I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you want my team to just do your marketing for you, click here.
I hope you enjoy reading this blog post. If you want my team to just do your marketing for you, click here.
Author: Jeremy Haynes | founder of Megalodon Marketing.
Earnings Disclaimer: You have a .1% probability of hitting million-dollar months according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. As stated by law, we can not and do not make any guarantees about your own ability to get results or earn any money with our ideas, information, programs, or strategies. We don’t know you, and besides, your results in life are up to you. We’re here to help by giving you our greatest strategies to move you forward, faster. However, nothing on this page or any of our websites or emails is a promise or guarantee of future earnings. Any financial numbers referenced here, or on any of our sites or emails, are simply estimates or projections or past results, and should not be considered exact, actual, or as a promise of potential earnings – all numbers are illustrative only.
Your ad account is bleeding money and you don’t know why.
The CPAs are through the roof. The conversion rate is in the toilet. You’re spending thousands of dollars a day and barely breaking even – or worse, you’re losing money on every sale.
And the worst part? You have no idea what’s actually broken.
Is it the creative? The copy? The audience? The offer? The landing page? There are so many variables that it feels impossible to figure out where to start.
Here’s the good news: most ad problems fall into one of three categories. Message, offer, or audience. And you can diagnose which one is broken in about an hour.
Not three weeks of testing. Not months of trial and error. One hour.
Let me show you the exact diagnostic framework I use when a client comes to me with an underperforming ad account. This is the same process that’s helped fix accounts spending anywhere from $5K to $500K per month.
By the end of this, you’ll know exactly what’s broken and exactly how to fix it.
Members of My Inner Circle are already scaling to $1M+ and beyond. This isn’t for beginners. It’s only for operators already at $100k+ per month who want proven strategies, speed, and focus. If that’s you, apply here.
Before we dive into diagnostics, you need to understand how these three variables work together.
Every paid ad campaign has three core components:
Message – This is your ad creative and copy. What you’re saying and how you’re saying it. The hook. The promise. The angle.
Offer – This is what they’re getting and at what price. Your product, your service, your lead magnet. The value proposition and the price point.
Audience – This is who you’re showing the ad to. The targeting. The demographics. The psychographics. The awareness level.
When all three are aligned, ads work. When even one is off, the whole thing falls apart.
Most people try to optimize all three at once. They change the creative and the audience and the offer all in the same week. Then they have no idea what actually made a difference.
That’s not diagnostics. That’s just guessing.
Real diagnostics means isolating variables. Testing one thing at a time. Following the data to the root cause.
And the fastest way to do that is to look at where people are dropping off in your funnel.
Here’s where you start. Open your ads manager. Pull up your campaign. And look at these four metrics:
These four numbers tell you everything you need to know about what’s broken.
Let me show you how to read them.
High impressions, low CTR – This is a message problem. People are seeing your ad but they’re not clicking. Your creative isn’t stopping the scroll. Your copy isn’t compelling. Your hook is weak.
High CTR, low landing page views – This is a technical problem. People are clicking but not making it to your page. Either your page is slow to load or there’s a tracking issue.
High landing page views, low conversions – This is an offer problem. People are interested enough to click and visit your page, but they’re not buying. Either your offer isn’t compelling enough or there’s a disconnect between what the ad promised and what the page delivers.
Low on all metrics – This is an audience problem. You’re showing your ad to the wrong people. They’re not interested. They’re not qualified. They’re not in-market.
See how this works? The drop-off point tells you exactly where to focus.
You’re not guessing. You’re not testing random stuff. You’re following the data to the broken link in the chain.
Let’s start with message issues since they’re the most common.
If your CTR is below 1% for cold traffic or below 3% for warm traffic, you have a message problem. Industry research shows that the average CTR for Facebook traffic campaigns is 1.71% across all industries, with variation by sector.
Your ad isn’t stopping people. It’s not compelling them to take action. It’s getting lost in the feed.
Here’s how you diagnose what specifically is wrong.
Pull up your top 5 ads by spend. Look at them with fresh eyes. Pretend you’re seeing them for the first time as a stranger scrolling through Facebook.
