3 Things Every Local Candidate Gets Wrong About Facebook Ads

Every cycle, thousands of local candidates try to run their own Facebook ads. Most waste money on mistakes that are easy to avoid once you know what they are.

Here are the three I see most often — and what to do instead.

1. Boosting Posts Instead of Running Real Ads

Facebook makes the "Boost Post" button impossible to miss. It's right there under every post you publish. Click it, throw $20 at it, and you're "running ads."

Except you're not. Boosted posts use Meta's most basic targeting and optimization. You can't control placements, run A/B tests, build custom audiences, or optimize for landing page views instead of engagement.

The difference matters. In a recent hyperlocal race, our ads manager campaigns achieved a 9.2% CTR on the best-performing ad — a number you'll never see from a boosted post. The same budget through Ads Manager, with proper audience targeting and creative testing, typically delivers 3-5x the results.

What to do instead: Use Meta Ads Manager. Set up a Traffic or Conversion campaign. Build a custom audience targeting your district's zip codes, age demographics, and interests. Run 3-4 ad variations and let Meta optimize toward the winner.

2. Targeting the Whole State (or Whole Country)

If you're running for city council in a suburb of 30,000 people, showing ads to 13 million people across your state is burning money. Yet this is the default behavior when candidates don't narrow their targeting.

Hyperlocal races need hyperlocal targeting. Your ad budget is small — probably $500-2,000 total. Every dollar that reaches a voter outside your district is wasted. In a township race we managed, we geo-targeted specific zip codes and achieved ad saturation — the "I'm tired of seeing your ads" feedback — on just $710 in total spend.

What to do instead: Target by zip code or radius around your district. Use "People living in this location" (not "People recently in this location," which includes commuters and visitors). Layer on age 25+ to match likely voter demographics.

3. Forgetting Political Ad Compliance

Meta requires political advertisers to go through a 4-step authorization process before running any political ads. This includes identity verification, a "Paid for by" disclaimer, and authorization of the Page to run political content.

Candidates who skip this step — or don't know it exists — get their ads rejected or their ad account restricted. Worse, the process takes 5-7 business days to complete. If your election is in 3 weeks and you haven't started this yet, you've already lost a third of your runway.

Google Ads has a similar process called Election Ads Verification that also takes 5-7 business days. And YouTube political ads require the same verification.

What to do instead: Start the verification process on every platform the day you decide to run paid ads — even before your creative is ready. Get the compliance paperwork out of the way first. Creative can catch up; compliance timelines can't be rushed.