I keep seeing the same Facebook Ads myths repeated over and over, and they're genuinely costing p...I keep seeing the same Facebook Ads myths repeated over and over, and they're genuinely costing p...
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Michael F. Esan
• Jul 27
I keep seeing the same Facebook Ads myths repeated over and over, and they're genuinely costing people money. So let's clear these up, one by one.
Myth 1: Targeting is the most important thing to get right; It's really not, not anymore. Meta is genuinely good at finding the right people now. If your campaign isn't working, it's rarely a targeting problem (unless you've made it way too restrictive). The real levers are your offer, is it actually better than what your competitors offer, and your creative. Most advertisers obsess over targeting and barely touch their creative. That's backwards.
Myth 2: Testing is the only way to learn; Testing matters, but it's slow. The faster way to learn is modeling, looking at ads that are already proven to work and using them as your starting point instead of reinventing everything from scratch.
Myth 3: You need a big budget for Facebook Ads to work; False. Start small, learn what works, then scale. In fact, your best ROAS numbers often come from smaller budgets, because Meta puts your ads in front of the best-fit people first, and the bigger you scale, the more you dilute into a slightly-less-perfect audience. Bigger budgets don't cause better results, they just tend to belong to bigger brands with stronger offers already.
Myth 4: You can't sell directly with Facebook Ads; Also false. Most successful campaigns are direct-to-offer. The nuance is price point, cheaper products (under ~$100) almost have to go direct, while higher-ticket offers need more warming up first. But "direct selling doesn't work" isn't the real issue, usually it's the offer or the creative that's weak.
Myth 5: Facebook Ads only work for cheap products; This one genuinely bugs me. The businesses getting insane ROAS (like 50x, 70x) are almost always the ones with high customer lifetime value, not low prices. High-ticket just requires a different strategy, more touchpoints, testimonials, multiple calls to action, not a "this platform doesn't work for me" conclusion.
Myth 6: You can only scale budgets 10% at a time; Outdated advice. Depending on your budget size, you can often scale by 50-100%+ without tanking your results. Smaller budgets can jump bigger percentages; larger budgets need smaller, more careful increments.
Myth 7: Avoid the learning phase at all costs; The learning phase isn't the enemy, it's Meta figuring out how to get you the best results. It typically only lasts 24-48 hours, and avoiding all changes to dodge it actually holds your account back more than it helps.
Myth 8: Retargeting is pointless now; Meta automates a lot of retargeting these days, sure. But if you want different messaging or offers for warm audiences vs. cold ones, you still need dedicated retargeting campaigns. It's not dead, it's just more selective now.
Myth 9: Followers don't matter; Trying to build an audience organically to skip ads entirely? Doesn't really work anymore. But having a credible follower count still matters, when a cold audience clicks through to check you out, a dead or tiny profile can quietly kill conversions.
Myth 10: New ad accounts can't run sales/lead campaigns; Huge one. People think they need to "warm up" a new account with traffic campaigns first. That's similar to training for a marathon by swimming. Run the actual campaign type you want results from, conversions, leads, sales, even if it's rough at first. That's literally how the account learns and improves.
Myth 11: Video always outperforms images; Not true. It depends heavily on your product, audience, and industry. Test both, don't default to video just because it's trendy.
Honestly, the common thread through almost every one of these? People find the wrong explanation for why their campaign underperformed, and then "fix" the wrong thing. Offer and creative fix way more problems than people give them credit for.
Follow for more of these breakdowns, trust me, there's more where this came from. 👀
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