When small businesses DM me ‘my ads aren’t working,’ they almost always tell me what they’ve tried.
‘I changed the targeting.’
‘I bumped the budget.’
‘I switched the objective.’
‘I tested a new audience.’
Almost never: ‘I tested four new creatives.’
That’s the problem. And it’s costing small businesses thousands.
The targeting thing changed
Five years ago, targeting was everything. You’d build a Lookalike audience off your customer list, layer in interests, exclude existing buyers, and watch the magic happen.
That world doesn’t exist anymore.
In 2024 and 2025, Meta automated most of it. Advantage+ campaigns regularly outperform ‘expertly targeted’ ones. Broad audiences (country + age range + your offer) beat carefully built segments more often than not. The algorithm is genuinely better at finding buyers than we are.
I know that’s annoying if you spent £200 on an ads course in 2022 that taught you Lookalikes. The course wasn’t wrong then. It’s just out of date now.
Practically: if you’re a small business with a budget under £30/day, you almost never need to do anything more clever with targeting than ‘broad, country, age range, gender if it’s relevant.’
Budget can’t rescue bad creative
If your ad is getting a 0.3% click-through rate, doubling the budget will get you twice as many people NOT clicking. Same CTR, more spend. The maths is brutal.
Budget amplifies whatever’s there. Good creative + more budget = more sales. Bad creative + more budget = more loss.
Before you increase spend on a flat campaign, ask: ‘Is the creative actually working?’ If yes, scale. If no, fix the creative first.
What ‘creative’ actually means
When I say ‘the creative,’ I mean:
– **The hook.** The first 2 seconds of a video. The opening line of an image caption. The visible-from-the-thumbnail text. This decides whether anyone watches/reads further.
– **The format.** Video vs. static vs. carousel. UGC-style vs. polished vs. text-on-screen. Different formats do different jobs.
– **The angle.** Same offer, different angle. ‘Save 3 hours a week’ vs ‘Stop dreading Mondays’ – same product, totally different ad.
– **The call to action.** ‘Shop now’ vs ‘See if this is right for you’ vs ‘DM me curious’ – same offer, different friction.
When people say ‘fix the creative,’ they usually mean fix the hook. The hook is the highest-leverage thing. Bad creative is almost always bad hooks.
The 2-second test
Open your phone. Scroll Instagram. Notice your own behaviour.
How long does it take you to decide whether to keep watching a reel? Half a second? A second? Less?
That’s your audience’s attention budget for your ads. If they don’t get a reason to stay in the first 1-2 seconds, they’re gone. Forever.
The 2-second test: does your ad earn the watch in the first 2 seconds? If you’re not sure, watch it on mute. If it doesn’t grab you with sound off, it’s not grabbing anyone.
What good ad creative looks like for a small business
Three principles that travel.
1. **Specificity over generality.** ‘Save 3.4 hours a week’ beats ‘Save time.’ Always.
2. **Felt experience over claims.** ‘It’s 11pm and you’re still answering emails’ beats ‘Productivity made simple.’
3. **Casual over polished.** UGC-style phone-shot content frequently outperforms expensive production for small businesses. The algorithm rewards authenticity, and so do humans.
If your ad is high-production-value, clever-tagline, generic-promise content – that’s the problem. Make it specific, felt, and slightly rough.
When to actually change targeting
You don’t NEVER change targeting. But it’s much further down the priority list than people think.
Change targeting when:
– You’ve tested 3+ creatives and none are landing (might genuinely be wrong audience)
– Your conversion data shows you’re hitting the wrong age range or geo
– Meta’s Advantage+ is finding people but they’re not your fit (rare, but happens)
That’s it. Otherwise: creative first, second, third. Targeting fourth.
What to do tomorrow
If your ads aren’t working right now, don’t open Ads Manager. Open your phone camera.
Film 3 new creative tests. Different hooks. Different first 2 seconds. Different formats – one talking head, one text-on-screen, one carousel. Same offer.
Run them for two weeks. See what works.
Almost certainly, one of the three will outperform whatever you were running before. Not because the targeting changed. Because the creative did.
Keep going.
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