With roughly 2.85 billion monthly active users as of the first quarter of 2021, Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide (Statista.com).
Facebook has quickly become one of the top platforms for businesses across the globe to market their products or services.
Businesses spend a ton of money on a Facebook ad campaign hoping to generate leads but end up with little to no conversions (when someone interacts with your ad). It seems like advertising money was flushed down the drain.
Does this sound like something that has happened to you? You’re not alone.
There is a large percentage of businesses who say their Facebook ad campaign didn’t work out well.
Keep reading and we will dive into some common mistakes that your business should avoid.
1. Not choosing the right target market
There are millions of users on Facebook at any given time, so there is a likelihood that your content or ad could get lost in the weeds with the other content that is uploaded every hour. There are 50 million businesses that use Facebook Pages and just like your business, they are utilizing it for facebook ads.
Creating an ad and then boosting it with no specific or not the right target audience is a guaranteed way for your ad to not get your return on investment back. The chances of your ads getting lost in the huge stream of content is very high.
You aren’t just competing with other competitors but also your aunts, uncles, cousins and more that post and utilize the platform.
Optimize your ads to get to the right audience and your ideal client, or else it can be a wasted effort because you may not be able to generate any leads.
Facebook has made it easier for businesses to define their audience for smarter ad targeting.
Facebook has created Core Audiences, that allows you to set the rules for where your ads are delivered. Adjust your target audience to be as broad or well-defined as you like, based on the following criteria:
Location — Advertise in the cities, communities and countries where you want to do business
Demographics — This would include things like sex, age, marital status, income levels, etc.
Behavior — Target your ads based on consumer behaviors such as prior purchases and device usage
Connections — Get your content across to people who are likely to interact with it and click it. Setting your ads by connections means that people who have recently liked, commented or followed you on social media will also see the ad
Interests — Add interests and hobbies of the people you want your ad to reach. This makes your ad more relevant.
Automatic Optimization — After setting the different target options that Facebook has provided, you can set Facebook to also automatically optimize this audience for you.
2. Not creating creative content
If you’re creating Facebook ads and targeting them in all the right places but still not getting clicks, then your audience may see that it isn’t valuable or boring. If you are not being creative in a way that will draw your audience’s attention to your products, then your business will not get the ROI it needs.
The art of advertising is not to sell your products, it is to have your customers buy your products.
You’re paying to circulate great ad content that will engage audiences. When designing your ad, are you asking what type of content your audience will enjoy the most? Does your audience engage more with videos or pictures, sound or other items?
The key with creating content that will drive customers is learning as you go.
Every moment is a chance to capture attention. The first few seconds your audience is looking at, watching or reading your ad is the key time to grab their attention. It could be the difference between a sale or not.
Once you decide what type of content you want to offer your online audience, you need to also research which types of messaging will grab their attention, stop users from scrolling, and get them to click on your ad.
A tactic we have learned that has been a key element in creating clickable content is using shocking headlines. Create a clear but enticing call to action that makes your audience want more information.
3. Not having a clear objective
There are multiple objectives and if you don’t select the right one, you’ll throw your ad out the window.
Creating a clear and measurable objective is the first step in any marketing campaign. This will help you develop the right strategy depending on the goals you have in mind for your campaign. They’re the first thing you select when you go to Facebook Ads Manager to create an ad.
OBJECTIVES KEEP YOU ON TRACK.
The purpose of having an objective to guide your marketing efforts toward set milestones.
Some objectives include:
- Driving more traffic to your website
- Increasing sales
- Promoting a specific product
- To obtain more orders on a product
- To increase your market share
- Reach more customers at your store
When you choose an objective, you’re telling Facebook what results you want to see, or which actions you’d like users to take.
The three main objectives Facebook looks at (with a broaden scope under each one) is:
Awareness — more attention
Consideration — more engagement
Conversion — more action
As your business grows, so will your marketing objectives. Keep in mind that your data will change and your objective may change from focusing on growing online presence to having more orders of a product. If things aren’t working as planned, you can decide to pause or change the parameters for your campaign instead of just wasting funds.
4. Wrong Facebook Ad type
Facebook offers a multitude of options for different ad types. Whether you want to use video, images or words—or a combination of all of the elements—there’s a Facebook ad format that fits your business story but using the wrong one can deter potential customers from your business.
To ensure success in your Ad campaign, it is important that you know which Ad type would work best with your objective or ad placement.
The different ad types include:
- Instant Experience : a fullscreen experience that opens after someone taps your ad on a mobile device.
- Video : The video ad features help educate your audience about your product features using video
- Messenger Ads: Messenger ads help people start conversations with your business
- Offers: Offers ads are discounts you can share with your customers on Facebook to encourage people to shop on your website, at your physical store, or both places.
