3 Things Every Personal Trainer Must Do Before Running Facebook or Instagram Ads

3 Things Every Personal Trainer Must Do Before Running Facebook or Instagram Ads

If you’re a personal trainer thinking about running ads to grow your online coaching business, you need to be careful. Many trainers rush into Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) without knowing how the system really works — and end up wasting hundreds or even thousands of dollars on junk traffic, bots, and low-quality clicks.

The truth is: if you don’t adjust a few key settings before you launch, your ad budget could be flushed straight down the toilet.

Here are the three most important things you need to fix before running your ads.

1. Turn Off Auto Optimizations of Your Creatives

One of the newer features on Meta Ads is called creative auto optimization. On the surface, it sounds useful, but for personal trainers it can actually hurt your results.

Here’s why:

• Meta takes the flexibility to rewrite and rearrange your ad copy.

• If your ad has six or seven lines of text, Meta might cut it down to just one line.

• In some cases, the system even changes your messaging entirely just to optimize for clicks.

That means people who click on your ad may have no idea what you actually do — which leads to poor conversions and wasted money.

👉 Solution: Always turn off creative auto optimizations so your message stays clear and aligned with your offer.

2. Untick the Multi-Advertiser Checkbox

Meta has a setting called the multi-advertiser option. When it’s enabled, your ad can appear in a carousel side-by-side with your competitors’ ads.

That’s a problem because:

• Nothing makes your offer stand out.

• Your ad gets lost among others.

• The traffic you receive will likely be weak, distracted, and low-quality.

👉 Solution: Untick the multi-advertiser option so your ad appears as a standalone placement. This way, you control the audience’s attention and avoid competing directly within the same carousel.

3. Remove Junk Traffic Placements

This step is the most important. By default, Meta automatically ticks every possible ad placement — and many of them send you traffic that looks good in your stats but delivers terrible quality leads.

Common junk placements include:

• Marketplace

• Explore pages

• Other low-intent areas of the platform

The danger is that you’ll see high click numbers, but once those people land on your page, they won’t understand your offer, won’t convert, and won’t be the type of clients you’re looking for.

👉 Solution:

• Manually adjust your placements.

• Untick Marketplace and Explore pages.

• Focus only on Feeds, Stories, and Reels — where real, engaged people are most likely to interact with your content.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a personal trainer investing in ads, the last thing you want is wasted clicks and fake traffic draining your budget. By turning off creative auto optimization, unticking the multi-advertiser checkbox, and eliminating junk traffic placements, you’ll instantly boost your ad performance.

Do these three things before launching your campaigns, and you’ll:

• Stop wasting money on bots and fake clicks.

• Improve the quality of your leads.

• See a real increase in conversions and results.

Running ads isn’t just about spending money — it’s about spending it wisely. Start with these three steps, and you’ll set yourself up for success.