Ask yourself these questions:
Does the hook grab attention in the first 3 seconds?
Most people scroll past an ad in under 3 seconds. If your hook doesn’t immediately make them stop, nothing else matters.
Bad hook: “Looking to grow your business?” Good hook: “We scaled from $10K to $500K in 90 days without increasing ad spend”
The first one is generic. The second one is specific and makes a bold claim that demands attention.
Is there a clear promise?
What is this ad promising? What will the person get if they click?
If you can’t articulate the promise in one sentence, your audience definitely can’t either.
Is there proof?
Claims without proof are just claims. Screenshots, numbers, before-and-afters, testimonials – these things make your message believable.
If your ad is all promise and no proof, that’s probably why people aren’t clicking.
Does it speak to a specific pain point?
Generic ads get generic results. “Grow your business” is generic. “Stop wasting money on ads that don’t convert” is specific.
The more specific the pain point, the higher the CTR.
Is there message-market match?
This is huge. Your message needs to match where your audience is in their awareness journey.
If you’re targeting cold traffic with an ad that assumes they already know who you are and what you do, it won’t work.
If you’re targeting warm traffic with an ad that’s trying to explain basic concepts they already understand, it won’t work.
Cold traffic needs education and curiosity. Warm traffic needs specificity and urgency.
Once you’ve identified what’s wrong with your message, fixing it is straightforward. You write new creative and copy that addresses the specific weakness.
Weak hook? Test 5 new hooks. No proof? Add screenshots and testimonials. Too generic? Get more specific about the pain point.
If your CTR is solid but your conversion rate is garbage, you have an offer problem. Research shows the average conversion rate for Facebook lead campaigns is 7.72%, with significant variation by industry and offer quality.
People are interested enough to click. They’re making it to your landing page. But they’re not buying.
That means one of three things:
Here’s how you diagnose which one it is.
Check for message-match between ad and landing page
Open your ad. Read it. Note what it promises.
Now open your landing page. Does it deliver on that promise immediately? Or is there a disconnect?
I see this all the time. The ad says “Get our free training on how to scale Facebook ads to $50K/day.” Then the landing page is a generic sales page for a $2K course with no mention of the free training.
That’s not an offer problem. That’s a congruency problem.
If there’s a disconnect, fix the landing page to match the ad. Or fix the ad to match the landing page. They need to tell the same story.
Evaluate your value proposition
Assuming the message matches, now you need to look at the actual offer.
Is it clear what they’re getting? Is it clear what it costs? Is the value obviously greater than the price?
Most people overcomplicate their offers. They try to explain too much. They bury the core value proposition under a mountain of features and bonuses.
Your offer should be explainable in one sentence. If it’s not, simplify it.
Check your price positioning
This is where most people get tripped up.
Your price isn’t too high or too low in absolute terms. It’s too high or too low relative to the perceived value you’re creating.
If you’re charging $2K for something that looks like a $200 product, you’ll have conversion problems. Not because $2K is too expensive, but because you haven’t built enough perceived value.
The fix is either to lower the price or increase the perceived value. Adding bonuses, adding guarantees, adding social proof, showing ROI – these all increase perceived value without changing the core offer.
Look at your funnel friction
How many steps does someone have to go through to buy?
Every additional click is a conversion killer. Every form field is a conversion killer. Every moment of confusion is a conversion killer.
If your checkout process requires 7 steps and 15 form fields, that’s your problem. Simplify it.
Most offer problems can be fixed by doing one of three things:
You don’t need to change your entire offer. You just need to present it better.
If your CTR is low AND your conversion rate is low, you probably have an audience problem.
You’re showing your ad to people who fundamentally aren’t interested in what you’re selling.
This is actually the easiest problem to diagnose and often the easiest to fix.
Here’s what you do.
Check your audience size
Open your ad set. Look at the audience size. If it’s under 500K, it’s probably too small. If it’s over 50M, it’s probably too broad.
Small audiences exhaust quickly. Broad audiences are too diluted.
