Why aren't my ads bringing in leads?

Is the campaign objective right?

The platform does exactly what you ask. If the campaign is optimised for views, likes or profile visits, that's what you'll get: people who look, like and move on. The button to boost a post, for example, tends to bring engagement rather than leads.

If you want leads, the objective has to be leads. There are four ways to get them, and the right one depends on how you work:

• Lead form: people leave their name and number without leaving Facebook or Instagram. Good when you can't always pick up.
• Messages: people write to you directly. Good when you reply quickly.
• Calls: the ad leads straight to your phone. Good when someone is always there to answer.
• Bookings or appointments: for businesses with an online system.

Changing the objective of a running campaign restarts the learning phase. When the objective is wrong, it's still worth it: better to restart on the right track than keep paying for the wrong one.

Does the creative grab attention in the first seconds?

With Meta increasingly choosing on its own who sees your ads, what's left for you to make the difference is what you show. The image or video now matters more to the result than any audience setting.

The first two or three seconds decide whether someone stays or keeps scrolling. What usually goes wrong:

• Opening with the logo. Those are the most valuable seconds, spent saying something nobody asked about.
• Relying on sound. Most people watch on mute: if the message is only in the voiceover, it reaches nobody.
• Stock photos. They're spotted at once and make the ad look like everyone else's.
• Only one piece. With a single photo, the platform has nothing to choose from.

What usually works is the opposite: the product or the work right in the first moment, movement from the start, real people. And, strange as it sounds, a homemade-looking video tends to do better than a highly produced film, because it looks less like an ad. Prepare three to six pieces on your phone and swap out whichever one wears out.

Is the area too wide or too narrow?

The area decides who can see the ad, and people get it wrong in both directions.

Too wide, and you're paying to reach people you'll never serve: a plumber in Gaia advertising across the whole district, a restaurant showing its lunch menu to people half an hour away.

Too narrow, and the audience is so small the platform doesn't have enough people to learn from. Costs go up and leads don't appear.

The rule of thumb is simple: advertise where you take on work and, for a restaurant, a few minutes from the door. The same goes for age: if your customers are over 55, sticking to Instagram is talking to an almost empty room, because that audience is mostly on Facebook.

Is the form putting people off?

With lead form ads, this is where many people give up. And here too it goes wrong both ways:

• Too many questions: ten fields before someone can ask for a quote put off people who were interested.
• Too few: a form that only asks for an email, filled in automatically, brings leads from people who tapped without thinking.

The balance usually lies in a name, a phone number and one question about the job, such as "Which room do you want renovated?" or "How many people is the booking for?". That's enough to call back prepared, and it filters out people who weren't really interested.

Did you change the campaign too early?

A new campaign goes through a learning phase, usually over the first two weeks. During that time the platform is still working out who to show the ad to, and results go up and down.

The most expensive mistake is losing patience at this stage. Every big change, such as raising or lowering the budget by more than a fifth, switching the objective or changing the audience, sends the learning back to zero. Tweak it every day and it never gets past the start.

• For the first two weeks, don't touch anything.
• In weeks three and four there's a signal: compare the cost of each lead with what a customer is worth.
• From then on, change the creative rather than the audience, and change one thing at a time. Swap the photo and the copy in the same week and you'll never know which one made the difference.

Is the offer clear?

Sometimes everything is set up properly and the ad simply has nothing to say.

"Come and meet us", "we're the best in the area" or "quality you can trust" don't make anyone pick up the phone. A concrete offer does: "free visit and quote this week", "lunch menu until 3pm", "free trial class in September". Better still with a deadline.

One ad, one problem, one solution. If you offer five services, run five ads rather than one that lists them all. And if you mention a price, make it the real one.

Where should you start fixing things?

In the order of this guide, which is also the order of what's quickest to check:

• Check that leads are arriving and that someone replies quickly.
• Make sure the campaign objective is leads, messages, calls or bookings.
• Look at the creative: the first seconds, no sound, more than one piece.
• Match the area and age range to your business.
• Simplify the form.
• Give the campaign two weeks without touching it.
• Make the offer concrete.

And change one thing at a time. It's the only way to know what worked.