Meta (Facebook & Instagram) had a major update to its ads platform in July 2025. Before this, once Meta found the best ad for you, it would show that to everyone. Now, Meta attempts to match your ad to the individual user by combining your ad, your organic content, and historical user data.
Meta divides this based on Persona, Desire and Awareness.
Persona is the type of customer you’re looking to attract. For gym purposes we’ll simplify it to the person not working out, or working out but not seeing results the results they want. You could expand it to new parents, former athletes, older people, etc. But start with a broad approach and refine as you go.
Desire is their goal. Simply put for us it’s to lose weight, feel more energetic, feel comfortable in the gym, boost confidence, or become pain free etc.
Awareness is their level of knowledge of the problem and your solution. Most people still don’t know what CrossFit is, for example. Do they know your gym exists and need the push to start? Do they know what Small Group Personal Training is?
What this means is that you need to combine different offers and calls to action in your ad. You can no longer have different pictures with the same call to action, in the same image format, and essentially the same text and headline offer.
For Images (which is the single most important factor in your ad) combine a photo with no text, photo with an enticing question, photo with a description of your service, and graphics with no photos.
In the headline and text, combine as many different problems, solutions, and calls to action as you can think of. Ensure at least one of your assets (image, headline, text) describes what you do in easy to understand terms. For example, you don’t describe CrossFit as “increase your work capacity across broad time and modal domains through constantly varied, functional exercise at high intensity.” But “Fun Fitness Classes” or “Beginner Friendly Strength & Conditioning” will work.
It’s unlikely you’ll get this perfect first go, and you’ll need to test to confirm what works. Of course if you want to save time and money in all this testing, book a time and let’s talk.