- Lead Generation Ads: Users are driven to a landing page to fill out a form or to book a service
- Page Likes: Ad “Like Page” to any ad to bring more traffic to your page
- Slideshow: Slideshow ads are video-like ads made of motion, sound and text. Almost like a moving billboard.
- Carousel: Carousel ads let you display up to ten images or videos in a single ad, each with its own link. Viewers will see everything the advertiser wants them to see in one place.
- Image: Image ads offer a clean, simple format to feature engaging, compelling imagery and creative copy
- Post Engagement: you can drive more engagement on individual posts and expand its original reach
- Stories: Story ads are not necessarily new to Facebook but are extremely under utilized. Stories are a customizable, edge-to-edge experience that lets you immerse people in your content.
With the amount of different ads to choose from, there is a possibility to choose one that won’t work for your business. Use the data you have gathered on your audience to see which one best suits your business, product, service or objective.
For example, if you just made your Facebook page or business, utilizing “Page Like” ads may be your best route to grow more organic traffic to your page and website.
Continue to try out different ads to find out which one works best for you.
5. Not writing Persuasive Copy
If your text is boring, unpersuasive and not eye-catching, your audience keeps scrolling. Content that captures creates better ads.
A few years ago Facebook changed the visual design of ads, which also reduced the amount of visible ad copy on the news feed. Now Facebook only allows for three lines of copy/text when on a mobile news feed.
MAKE THOSE THREE LINES COUNT. AFTER THE FIRST THREE LINES, YOUR AUDIENCE HAS TO CLICK THE AD TO KEEP READING.
Your goal is to hook ’em’ and have them keep reading. Facebook ads can often focus on the visual creative like utilizing video or images but ad copy is equally as important to your objective.
What are you hoping to persuade your audience to do? Buy? Click? Follow? Grab your reader’s attention from the get-go and persuade them.
Here are three ways to write persuasive Facebook Ad copy and grow your audience:
- Write in a way that people can scan it: When browsing Facebook, people are typically on their phones scrolling. No one wants to have to read a novel to understand what you’re selling or persuading them to do. Look to convey meaningful information in as little space as possible.
- Write to your audience: With Facebook targeting, you know the median age, gender and area of your audience. Use keywords that this audience knows and reciprocrates to. Talk to them the same way you would if you were making an in-person sales call, instead of how you would present at a conference.
- Lead with value and keep it short: When paying for your ad, it can be tempting to cram as much information in it as possible. But with Facebook ads, keep it short and leading with value will gain you more clicks. Answer the clients questions of — what will they get out of this product or service? How does it help or affect them? Why do they need it? What do they need to do next to get it?
6. Not running an ad long enough
No matter what platform you are using to run an ad, you always have to give yourself 30 to 90 days to gather data and understand the feedback. It is important that you analyze the performance of your Ads daily. Monitoring your ads on a daily or weekly basis helps you know if you need to make changes to your ad and get a larger return on the ad. When you cut the time too short, it limits Facebook’s ability to optimize the ad and show you what is and isn’t working.
If you aren’t able to gather data that will help you in campaigns going forward then you are probably wasting your advertising budget.
Don’t miss out on the ability to create a long-term winning strategy that you deserve for your business.
When going forward with your ads after the first month, gather as much specific data as you possibly can. Break your results down by age, gender, placement, date range, action; and use that data to determine the longevity, schedule and how you should run your ads.
7. Lack of understanding of data
At any given moment, you need to be able to change your ad or make adjustments. If you want to get serious about running Facebook ads, 2021 is the time to start track analytics and figure out Facebook Ad metrics.
The more you are able to understand from your metrics, the more you are able to grow your business online and through Facebook.
The great part about Facebook ads is that they do a lot of the tracking for you. After you’ve published an ad on Facebook, Facebook Analytics will help you track how well it performs. Facebook automatically provides you with a variety of metrics you can watch.
The key ones to watch are:
Cost Per Result: shows you the average cost calculated by dividing the total amount spent by the number of results (reach, clicks, conversions, video views). — Total amount spent / total # of results
Impressions: how many times your ad was viewed
Frequency: average number of times your ad is displayed to a unique user
Clicks: how many times someone has clicked on your ad
Click-Through-Rate (CTR): tells you the percentage of people who click on your ad and how many didn’t but still saw the ad
Cost-Per-Click (CPC) / Cost-Per-Impression (CPM): CPC is how much you are paying when someone clicks on your ad / CPM shows how much you are paying per 1,000 views
Facebook provides you with a much longer list of metrics you can watch but the key takeaway is that the data you get from insights will help you build an advertising strategy that maximizes your ads reach and uptake.
Check out more of what we do on our services page. Contact us TODAY and let us design your next Facebook ad!
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