You hit the Boost button, got a pile of likes and a few clicks, and the phone didn’t ring. So you’ve decided ads don’t work for a business like yours. Fair enough. But there’s a good chance the ads never had a proper shot, because they were built around the wrong thing.
These are the paid advertising myths I hear most from Tauranga and Bay of Plenty business owners. None of them are daft. Each one is half true, which is exactly why they stick. Here’s the true half, and the half that costs you money.
Myth 1: Boosting a post is the same as running ads
Facebook and Instagram make Boost very easy. One button, pick an amount, done. The ease is the appeal, and it’s also the problem.
A boost is built to get a post seen by more people. That’s its job. It suits a post you want a few more eyes on, like a new hire or a community event. It isn’t built around the thing you actually want, which is somebody ringing, booking or filling in a form.
Ads set up properly in Meta Ads Manager (the full advertising tool behind Facebook and Instagram) start with the result you want. You choose the goal, say leads. You decide who should see the ad. You send them to a page or form made for that one job, and you track what happens after they click. Google Ads works the same way. You’re paying to show up when someone types in what you sell, and you decide where they land and what you measure.
So the difference isn’t the money. Two businesses can spend the same amount, and one buys likes while the other buys enquiries. It comes down to the setup.
The honest bit is that boosting isn’t evil. If the goal is “more locals know we exist this week”, it’s fine. Just don’t judge it on whether the phone rang, because it was never built to ring it.
Myth 2: Lots of clicks means the ads are working
Clicks are the easiest number to show you, so they’re often the number you get. “You had heaps of clicks this month” feels like progress.
A click is what you pay for. A call, a quote request or a booking is what you wanted. Between the two sits a gap, and that’s where the money goes missing. Three things tend to live in it.
Nobody’s tracking the outcome. Plenty of ad accounts I look at report clicks and impressions (the number of times an ad was shown) and nothing else. Without call tracking and form tracking, nobody can say which clicks turned into customers. That means nobody can say which ads to keep and which to switch off.
The wrong people are clicking. Loose keywords and broad targeting attract people hunting for a free tip, a job, or a DIY fix. They click, you pay, and they were never going to ask for a quote.
The website is the leak. The ad did its job and sent a real prospect to a page that loads slowly, hides the phone number on mobile, or has a contact form that emails an inbox nobody checks. That’s a lot of ad spend poured into a bucket with a hole in it.
There’s a simple test. Ask whoever runs your ads how many calls and enquiries they produced last month. If the answer is a number of clicks, you’ve learned something useful. A report can be full of green arrows and still sit beside a quiet phone.
Myth 3: If ads haven’t worked in a month, they won’t work for you
This one has the sharpest edge, because there’s a real point inside it. If ads still aren’t producing anything after a few months of proper setup and tuning, that’s a genuine signal and it deserves a hard look.
But month one isn’t the verdict. It’s the first draft. In the first month the platform is still working out who responds, and you’re still finding which message, which offer and which page get people to act. Early cost per lead is usually the most expensive it will ever be.
Lawrence Roofing is a good example. They’re a Wellington roofing company, and I run their Meta Ads. Their cost per lead was $79.70 in month one and $19.41 by July 2026. That’s a 76% drop, and it happened because the ads were tuned month by month rather than judged after four weeks. You can see more on the results page.
If they’d pulled the plug at the end of month one, they’d have walked away at the worst number they were ever going to see. Plenty of businesses do exactly that, and then tell their mates that ads don’t work around here.
Why these paid advertising myths stick around
Each myth is built on something real. Boosting does get a post seen. Clicks are a real number. Month one really is disappointing sometimes.
The trouble is that the half-truths get repeated by people selling the easy version. Some agency reports lean on whichever numbers look best, and a boost button is designed to feel like advertising in one tap. Nobody’s lying exactly. It’s just that the simple story is easier to sell than the accurate one.
Ads are rarely good or bad in general. They’re pointed at a result, tracked and tuned, or they aren’t. If yours were never pointed at a phone call, they didn’t fail. They never really tried.