The sweet spot for cold traffic is usually 1M-10M. For warm traffic, it depends on your list size, but you want at least 100K if possible.
Check your targeting overlap
If you’re running multiple ad sets, check if they’re competing with each other.
Facebook has an audience overlap tool. Use it. If your ad sets have more than 25% overlap, they’re cannibalizing each other and driving up your costs.
Consolidate or exclude overlapping audiences.
Check your creative fatigue
Pull up your frequency metric. If it’s above 3-4 for cold traffic or above 7-8 for warm traffic, you’ve exhausted your audience. Studies show that ad fatigue significantly impacts CTR and conversion rates when ads are shown too frequently to the same users.
They’ve seen your ad too many times. They’re ignoring it. Your CTR and conversion rate are dropping.
The fix is to refresh your creative or expand your audience.
Analyze your demographic data
Look at who’s actually clicking and converting. Age, gender, location, device.
Is it the audience you expected? Or is someone else responding to your ad?
I’ve had campaigns where we were targeting business owners but the people actually converting were their assistants. Or we were targeting men but women were the ones buying.
If the wrong people are responding, you need to adjust your targeting or your message to speak to the people who are actually in-market.
Check awareness level match
This is subtle but critical.
Are you running a bottom-of-funnel ad to top-of-funnel traffic? Or vice versa?
If you’re targeting cold audiences with an ad that assumes they already know who you are and what you do, it won’t work.
If you’re targeting your email list with an ad that’s trying to educate them on basic concepts, it won’t work.
Match your message to your audience’s awareness level.
Most audience problems can be fixed by:
Now let me give you the step-by-step process to do this in an hour.
Minutes 0-15: Pull the data
Open Ads Manager. Pull your last 30 days of data. Export it to a spreadsheet if that’s easier for you.
Look at your four key metrics by campaign:
Identify which campaigns are underperforming and where the drop-off is happening.
Minutes 15-30: Identify the problem type
Based on where the drop-off is, categorize each problem campaign:
Minutes 30-45: Deep dive on the biggest problem
Pick your worst-performing campaign. The one that’s spending the most money with the worst results.
If it’s a message problem, review the creative and copy against the questions I gave you earlier.
If it’s an offer problem, check message-match and value proposition.
If it’s an audience problem, check size, overlap, and fatigue.
Document what’s specifically wrong. Don’t just say “the creative is bad.” Say “the hook doesn’t grab attention” or “there’s no proof” or “it’s too generic.”
Minutes 45-60: Create your fix list
Based on what you found, create a prioritized list of fixes.
Not 20 things. Three to five specific changes that will address the root cause.
For a message problem:
For an offer problem:
For an audience problem:
That’s it. One hour. You now know what’s broken and how to fix it.
Let me save you some pain by pointing out the mistakes I see people make when diagnosing their ads.
Mistake #1: Looking at too short a time frame
Don’t diagnose based on one day or even one week of data. You need at least two weeks, preferably 30 days, to see real patterns.
Facebook’s algorithm needs time to optimize. Early performance isn’t always indicative of long-term performance.
Mistake #2: Changing multiple variables at once
If you change the creative, the audience, and the landing page all at the same time, you’ll never know what actually made the difference.
Change one thing. Let it run for at least 3-5 days. Measure the impact. Then change the next thing.
Mistake #3: Ignoring winning campaigns
Most people only look at what’s broken. But you should also be looking at what’s working.
What do your best-performing campaigns have in common? What message are they using? What audience? What offer?
Often, the fastest way to fix a broken campaign is to model it after a winning one.
Mistake #4: Not checking the basics first
Before you dive into complex diagnostics, make sure the basics are right.
Is your pixel firing correctly? Is your tracking set up properly? Are your ads actually approved and running?
I’ve seen people spend hours diagnosing an audience problem when the real issue was their pixel wasn’t tracking conversions correctly.
Check the basics first.
Mistake #5: Optimizing for the wrong metric
Make sure you’re optimizing for the outcome you actually care about.
If your goal is purchases, don’t optimize for link clicks. If your goal is qualified leads, don’t optimize for form submissions.
