Facebook ads that get clicks but no enquiries: what to check.

Check which number you are reading

Ads Manager has several click numbers, and the one that looks best is often the wrong one. Clicks (all) counts every tap on the ad: likes, comments, shares, taps on your Page name or profile picture and opening a photo full screen, as well as taps on the link. A post people like and comment on can show plenty of clicks and send nobody to your website.

The numbers that matter for enquiries, from the widest to the narrowest:

• Link clicks: taps on a link in the ad that leads to a destination you chose, on or off Facebook and Instagram.
• Outbound clicks: taps that take people off Meta's apps, for example to your website.
• Landing page views: the times your page actually loaded after a tap. Meta counts them through its in-app browser or your Meta Pixel, and estimates some.
• Results: the enquiries Meta counted, if the campaign is set up to count them.
• Enquiries in your own inbox and records, which is the number that matters.

Add link clicks, landing page views and results as columns next to the amount spent, and look at them per ad rather than per campaign. If you have been judging the ad on Clicks (all) or CTR (all), the problem may be the report, not the ad.

Compare link clicks with landing page views

Meta gives two reasons for a gap between the two: the page did not fully load after the tap, or the ad has more than one destination and some taps went somewhere other than your page. In practice, a wide gap means people tapped and gave up before your page appeared.

Meta does not publish a good ratio, and the right one depends on the placement and the page. Compare your ads with each other and with last month. A sudden drop after a website change points at the change. When the gap is wide, check these:

• Open the ad link on a phone over mobile data and watch how long the first screen takes. If it is slow, run the page through PageSpeed Insights and fix what it names first: PageSpeed Insights explained shows which parts of the report matter.
• Check the link itself. A link shortener, an old redirect or a typo can send people through several hops or to an error page.
• Check every destination in the ad. If the headline, the image and the button point to different places, some link clicks never reach the page you are measuring.
• Check what appears first on the page. An age check, a login or a full-screen banner before any content loses people who were only half sure.

If link clicks and landing page views are close and enquiries are still at zero, the page loads. The problem is further along: who is clicking, what they find there, or what you are counting.

Break the results down by placement

Unless you chose otherwise, your ads probably run on Advantage+ placements, which lets Meta spread the budget across its apps and the Audience Network, a network of other companies' apps. One placement can bring plenty of cheap link clicks and no enquiries, and the campaign total hides it.

To see it, open the Ads tab in Ads Manager, click Breakdown (between Columns and Reports) and choose Placement from the delivery group. Meta marks these figures as estimates, but a large difference is still a difference.

Look for a placement with many link clicks, few landing page views and no results. A tap on a banner inside a game is easily a mistake, so check the Audience Network rows first. If one placement clearly brings nothing, remove it:

• Open the ad set, go to Placements and click Show more settings.
• Next to Placement controls, click Edit and untick the placements you want to drop.
• Look for Allow limited spend to excluded placements. When it is ticked, Meta can still spend a small share of the budget on each placement you excluded. Untick it if you want them out.

Removing a placement switches Advantage+ placements off for that ad set, and Meta recommends keeping it on, so its delivery system can move the budget to wherever results come from. That advice holds when the result is an enquiry. If a placement brings link clicks and no enquiries, its low cost per click is beside the point. Change one placement at a time, then give it enough days to judge.

Check what the campaign was told to find

Every ad set has a performance goal, and Meta shows the ad to the people most likely to do that one thing. Choose Maximize number of link clicks and Meta finds people who tap links. Some of them tap links all day and never fill in a form. The campaign is doing what it was asked.

For enquiries, the settings that matter are:

• Traffic objective, Maximize number of link clicks: the cheapest clicks and the weakest signal. Use it only when a visit is the result you want.
• Traffic objective, Maximize number of landing page views: Meta looks for people likely to wait for the page to load. Better than link clicks, and still not an enquiry.
• Leads objective, website as the conversion location, Maximize number of conversions: Meta looks for people likely to send your form. It needs a Lead event from your pixel or the Conversions API that fires only when an enquiry has really gone through.
• Leads objective with instant forms: the form opens inside Facebook or Instagram, so the lead never needs your website. It is easier to send, which brings its own problem: see fake and junk leads from lead ads.

Conversion goals need data. Meta says an ad set usually leaves the learning phase after about 50 results in the week after its last significant edit. A small budget that brings a handful of enquiries a week may sit at Learning limited for good. Meta's own suggestion for that case is to optimise for landing page views instead, which at least filters out people who never wait for the page.

So: if you can collect enough enquiries, optimise for enquiries. If you cannot, use landing page views rather than link clicks. Either way, judge the campaign on the enquiries in your own records.

Send a test enquiry from inside the app

People who tap your ad on a phone see your page in the browser built into Facebook or Instagram, not in Safari or Chrome. Meta confirms that ad links open there by default, and the visitor has to choose to open the page in their usual browser. A page that works on your laptop can fail in the app browser, and nobody tells you.

