7 Common Facebook Ads Mistakes You Should Avoid

You are not the only one!

According to Weebly, up to 62% of small business owners say that their Facebook ads campaign never works out well.

In this article, we would look at 7 of the most common Facebook Ad mistakes that marketers make and how you can start doing things differently from henceforth.

1. Lack of clear Objectives

The first step to achieving success in any marketing campaign is having a measurable objective and also creating your strategy from the outset.

Having a clear idea of your objective would help in developing the right strategy depending on the goals you want to achieve.

Facebook Ads can have one of the following objectives:

• Do you want to increase traffic to your website?
• Increase conversions or direct leads to a particular landing page?
• Do you just want to do a one-off promotion that would lead to immediate sales for a particular product?

Knowing your objectives before the start of the campaign would help you measure accurately if you are getting the desired results. And if things aren’t working as planned, you can decide to pause or change the parameters for your campaign instead of just wasting funds.

How to develop business objectives and goals

• Define goals as a group: If you discuss it with your stakeholders before defining your Ad objectives, it is more likely that you would set goals you can achieve.
• Create an action plan: An action plan or strategy should be made alongside goal setting. Do not just set goals, also prepare an action plan that defines the process you want to follow in order to achieve them.
• Set KPIs: A constant track of the key performance indicators will help you optimize the campaign to maximize return.

Create objectives that meet your current needs

It is important that you set objectives that would meet the immediate needs of your business. There is a key difference between setting goals and setting the right goals!

These are some of the most common goals that marketers have:

• Increased brand awareness
• Increased community engagement
• Increased sales and lead generation
• Increased web traffic
• Improving the efficiency of your recruiting process
• Get more ROI from Facebook ads, etc.

So, if you do not have any objectives set, you can use any of the examples mentioned above as a template to get started.

2. Poor Audience Targeting

There are millions of users on Facebook, so there is a high likelihood that your content might get lost amongst a huge amount of content that is updated on the site daily.

Reports show that Facebook users make up to 510,000 comments, 136,000 photos uploads and 293,000 statuses every minute

There are also over 50 million business pages on Facebook and most of them would be using Facebook ads to try and reach the same audience you are targeting.

The huge popularity of the social media site will give you an idea of the level of competition that you will have to face to get your content across to your customers. Not only would you be competing with other marketers, but you would also be competing with your audience’s friends, family, and colleagues as well, who also post on the platform.

All this data shows that if you do not target your audience properly, the chances of your ads getting lost in the huge stream of content is very high.

For this, you first need to create a content that is engaging, interactive and have a good selling proposition as well. And, then optimize your ads to get to the right audience, or else it would be a waste of effort because you would not be able to generate any leads.

The good news – Facebook has inbuilt features that can help you target the right demographic of people.

These are some of the key points to keep in mind when defining your target audience:

• Location: It is important that you target an audience depending on things like their country, state, zip code, etc. You can even streamline it further to target people that work in a particular area.
• Demographics: This would include things like sex, age, marital status, income levels, etc.
• Interests: When defining your target market, it is important that you put interests into consideration. Let’s say you are selling cameras, an interest you can set when defining who would see your ads are individuals that are interested in photography or art.
• Engagement: This is a handy way to get your content across to people who are likely to interact with it. Setting your ads by engagement means that people who have recently liked, commented or followed you on social media will also see the ad.
• Behaviors: Facebook has a targeting tool called Facebook Pixel. The pixel tracks the behavior of a user and display ads accordingly. This is a good way to efficiently target your ads. For example, if someone visited your website recently, Facebook would show them ads that are related to your site.
• Automatic Optimization: After setting the different target options that Facebook has provided, you can set Facebook to also automatically optimize this audience for you.

Another mistake that most marketers make when choosing their audience demographic is either spreading their tentacles too wide or too narrow.

To avoid this mistake when creating your ad, make sure that you set your audience size.

Instead of setting an ad that would reach millions of people, it is better to set it to a realistic number of people that would convert and are interested in your product. You can use the demographic and user interest options to narrow this size.

Note that on the other hand, if you make your audience size too small, Facebook might not deliver your ad. Facebook has a dial that would show you if you are doing this right.

Choosing the right audience would not only increase your success rates but also lower your ad costs.

When creating a new ad campaign, you can also create a lookalike audience. With a lookalike audience, you would be able to reach a similar type of audience based on certain behaviors they exhibit.

