After 5 years in paid social, I see and hear of the same mistakes holding brands back.
The 10 most common ones are:
1. No clear objective.
If you don't know your goal, the algorithm won't either. Define what success looks like before you launch and this will help guide everything else.
2. Measuring the wrong KPIs.
Chasing conversion volume when your goal is brand awareness? Your paid social metrics should ladder up to your marketing and business objective.
3. Creative volume over quality.
More creative doesn't necessarily drive better results. Focus on differentiation and quality instead of churning out endless variations. Inspired by Chris Robinson's latest post.
4. Testing micro variables.
Prioritising testing of micro variables that barely make a difference e.g. minor copy tweaks. Instead, test variables that could meaningfully impact performance (check out my latest post on this).
5. Lack of measurement setup.
Without a pixel and marketing tags, you're wasting budget - the algorithm has no signals to optimise towards and you're not able to measure effectively. Proper tracking is non-negotiable (paid social 101).
6. Ignoring the full user journey.
Think beyond the ad. What's the next step in the user journey - is your landing page optimised? Could you reduce friction in your lead form? (e.g. reduce the number of fields to only the essential ones).
7. Not considering and acting on all insights available.
Get a complete story of performance by checking your in-platform data AND business metrics (GA4, revenue, incrementality). Checking only one of these means you're probably flying blind.
8. Testing too many variables at once.
Change one thing at a time, otherwise you'll never know what actually worked.
9. Impatience during learning phase.
Editing campaigns too early disrupts and prolongs learning. Give the algorithm time to learn and gather robust data BEFORE you make optimisations.
10. Treating paid social as conversion-only/bottom of funnel.
The low-hanging fruit is easy but your performance will likely level out if you don't invest in brand building for sustainable growth.
Phew that's a lot🥲. The positive? These mistakes are fixable and can be turned into wins to significantly improve paid social performance.
If you work in paid social, what's one mistake you see repeatedly and how would you fix it?
Let me know in the comments👇
Ellie x