Five things we check before spending a rand on ads

Before we spend a rand or a pound of a client’s ad budget, we go through the same checklist. Not because we love admin, but because most wasted ad spend is decided before the first ad goes live.

Here’s what we look at, and why it matters.

1. Is the tracking telling the truth?

If the platform can’t see who enquired or bought, it can’t find more people like them. We check that the pixel is installed properly, that the right events fire on the right pages, and that conversions are being sent back to the platform reliably. Bad tracking doesn’t just make reports wrong. It actively trains the algorithm on the wrong people.

2. Does the landing page match the ad?

Someone clicks an ad about one thing and lands on a homepage about everything. That’s where a lot of budget quietly disappears. The page someone lands on should say the same thing the ad said, load fast on a phone, and make the next step obvious.

3. Is the offer actually worth stopping for?

Good targeting can’t save a weak offer. We look at what’s being offered, how it’s framed, and whether there’s a reason to act now. Sometimes the fix isn’t in the ads at all, it’s in what the business is putting in front of people.

4. What happens after someone enquires?

This is the one that gets missed most. A lead that waits a day for a reply is often a lead that’s already spoken to someone else. We check who picks up enquiries, how fast, and whether anything follows up automatically if they don’t. It’s exactly what Kinetic is for.

5. Is there enough creative to test?

One ad isn’t a campaign. We want a few genuinely different angles ready to go, so we can learn quickly what people respond to and move the budget behind it. That’s where having our own designer and editor in the team pays off.

The point of all this

None of it is exciting, and none of it shows up in a pretty report. But it’s the difference between ads that look busy and ads that bring in customers. If you’d like us to run the same checks on your account, send us a WhatsApp and tell us what’s not working.