Most small Meta accounts do not fail because the budget is too small. They fail because the budget is spread over too many ad sets, the tracking is broken so the algorithm learns from the wrong signal, and nobody has decided in advance what a good result costs. Fix those three and a 1,500 € budget behaves like a 5,000 € one.
This is the list we run before we touch a new account and again every month after. It is written for the 2026 version of Meta: Andromeda-era delivery, Advantage+ campaigns as the default, broad targeting winning more often than not, and creative doing the job that audiences used to do. If your mental model of Meta ads is from 2021, a few of these points will feel wrong. Test them anyway.
Enter your email and we send the PDF straight to your inbox, with a direct download link right here as well.
The PDF is on its way to your inbox. If it is not there in a few minutes, check the spam folder.
Download nowNumbers in here are from our own accounts and are illustrative. Your market will differ. The logic will not.
I run Maison Mint, a boutique marketing agency in Tallinn that manages Google and Meta ads, does SEO and GEO, and builds the tracking underneath it, for brands growing across the EU. Everything in this checklist comes from accounts we run, not from a course.
The resources on this site are free because the people who find them useful are exactly the people we like working with. No sales sequence, just the Wednesday newsletter, which you can leave with one click.
The checklist is written for 500 to 5,000 € a month. Below 500 € the learning phase rarely completes and we would usually suggest a different channel first. Above 5,000 € the logic still holds but the structure gets more layered.
Yes. The structure section assumes Advantage+ Sales or Leads campaigns, broad targeting and automatic placements, which is how Meta delivers ads in 2026. The creative section explains why creative does the job audiences used to do.
Yes. Instagram ads run through the same Meta Ads Manager and the same delivery system. Placements, creative formats and tracking are identical.
Then fix that first; section two is the order to do it in. An account optimising toward bad data wastes money at any budget. Our server-side tracking guide on the blog goes deeper.
Yes, from around 1,500 € a month in ad spend. Book a free 30 minutes and we will look at the account together before anyone commits to anything.
A one-evening, seven-page plan for a growing brand: goals, customer, channels, budget, 90-day calendar and KPIs
42 checks to get your brand cited by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, Perplexity and Copilot
B2B outreach that lands in the inbox, gets read and gets replies, GDPR included
All free resources live at mintagency.eu/resources. Ten free in-browser tools (ROAS calculator, UTM builder, SEO audit, ad copy generator and more) are on the blog.
Maison Mint runs Google and Meta ads, SEO and GEO, email and the tracking underneath for brands across the EU. The first 30 minutes are free and useful either way.