So, your ads stopped performing...

This is an inevitable aspect of running paid traffic. The first few days or weeks may be amazing for your campaign: I call this the "honeymoon" phase of paid traffic.

Then, seemingly out of nowhere the results start to tank.

Luckily, there are some things you can do to reverse the issue and get back your ROI. Here's 8 troubleshooting tips.

Change The Creative

The ad creative is the image or video aspect of an ad. Out of all the variables to test, this is the first one I would recommend tackling.

Your audience may be seeing the same image/video too many times in their feed and become desensitized to it. This is very common.

Some metrics to keep an eye on would be click thru rates (CTR) and Frequency. If you notice click thru rates decreasing, that is a sign your audience is ignoring your ad.

Frequency equates how many times the average person is seeing your ad. If this number becomes too high, that is another sign you need to swap out the creative.

An easy way to update the creative is to simply enhance the images or videos of your ad.

For example, let's say you're running an image of a maid. You may use the same image, but add text overlay or a graphic to the image, and retry the creative. You can also enhance videos with text overlay and colors to revamp the creative.

Update Ad Copy

The ad copy is the written portion of an ad. For Facebook ads, this would be the piece of text above an image. For Google PPC ads, this would entail the headline and description of your ad.

Sometimes keeping all variables of an ad the same but updating your ad copy can improve performance.

This allows you to test new hooks with your messaging and attract new demographics.

Test New Landing Page/Funnel

Is your funnel to blame?

This becomes especially true if your campaign is still getting a lot of clicks and engagement, but conversion rates have dropped off.

Periodically, you'll want to open up your landing page and check for anything fishy going on.

For example, we had one client's campaign decline in performance and couldn't figure out why. None of the variables had changed. After clicking onto the landing page, we discovered "Mother's Day" was still being promoted, even though the holiday had long passed.

Try A/B testing landing page designs; perhaps a short, simple one vs a more complex page. See which produces more conversions and adopt accordingly!

Do you know what your landing page conversion rate is?

Repackage Your Offer

If your offer isn't converting as well anymore, it may be time to reposition it.

Add your own naming convention. Find ways to incorporate seasonality or holidays into your offer (if you're not already.)

For example, let's say your cleaning company is running a buy one, get one offer. Let's say Christmas is coming up. Simply adding "Our Christmas Cleaning Special..." or "Holiday Cleaning Special..." immediately adds relevance to your ad.

Everything else remains the exact same, but now there's an element of scarcity = more clicks!

Try a New Hook

When in doubt, you can test a whole new hook.

Let's say the offer your running is a fixed-price point cleaning: "Get a Deep Cleaning Starting at $____."

This is a price-based incentive, but maybe now you want to test a new incentive around charity/donations.

Different angles will attract different buckets of people.

People that didn't interact with your ad previously may see this and suddenly feel inclined to your cleaning company! You won't know until you test.

Target a New Audience

If you've been targeting a specific demographic of folks, it may be time to try something new.

Let's say you're targeting female professionals, age 30-50. You can try switching your age group of females to 55+ and crafting your message to be around this demographic.

Or maybe you switch to males, age 30+ etc.

This especially applies if your service zone is relatively small. Since you have a smaller sample size, you'll need to find creative ways to stay in front of your audience.

Promote a New Service

If your cleaning company offers more than one service, you are at an advantage.

Let's say you've been promoting house cleaning services. Try promoting carpet cleaning to the same target audience and you will notice a new influx of potential customers.

Similarly, you may offer services that compliment your core service. Let's say you are primarily a carpet cleaning service but you also provide air duct cleaning. You can bundle air duct cleaning into your ad/offer and potentially acquire new traffic.

If you do not offer multiple services, find a way to make your service sound more attractive. Be creative.

Test a New Advertising Platform

If all else fails, the last option is to migrate to a new advertising platform.

Depending on your location and competition, some platforms are better suited for you than others. The great thing about cleaning services is there are tons of options to advertise your services!

Google local service ads, Google PPC ads, Facebook/Instagram ads, Linkedin ads, Youtube ads, Craigslist ads... These are only some of the many ways to promote your cleaning business!

Once you know the fundamentals of paid traffic, you can be profitable on just about any ad platform.