Paid Advertising
Google and Meta ads can feel like a black box. You put money in, results come out — or don’t — and it’s not always clear why. After running campaigns for dozens of businesses, the same five mistakes come up again and again. Here’s how to avoid them.
Mistake 1: Going Broad Too Early
The most common mistake brands make is launching with broad targeting and expecting the algorithm to figure it out. This worked five years ago. It doesn’t work now. You need to give the algorithm a head start with well-defined seed audiences built from your actual customer data.
Before you launch any campaign, build custom audiences from your customer email list, your website visitors segmented by behaviour, and your existing social followers. These are your warm pools. Every cold audience campaign you run should be benchmarked against them.
Mistake 2: Running the Same Creative for 60+ Days
Ad fatigue is real and it comes faster than most people expect. A creative that performs well in week one will show declining returns by week four and will often be actively hurting you by week eight.
The solution isn’t to create more — it’s to build a testing system. Test one variable at a time. Keep a creative log. Rotate winners every 3–4 weeks and keep your losing tests documented so you don’t repeat them.
Mistake 3: Optimising for the Wrong Metric
A low cost per click is not a success metric. Neither is a high click-through rate. The only metrics that matter are cost per qualified lead and return on ad spend — and to track those accurately, your attribution needs to be set up correctly from day one.
Paid Advertising
Paid Advertising