Test it the way a customer would:

• Find your live ad in the Facebook app, or have a friend send you the ad link in Messenger so it opens in the app browser.
• Tap through over mobile data, not office Wi-Fi.
• Fill in the form with the keyboard open, add a photo if the form asks for one, and send it.
• Check that the thank-you message appears, the confirmation email arrives and the enquiry reaches the inbox your team reads.
• Repeat it in the Instagram app and on the other kind of phone, iPhone or Android.

Watch for anything that opens a second window, asks the visitor to log in, uploads a file or loads a booking widget from another company, and for a cookie banner that covers the button. If the form fails in the app, every paid click from the app fails with it, and Ads Manager still reports the click. What the page itself should say and show is covered in before you run ads.

Check whether the enquiries are really missing

Sometimes the enquiries arrive and the report is what is broken. Before you change anything, count enquiries from your own records for the same dates: form emails, calls, Facebook and Instagram messages, and people who mentioned the ad when they rang.

• No results in Ads Manager, but enquiries in your inbox: the Lead event is not firing, fires on the wrong page, or the visitors declined tracking. Your own count is the right one.
• Results in Ads Manager, but nothing in your inbox: the Lead event fires on a button tap or a page load instead of a sent form, or the form's emails land in spam. Why business emails go to spam covers the second.
• More calls and messages, but no forms: the ad works and people would rather ring. Count those too: call tracking for a small business explains when a tracking number is worth it.

To check the event, open Events Manager, select your pixel's dataset and use Test events while you send a test enquiry. The Diagnostics tab lists problems Meta has found with the setup. The full setup, with the Conversions API and one event ID per enquiry, is in how to track leads from Meta ads.

Save the utm tags with every enquiry as well. Then each enquiry shows the ad that brought it, whatever the pixel did.

Look at who is clicking

If the page loads and the form works, look at the people. Break the results down by age, gender and region, and read the enquiries and comments you do get.

• Clicks from outside your area. Check the location setting of the ad set. Meta says its location signals are not always accurate, so a few clicks from elsewhere are normal. A lot of them point at the setting.
• Clicks from an age group you do not serve. A children's swimming school wants parents, not teenagers who liked the video.
• Comments asking the price, the area or the opening hours. The ad left out something people need before they enquire, so they tapped to find it, found it and left.
• Many clicks on a striking image that has little to do with the offer. It brings the curious.

Then read the ad as a stranger would. If it does not say what you sell, where, what decides the price and what happens next, people tap to find out. That is a cheap click and a fair decision on their part. An ad for gutter clearing that names the town, says how the price is worked out and offers Saturday visits will get fewer clicks than one asking whether your home is ready for winter, and the clicks it gets are from people who need gutters cleared.

One campaign, checked step by step

A two-chair brow and lash studio runs a campaign for its new brow lamination. After two weeks Ads Manager shows a low cost per click and the booking tool shows no new clients. The owner works down the list:

• She had been reading Clicks (all). Link clicks were well under half of it, because the video got likes and comments.
• Link clicks were far above landing page views. The placement breakdown showed the gap came almost entirely from Audience Network, so she removed it and unticked limited spend to excluded placements.
• The goal was Maximize number of link clicks. Her booking page sent no Lead event, so she switched the goal to landing page views until she could count bookings.
• Her test from the Instagram app found that the booking widget asked for a login before it showed any times. She replaced it with a booking link that opened the times straight away.
• Her own records showed two people had booked by phone after seeing the ad. She now asks new clients how they found the studio.

None of these fixes touched the ad. Every one was in the account or on the booking page. The salons and spas page shows what a studio like this can automate around bookings.

Fixes that make it worse

• Raising the budget to get more data. More clicks of the same kind cost more and teach you nothing new.
• Changing the ad, the audience, the goal and the page on the same day. When results move, you will not know why.
• Switching to boosted posts because Ads Manager feels complicated. A boost has fewer settings, so the same problems are harder to see: compare them in boost a post or use Ads Manager.
• Pausing and restarting the ad set every few days. Significant edits send it back into learning.
• Judging on cost per click. A cheap click that never enquires costs more than a dear one that books.
• Blaming bots before checking the placement, the page and the goal, which you can fix yourself.

When the checks pass and enquiries still do not come

If the clicks are real, the page loads in the app, the form works and the tracking counts correctly, the offer is the problem. People saw it and decided against it. Look at the price or how it is worked out, the area, the first screen and how your offer compares with what competitors run: how to see your competitors' ads shows where to look.

You can also test a different route to the same customers. A search ad reaches people already looking for the service, which suits some trades better than a feed: Google Ads or Facebook ads compares the two. For a home services or trade business, the reply matters as much as the ad, so make sure someone answers each enquiry while it is fresh. Enquiry follow-up can remind them when nobody has.

GGSites builds landing pages for ads and does not run ad campaigns, so we have no reason to tell you to spend more. Before a page goes live we test the form, the consent banner and the thank-you message inside both apps. If your page is the weak point, see websites for how we build and test one.