The algorithm will give you what you optimize for. Make sure you’re optimizing for the right thing.
Not every campaign is worth saving.
Sometimes the best move is to kill the campaign and start over with a different approach.
Here’s how I decide.
If a campaign has spent at least 3x your target CPA and hasn’t generated a single conversion, kill it. It’s not going to magically start working.
If you’ve made 3-4 significant changes and nothing has improved, kill it. You’re probably targeting the wrong market or selling the wrong offer.
If your CPM is 2x higher than your account average with no improvement over 7+ days, kill it. You’re in an auction you can’t win.
But if a campaign is getting some results – just not enough – it’s usually worth fixing.
A campaign that’s converting at 1% when you need 2% is fixable. You’re not that far off.
A campaign that’s getting a 0.5% CTR when you need 2% is fixable. You just need better creative.
A campaign that’s converting at 5% but the CPA is too high because the AOV is too low is fixable. You need a better offer or upsell strategy.
The question is: is it faster to fix this or to start fresh?
If the fix is simple and clear, fix it. If you’d have to change everything, start over.
Once you’ve diagnosed the problem and identified the fix, you need to actually implement it.
Here’s the order of operations.
For message problems:
Don’t pause your existing ads while testing. Let the new ones compete. If they’re better, they’ll win.
For offer problems:
Always test big offer changes in isolation so you can measure the impact cleanly.
For audience problems:
Never change audience targeting in an existing ad set. Always create new ad sets. Changing targeting resets the learning phase and tanks performance.
The best way to fix ad problems is to prevent them in the first place.
Here’s what you should be doing on a weekly basis to catch issues before they become expensive.
Monday: Check the dashboard
Pull your key metrics. Look for anomalies. CPM spike? CTR drop? Conversion rate change? Investigate immediately.
Wednesday: Review creative fatigue
Check frequency on all ad sets. Anything above 4 for cold traffic or 8 for warm traffic needs fresh creative.
Friday: Analyze winning patterns
Look at your best performers. What do they have in common? How can you replicate that success in new campaigns?
This weekly rhythm keeps you proactive instead of reactive.
You’ll catch problems when they’re small instead of waiting until you’ve burned through thousands of dollars.
Most business owners waste years figuring out what actually works. In my Master Internet Marketing program, I compress that learning curve into 7 weeks — covering copywriting, funnels, ads, and more. If you’re ready to invest $5k and get serious about your skills, apply here.
If your ads are underperforming right now, here’s what you need to do this week.
Today: Run the one-hour diagnostic. Identify whether you have a message, offer, or audience problem.
Tomorrow: Create your fix list. Three to five specific changes that address the root cause.
Day 3-4: Implement the fixes. New creative, updated landing pages, adjusted targeting – whatever you identified.
Day 5-7: Monitor the results. Are things improving? If yes, double down. If no, go back to diagnostics.
The mistake most people make is they know something’s wrong but they don’t take action. They keep running the same broken campaigns, hoping they’ll magically improve.
They won’t.
You have to diagnose the problem and fix it. Nobody else is going to do it for you.
So pull up your ads manager right now. Run the diagnostic. Figure out what’s broken.
Then fix it.
Your margins will thank you.
Jeremy Haynes is the founder of Megalodon Marketing. He is considered one of the top digital marketers and has the results to back it up. Jeremy has consistently demonstrated his expertise whether it be through his content advertising “propaganda” strategies that are originated by him, as well as his funnel and direct response marketing strategies. He’s trusted by the biggest names in the industries his agency works in and by over 4,000+ paid students that learn how to become better digital marketers and agency owners through his education products.
Jeremy Haynes is the founder of Megalodon Marketing. He is considered one of the top digital marketers and has the results to back it up. Jeremy has consistently demonstrated his expertise whether it be through his content advertising “propaganda” strategies that are originated by him, as well as his funnel and direct response marketing strategies. He’s trusted by the biggest names in the industries his agency works in and by over 4,000+ paid students that learn how to become better digital marketers and agency owners through his education products.
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