Numbers and the funnel
Clicks but no sales? The problem might not be your ads
Last month we fixed a client's sales without touching a single ad.
I don't think you can run ads well if all you know is ads.
The way I see it, ad performance comes down to three things:
| Part | What it covers |
|---|---|
| The research | Who buys, why, and in what words |
| The creative | The ads themselves |
| The post-click experience | The page, the offer, the checkout |
When sales don't come in, someone who only knows the second one goes straight to testing new hooks, new personas, new angles. Sometimes that's the right call. But only if the data backs it up.
That's why diagnosing is one of the most important skills in performance marketing. Read the data, find exactly where the leak is, then have the skills to fix it.
Where's the leak?
| What the data shows | Where the leak probably is | What to fix |
|---|---|---|
| Low click-through rate | The ad | Persona, angle, hook (how we build concepts) |
| Good clicks, but far fewer landing page views | Between the click and the page | Page speed, tracking, accidental clicks |
| People land and leave almost immediately | The page doesn't continue the ad | Message match, price framing, proof, trust |
| Add to carts, but few purchases | Checkout | Shipping costs, surprise fees, payment options |
The fix that wasn't in the ads
The ads were working. People clicked, landed on the product page and left almost immediately.
The leak wasn't in the ads. We had the right audience. It was the product page: a high price point, without the social proof and trust needed to justify it.
So we rebuilt the page and relaunched.
| Before | After | |
|---|---|---|
| Ads | Same | Same |
| Product page | Original | Rebuilt around proof and trust |
| Conversion rate | 1x | 4x |
If all we knew was ads, we'd still be making new creatives for a problem that was never in the creative.