Before you switch anything on Ads amplify what already exists. If the offer is weak, ads will show you that quickly and with your own money. So, three things first. ## Where you send people You need a page, or at least a first screen, where someone understands in three seconds what is offered, to whom, roughly what it costs and what to tap. An Instagram profile whose last post is six months old is not that page. ## Who answers the leads Decide in advance who replies and how fast. Ads go live only when someone is on the other end. ## What you offer a new person Not "salon services", but one clear reason to come the first time. A first visit with an exam, a diagnostic, an estimate, a trial treatment. One offer, one price, one timeframe. # Business account and pixel Ads run from Business Manager, not the Boost button under a post. The button spends money and gives you almost no control. What you need: 1. A Meta business account with an ad account inside it. 2. A pixel on the site so the platform sees what happens after the click. 3. Events: form submitted, WhatsApp tapped, call started. Without the pixel the platform does not know who left a lead and cannot look for similar people. It is like teaching someone to shoot without showing the target. # Which goal to choose For a small company, Leads or Sales with optimization for a specific event usually fits. Do not pick reach, traffic or engagement if you want customers. Those goals buy cheap clicks and pretty numbers, but the algorithm looks for people who like tapping, not buying. # Setting the audience For a local business, geography matters most. A radius around your location usually beats a whole city and clearly beats a state. Do not overcomplicate the rest. A broad age and gender range is enough at the start: the algorithm figures it out faster than you can pick interests by hand. Narrow audiences get expensive, because the platform keeps showing the same ad to the same people. A lookalike audience built from people who already left leads is worth having, but that needs a few dozen leads in the base, so it belongs to month two. # How much money The honest answer: enough to get at least 20 to 30 leads a month, otherwise you cannot tell a result from luck. The amount depends on industry and city. Work backwards from the cost per lead you can afford, which comes from your average ticket. Starting at five dollars a day is allowed, but it will not produce conclusions. # The first two weeks The first days will look bad: the platform is learning. Do not touch the campaign daily. Every change to budget or audience resets that learning. What to watch: - How many leads and at what cost. - How many reached a conversation. - Whether the same ad is hitting the same people too often. If there are no leads at all after two weeks, the problem is usually the offer or the page, not the account. # Common first month mistakes - Launching five campaigns at once and not knowing what worked. - Choosing traffic, celebrating clicks, then looking at leads. - Changing settings every day. - Promoting a photo of the interior with no word about what to do next. # The point Month one is not about profit, it is about data. Your job is to get a clear cost per lead and see where people drop off. Month two is where you improve on purpose. If you would rather not spend month one learning with your own money, book a review call: we will show the numbers that are typical for your industry and where to start.
