Small Levers, Big Results: 7 Paid Social Optimizations to Improve Performance
The best performance improvements in paid social rarely come from complete overhauls or dramatic rebuilds, new funnels, or reinventing your brand voice.
They come from small, strategic adjustments that sharpen how your campaigns learn, how your creative lands with your target audience, and how your budget actually works for you, and not deceptively against you. And these small adjustments compound quickly over time. I’ve seen it firsthand across many clients.
One small improvement in signal clarity.
One shift in audience build or campaign structure.
One tighter feedback loop between creative and results.
I have personally seen so many of both the largest and the most nimble brands waste time chasing the “big, bold fix.”
But like I said, real scale happens in the small, “boring,” strategic moves that most advertisers skip.
I want to make sure you don’t skip them … so keep reading!
These are my 7 low-lift & easy optimizations that I consistently check for first, and apply across Meta and TikTok accounts. These are the ones that deliver meaningful performance improvement without increasing spend or burning out your team.
Let’s get into it!
1️⃣ Consolidate Your Campaign Structure
If your ads manager looks like a messy spiderweb of campaigns, ad sets, exclusions, layered interests, stacked lookalikes, and half-paused tests (phew, that was a mouthful) then you are splitting your signals and causing a severe delay in your learning phase.
Fragmentation kills performance - it may looks smarter but it’s not.
Instead:
Run fewer campaigns
Start with broad targeting first, don’t jump right into hyper-targeting
Let the platform collect more conversion data in one place
When you consolidate, you give the algorithm the space to learn faster and make decisions more confidently. Most brands see a 10–30% CPL improvement just by simplifying structure. Small levers, big impact.
2️⃣ Signal Quality First, Not the End Conversion
Here’s a common mistake: Brands try to optimize for Purchase / Conversion way too early, long before the pixel has enough data. When there isn’t enough signal, your campaigns aren’t “underperforming, they’re still in the dreaded learning phase.
So instead of forcing efficiency… build stability first. Do this:
Start optimizing for View Content or Add to Cart
Once you have stable volume (consistency day over day),
Then switch to Purchase optimization
This improves both learning and conversion depth. It’s like building a runway before you try to take off.
3️⃣ Refresh Your Hooks, Not Your Whole Ad
Most creative fatigue isn’t actually creative fatigue. It’s hook fatigue. And it’s very difficult to assess.
The thing that stops someone from scrolling is almost always:
The first frame,
The first 3 seconds,
The first line of the caption or voiceover.
So stop throwing away entire ad concepts. Keep the ad - fix the opening.
Change:
The first visual cue
The lead-in text
The angle of the claim
The emotional “why”
This is how winning ads can scale sustainably without creating creative burnout.
4️⃣ Let Broad Targeting Work (Yes, Really)
The era of micro-interest targeting and stacked lookalike audiences is fading.
Platforms know more about your customer / consumer than any audience hack ever could.
Your creative is your targeting now.
Good messaging filters the right audience for you. When you give platforms broader space, performance improves because:
Signals consolidate
Learning stabilizes
Cost volatility goes down
Let the algorithm do its job. Yours is to tell it what good results look like.
5️⃣ Test Like a Scientist (Not a Slot Machine)
If you change 7 things at once, you don’t learn anything.
You just get different results with no explanations or learning potential.
Clear testing = clearer insights.
One variable. One learning. One next step.
For example:
Same video, 3 different hooks
Same script, 3 different CTAs
Same angle, 2 different edits
You’re not just trying to “win.” You’re trying to understand the why.
That’s how you build repeatable success.
6️⃣ Watch Frequency. Your Performance Depends on It
High frequency without conversion is not a media problem, it’s a creative narrative problem. It means the audience has seen your ad enough times to form an opinion,
and unfortunately that opinion is not compelling them to act. And the fix isn’t to spend less, it’s to introduce a new angle, not just new visuals.
Your messaging needs rotation just as much as your creative does.
7️⃣ Check Attribution Before You Panic
Every marketer knows the pain of a perceived sudden performance drop. But often, the performance didn’t drop, the measurement did.
Before over-reacting, check:
Attribution window changes in-platform
View-through vs. click-through conversions
If you optimize to the wrong data, you scale the wrong insights. This is where marketers win, lose, or draw.
The Truth Is Simple
Most ad accounts don’t need more spend.
Most strategies don’t need more platforms.
Most platforms don’t need more tactics.
They need clarity, control and focus. Small adjustments will lead to successfully compounding impact.
This is how you scale intelligently.
And this is where I come in.
If your paid social feels messy, expensive, or inconsistent, I help identify these small, high-leverage improvements that unlock performance quickly and sustainably.
Book your 30-minute Paid Performance Audit (free)
Let’s find your small levers.
(Image credit: Brett Jordan on Unsplash)