A lot of local businesses have run ads that didn’t work. They spent a few hundred dollars on Facebook, got some impressions, maybe a click or two, and concluded that social advertising doesn’t work for businesses like theirs.

Usually the problem wasn’t the platform. It was the ad.

Ads that don’t work tend to have a few things in common: they’re too broad (targeting ‘everyone within 25 miles’), the creative looks like it took fifteen minutes (because it did), and the goal is vague (‘get our name out there’).

Ads that work are specific. They target a real audience with a real reason to care. The image or video stops someone mid-scroll. The copy says something that matters to the person looking at it. And there’s a clear next action — book, call, come in, sign up.

This sounds simple. It’s not. Building an ad that does all of those things requires knowing your customer well, having the production capability to make something worth stopping for, and testing enough to know what’s actually working versus what you think is working.

That’s the work. Not the budget — the work behind the budget.