Facebook ads for local businesses, plainly
What the money actually buys, and the three settings that decide whether it works.
Most local businesses that try Facebook ads stop after a month, convinced they don't work. Usually the ads were fine and the setup wasn't. Here's what's actually going on behind the interface.
You are not buying clicks. You are buying a guess.
Facebook doesn't show your ad to whoever you picked. It shows it to the people inside your targeting that it predicts will do the thing you asked for. That prediction comes from watching who has already done it on your website. No history, no prediction — which is why the first two weeks of any new account look bad, and why people quit at exactly the wrong moment.
Setting one: what you count as success
If you tell Facebook to optimise for purchases and you get two a month, it never learns anything. Pick the most valuable action that happens often — a form completed, a quote requested, a call booked. Roughly fifty of them a week is where the guessing gets good. Fewer than that and you're paying for exploration.
Setting two: how many people you target
A bigger audience is not a better one. If your audience is millions of people and your budget is modest, the system spreads thin and learns slowly. Narrow enough that your budget can actually find patterns — a region, a plausible age range, one or two interests.
Setting three: one ad set, not six
That fifty-a-week threshold applies per ad set, not per campaign. Splitting your budget across six ad sets to "test" means all six stay stupid. Put several creatives inside one ad set and let it choose.
What actually kills most campaigns
Not the targeting and not the creative. It's the page they land on. If your ad promises a free quote and the page asks for nine fields before anything happens, you paid for a click and threw it away. Fix the landing page before you touch the ads.
How long before you judge it
Two weeks minimum, with consistent spend and without editing it daily. Every meaningful edit restarts the learning. The urge to fiddle is the single most expensive habit in advertising.
Curious where you stand? Run the free AI visibility check on your own website — it takes about a minute.