I’ve been a social media manager for a while now, and during my first two to three years, I handled ads with modest budgets across a few industries. After completing my Diploma in Digital Marketing earlier this year (2025), I decided to double down and learn how to set up Meta Ads campaigns properly.
I took an Audience Targeting Course from a popular Ads Expert and later a 7-Figure Meta Ads Training from another.
With that, I gained an impressive knowledge base for tuning ads. But before that? Let’s just say I had my fair share of rookie mistakes.
In retrospect, here are the three biggest Meta Ads mistakes I made in my early days of running Meta Ads campaigns and what you can learn from them.
1. Choosing the Wrong Campaign Objective
Yunno that thing when you’re trying to sell an offer, but you go ahead and select another campaign objective? That was me.
I remember one of my first campaigns, I wanted leads. But guess what I chose? Traffic.
I was more concerned about the number of clicks we were getting… and yet, there were no conversions. I laugh now, but back then, I was confused.
Meta gives you exactly what you ask for. If you choose Traffic, the algorithm will show your ads to people more likely to click not necessarily buy or submit their details.
If you want sales or leads, you must choose Sales or Lead Generation objectives.
Simple? Yes. But it’s one of the most common mistakes beginners make.
Simple? Yes. But it’s one of the most common Meta Ads mistakes beginners make.
2. Guessing My Targeting
Targeting looks easy until you actually have to do it.
Back then, I just typed related keywords that came to my head into the targeting box. There was no real strategy and no data to back up what I was doing.
And when results didn’t come, I’d tweak something small and hope it worked.
Now, I know better.
Effective targeting requires research. You must understand your ideal audience, their behaviour, interests, and what truly matters to them and also know how to prevent competitors or unserious users from seeing your ads.
Use tools like Audience Insights, Advantage Plus Audience, study your competitors, and test different audience sets. Don’t guess your way through; it’ll cost you time and money.
Among all Meta Ads mistakes, guessing your targeting is one of the most expensive to make when running a Meta Ads campaign.
3. Thinking YouTube Videos Were Enough
This one gets me every time.
I started running Meta Ads campaigns by watching YouTube videos. And to be fair, they helped a bit. At least I learnt the Meta Ads Manager interface.
But I soon realised that watching tutorials isn’t the same as having a structured understanding.
I didn’t know about A/B testing, funnel stages (top, middle, bottom), pixel tracking, event setup, or retargeting. I didn’t even understand scaling.
So, when results came in, I couldn’t tell why they came or why they didn’t (they never really came anyway 😅).
That’s when I decided to invest in proper training, and the difference was clear. YouTube can teach you tactics, but not strategy.
Avoiding this mistake alone changed how I approach running Meta Ads campaigns today.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve read this far, you probably care about getting better results from your ads.
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