What are the biggest mistakes local newsletters make with Meta ads?

I've reviewed a handful of publisher ad accounts. The same mistakes show up again and again, and most cost nothing to fix.

1. Sending traffic to the homepage

That's like a disaster. A guest on my podcast spent his first $30 and got zero subscribers because the ad pointed to his homepage instead of the subscribe page. Use a single-purpose page with no navigation. See what the landing page should look like.

2. Optimizing for the wrong thing

One account I reviewed was optimizing for landing page views. Another partner thought they were paying 14 to 16 cents a signup, and people were only clicking and browsing. Optimize for the subscribe event.

3. Running only static images

Two publishers I reviewed had nothing but static image ads. Video gets a much lower cost per subscriber.

4. Recognizable landmarks in the background

The biggest creative mistake almost everyone makes. Who cares about the bridge? People care about fun they might be missing. Show a festival, not a skyline.

5. Too much text

On one new operator's first ad, the top line should have been one sentence. Fewer words win, and text near the edges gets cropped on some placements.

6. Advertising what you're proud of

"You might be great, but no offense, nobody cares. If it's our journalist won an award, nobody cares."

About 95% of the people I talk to outside this space struggle with this. Think about the value to the person scrolling.

7. Overproduced creative

Managers judge ads on production quality. Polished ads read as ads in the first quarter second and get ignored. Casual wins.

8. Not saying free

If people aren't sure it's free, they won't risk it. Say it about 10 times.

9. Spending too much, too fast

Past about $50 a day in a smaller local market, results degrade. Doubling a working budget resets the algorithm. Go slow and raise it a dollar or two at a time.

Same goes for launch. I know people who jump in with money and throw $5,000 or $10,000 at ads right away. You'll get a lot of subscribers, but you're telling Meta to show the ad to anybody in a local area, and many won't be good. In areas where we got subscribers super cheap and got a ton of them, those usually ended up with worse open rates and worse click rates.

10. Tinkering with what works

Once a campaign is working, don't mess with it. Keep a main campaign you don't touch and test in a separate one.

11. A name with no city in it

If your newsletter's name doesn't include the towns you cover, city-level ads struggle. Put the city names in the copy.

12. Hiring a Meta agency that doesn't know local media

One local news brand's account I looked at was run by a paid agency. They knew Meta. They knew nothing about local media, so they used the same strategies they'd use for an insurance agency or an e-com product. Growing a newsletter is a different job: the result you want is a subscriber, not a sale.