Always, always, ALWAYS optimise for Conversions (likely 'Purchase' for an eCom store). Don't use 'Traffic' or 'Reach'. You're telling Facebook you don't just want anyone, you want *buyers*. It costs more per click, but the clicks are from better people. -> Audiences to Test: Create different ad sets for different audience themes. For our coffee example: one ad set for 'Competitor Brands', one for 'High-End Equipment', one for 'Ethical Consumer Interests'. You'd also eventually create Lookalike audiences (e.g. an audience of people who 'look like' your past purchasers), which are incredibly powerful. But you need sales data first.

MoFu/BoFu: Retargeting (Bringing People Back)
This is arguably the most important, and most profitable, part of any ad account. This is where you target people who have already shown interest but didn't buy. Most people don't buy on their first visit. Forgetting to retarget them is like letting a customer walk out of your shop without asking if they need any help. -> Objective: Still Conversions ('Purchase'). -> Audiences: You create 'Custom Audiences' of people who have taken specific actions. The most valuable ones are:

• -> All Website Visitors (last 30 days)
• -> People who Viewed a Product (last 14 days)
• -> People who Added to Cart (last 7 days)
• -> People who Initiated Checkout (last 3 days)

Here's a look at what a very basic, but infinitely better, campaign structure might look like in your ad account. We use this kind of seperation for pretty much all our clients, from eCommerce brands to B2B software companies.

This structure allows you to control your messaging, test properly, and let the algorithm do its job within clearly defined parameters. It stops being a lottery and starts being a system.

I'd say you need a message they can't ignore...

Now we get to the ads themselves. The reason your old ad died is because it became invisible. You need a constant stream of new, interesting creative to keep your campaigns healthy. But "new" doesn't just mean a different colour background. It means a different angle, a different message, a different format.

Your ad copy needs to speak directly to the "nightmare" we identified earlier. A great framework for this is Problem-Agitate-Solve (PAS).

• Problem: State the problem your ICP has, in their own words.
• Agitate: Poke the bruise. Remind them why this problem is so frustrating.
• Solve: Introduce your product as the clear, obvious solution.

Example for our coffee brand:
(Headline: That "Coffee Shop" Taste, At Home.)
Problem: "Tired of your expensive new coffee machine making the same old bitter brew?"
Agitate: "You follow all the steps, but it still tastes like disappointment. It shouldn't be this hard to get a great cup of coffee in your own kitchen."
Solve: "The problem isn't your machine, it's the beans. Our freshly-roasted, single-origin beans are the secret ingredient baristas use. Taste the difference for yourself. Click to explore our Discovery Pack."

This is a world away from "Buy our coffee". It connects on an emotional level. You should be testing multiple versions of this copy, along with different creative formats. Don't just use one static image. Test:

• -> A carousel ad showing off different products or benefits.
• -> A short video ad (even a simple one from your phone) showing the product in use.
• -> A testimonial graphic with a quote from a happy customer.

This isn't about finding one "perfect ad". It's about having a library of high-quality ads you can rotate in and out to prevent fatigue. For one of our clients, a cleaning products company, we managed to achieve a 633% return on their ad spend. It's about showing, not just telling.

You probably should understand the numbers behind a successful campaign...

Finally, let's talk about metrics. You mentioned a CPC of $0.03. To be brutally honest, that number is a massive red flag. It's almost impossibly low for any meaningful traffic in a developed country. It tells me the traffic quality was likely abysmal, which explains why you got a few quick sales and then nothing. You were paying for clicks from people who had no real intention to buy.

You need to get comfortable with what realistic numbers look like for a well-run eCommerce campaign. Chasing an ultra-low CPC is a fool's errand. You should be chasing a profitable Cost Per Acquisition (CPA) and a high Return On Ad Spend (ROAS).

Here's a rough idea of what to expect when targeting a developed country like the UK or US for an eCommerce product. These are just ballparks, but they're grounded in reality.

The question isn't "how cheap can my clicks be?". The question is "how much can I afford to pay for a customer and still be profitable?". This leads to the most important metric of all: Customer Lifetime Value (LTV). If you know an average customer will spend £300 with you over the next two years, paying £50 to acquire them is an incredible deal. It's this kind of maths that allows you to scale aggressively and intelligently.

This is the main advice I have for you:

I know this is a lot to take in, and it's a big shift from what you've been doing. To make it clearer, I've boiled down my main recommendations into a table. This is the strategic framework you should be aiming for.

As you can probably see, doing this properly is a significant amount of work. It's not just about pushing a few buttons in Ads Manager; it's about deep strategic thinking, audience research, copywriting, creative production, and constant analysis. It's a full-time job.

That's where professional help can make a huge difference. An experienced hand can help you avoid the common pitfalls, build this entire system for you, and manage it day-to-day to ensure you're getting the best possible return on every pound you spend. It's about turning your ad spend from a cost into a predictable, scalable investment in growth.

If you'd like to discuss how we could apply this kind of strategic thinking specifically to your business, we offer a free, no-obligation strategy session. We can have a look at your account together and give you a clear roadmap for what needs to be done. Feel free to let me know if that's something you'd be interested in.

Hope that helps give you a much clearer path forward!

Regards,

Team @ Lukas Holschuh