Meta ads are a powerful option for any business looking to scale. With over 3 billion monthly users on Facebook, 2 billion on Instagram, 2 billion on WhatsApp, and 300 million on Threads, you have access to an enormous, connected ecosystem.
Through the behavioural learnings and detailed audience data collected across these platforms, Meta is an ideal place to:
- Connect with audiences who are most likely to buy
- Understand the behaviours, preferences, and interests of those engaging with your business
- Leverage that data to refine your targeting, messaging, and results
But it’s not just about reach.
It’s about relevance, precision, and performance.
However, with time pressures put on marketing executives and business owners, it’s unreasonable to expect them to be experts on the tools, especially when it feels like these advertising channels get updated every week.
But with just a few key strategies, you can harness the power of Meta Ads and create winning campaigns that actually convert for your business.
So, what actually makes a Meta Ad campaign great? Beyond just pressing “boost” or choosing an audience, there are strategies, principles, and pitfalls that can make or break your results. Whether you’re new to the platform or looking to level up your current ads, these are the key essentials every business should know before launching their next campaign.
Know your audience, or let us help you find them
The foundation of any great campaign starts with a deep understanding of your audience. Who are they? What do they care about? Where do they spend time online and how do they want to be spoken to?
Without this, even the most beautifully designed ad won’t hit the mark. But don’t worry. If you’re not quite sure who your audience is, we can help. With A/B testing, first-party data insights, and a tailored strategy session with the Red Herring Digital team, you’ll walk away with clarity and a clear path to connect with the people who matter most.
It’s not a boost button, it’s a full funnel platform
Many businesses mistake Meta ads for a simple “boost” tool. But it’s so much more than that. Meta is a full-funnel ecosystem, built to take cold leads from awareness through to purchase, loyalty, and beyond.
With the right strategies, creative, messaging and marketing funnels, you can build campaigns that not only attract attention, but also nurture and convert.
Creative is more important than ever
Thumb-stopping creative isn’t optional anymore, it’s everything. Meta’s algorithm rewards relevance and engagement, so creative that reflects your brand, speaks to your audience, and follows best practices (like effective hooks, short captions, mobile-first formats, and storytelling) can mean the difference between a scroll-past and a sale.
ROAS isn’t the only metric
Obsessing over ROAS in isolation can lead to short-term thinking. Meta ads often drive incremental lift in brand search, direct traffic, and other indirect conversions. Businesses sometimes pause ads that are actually working, just not in a directly attributed way.
So while Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is useful, it’s not the full picture. Depending on your campaign’s goals, you should also be watching:
- Cost per click (CPC) used especially for traffic optimised campaign measurement
- Cost per acquisition (CPA) for measuring bottom of funnel conversions
- Click-through rate (CTR) for measuring how many people who have seen your ad have clicked the button through to the landing page.
- Engagement rate for measuring the success of creative
- Impressions vs. frequency for measuring the reach of your ads
- Customer lifetime value (CLV) for measuring how valuable a customer is over time, including repeat purchases, engagement and loyalty.
- Add-to-cart or checkout initiates for estimating purchase intent and helping to diagnose drop off points.
Campaign success isn’t just what you spend vs. what you earn, it’s what you learn about your customers, their journey and how your business grows from these learnings.
Ad fatigue happens fast
On Meta, performance doesn’t always decline because your audience isn’t interested, it could just be that they’ve seen the ad too many times.
Meta’s platforms are designed for fast-scrolling, high-frequency content consumption. If your target audience sees the same ad too many times, they start to tune it out, or worse, develop a negative association with your brand. The result? Higher costs, lower engagement, and wasted budget. Rotating fresh creative and testing different formats is key to keeping results strong and engagement high.
The algorithm works best with volume
Small, overly targeted audiences can restrict your results. Meta’s algorithm thrives when it has more data to work with, so broadening your audience slightly or consolidating ad sets can often improve performance.
Let the algorithm do what it does best, it might know more about your customers than you do!
Meta ads don’t solve bad offers or broken websites
No ad campaign can save a poor user experience. If your offer isn’t compelling or your website is slow, confusing, or lacks mobile optimisation, you’ll lose those add to cart and sale conversions.
This can also be your messaging, pushing too hard too fast, products or services packaged incorrectly or a lack of information.
A successful Meta campaign is part of a holistic brand experience, and every touchpoint (we mean every!) matters.
Retargeting isn’t what it used to be
With iOS privacy changes and tracking limitations, traditional retargeting has become less reliable. But that doesn’t mean it’s dead. Creative strategies like broad retargeting windows, engagement-based audiences, and first-party data collection can still bring you strong results. This could look like using the conversion API for server side tracking and meta pixel for browser tracking. This enables you to get more accurate data and track conversions that may have been missed. Creative and messaging can also help push users through your campaign funnel and exclude users unlikely to convert yet.
Scaling is a delicate art
It’s tempting to increase budget when an ad performs well, but do it too quickly, and you risk disrupting the algorithm’s learning phase. Scaling requires strategy; knowing when to increase, by how much, and when to duplicate or create new campaigns entirely.
Speak the platform’s language
Every platform has a tone. What works on TV or Google most of the time doesn’t translate directly to Meta’s ad placements. Meta is visual, fast-paced, and personal so ads that feel like native content, rather than traditional commercials, will tend to perform better.
Think vertical video where relevant, user-generated style reels and stories, social proof, and platform-first storytelling and bold visuals designed for mobile.
Brand building and performance can coexist
Gone are the days where you had to choose between brand awareness and conversions. A well-structured Meta campaign can achieve both by blending compelling storytelling with strong calls to action, and nurturing your audience through multiple touchpoints.
So now you have the low down on Meta ads, it’s time to launch your next campaign and make every cent count.
There are thousands of strategies you can use when running Meta Ads. Which one you’ll use depends on many factors like your goals, industry niche, audience interests and behaviours, budget, and the user journey they have with your brand.
At Red Herring Digital, we have years of experience you can leverage to help connect your business with potential customers.
With businesses readying for the new financial year and EOFY sales planning in full swing, now is a critical time for setting up your Meta Ad campaigns. Book a chat with our team, and let’s connect your business with audiences ready to buy in FY25/26.