For example, if you have a list of customers that engage with your content or have made purchases in the past, you can build a lookalike audience of new prospects that exhibit similar traits.

3. Using the Wrong Facebook Ad Type

Facebook offers you different ad formats to choose from. But, you need to be clear about your audience to be able to choose the right one.

These are examples of some of the most popular Ad types:

• Photos (with size variants)
• Videos
• Carousel (i.e. making use of multiple images or videos in one ad)
• Slideshows
• Making use of canvas
• Collections (a single ad that would display all of your products)

Along with these Ad options, there are also different ways you can place your Ads. You can place ads on:

• Desktop
• Mobile or
• Right-hand sidebar

Depending on your objectives, there are also certain ways you display your ads:

• Lead ads (for mobile) : They would use a pre-populated form to get the information of the user.
• Link ads – These Ads will have a link pointing to your website. This link would be in the form of a CTA prompt. These prompts can be Sign Up, Download, Learn More, Shop Now, etc.

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.

For example, desktop ads have one of the highest conversion rates. The only problem is that they can be very expensive and there is a lot of competition.

If you plan on using desktop ads just to drive traffic to your site, the cost might kill your campaign. So, if you have a small marketing budget, desktop ads might not be the best option for you.

This chart below would help you understand different ad types and the proper way to use it.

You should continue to do A/B testing until you find the option that works best for you.

4. Abandoning your Ads

One of the most common Facebook Ad mistakes that most marketers make is creating new Ads and abandoning them for weeks. It is important that you analyze the performance of your Ads daily.

You want to make sure that your audience does not continue to see the same particular Ad every day. If you do not monitor your Ads, you wouldn’t know if your campaign is achieving the objectives you set it up for.

When you are checking your Ad progress, these are some important things you should look out for and keep in check:

• Ad frequency
• Click-through rate
• Conversion rate
• Number of leads generated
• Ad performance by type and placement
• Clicks by interest

Monitoring your ads regularly would help you know if you need to make changes to your Ad options.

In marketing, data is important. These data are what would help you improve productivity and ensure that you have a successful campaign.

5. Using Ads for Sales Funnel Only

Another Facebook ad mistake is using your Ad only as a means to sell your products or services. This is like a salesperson that pushes their product in front of the customer’s face all the time. Nobody likes such a salesperson.

To get successful at Facebook ads, it is important that you use your Ads to tell a story that your viewers can connect to. Making this connection is important to generate leads that convert.

Consider creating Ads that build trust by sharing your success stories, benefits delivered, testimonials, industry recognitions, etc.

You can even boost your Facebook posts to increase your reach. This helps improve engagement.

6. Lack of a Clear Value Proposition

When it comes to marketing, your value proposition is one of the most important aspects. Neglecting it can be detrimental to your campaign.

It is your value proposition that would convince people to do business with you or use your product instead of your competitor’s. It clearly shows from the beginning what benefits you can offer to them.

Unfortunately, in many Facebook Ad campaigns, businesses do not bother making their value proposition visible or do not even know what it is at all.

If you fall into the latter, Uber offers a good example of a value proposition. You can use this template to develop yours or even refine it and make it better.

Uber

Uber nails its value proposition right in the head. Uber offers user’s convenience as their value proposition.

Without saying it directly, Uber shows everything that is wrong with traditional cabs and how they have taken care of this issue to make life easy for their users.

From the image on their homepage, they highlight three reasons why you should use their service:

• With a single click on their app, you can get a ride to come directly to you.
• Your driver knows exactly where you are going.
• Payment is cashless so you don’t have to worry about not having money on you.

This value proposition shows exactly what a user would get by using their service instead of a traditional taxi. This is an example of a value proposition that works.

To make sure that your Facebook Ad has a good value proposition, it should contain the following:

• It should be clear and easy to understand.
• It should communicate what benefits or results the user would get from using your product or service.
• Avoid filling your value proposition with buzzwords or meaningless slogans.
• Show how you are different from your competition. It should convince them why they should use your product instead of your competitors?

Having a clear value proposition helps your brand to connect with the consumer. You should do surveys and A/B testing on the best Ad types and copies, that would work best with your value proposition to ensure a higher ROI.

7. Running too many Ads on a Tight Budget

One of the common mistakes that most businesses make, especially the small ones is creating very complex Ad accounts. You would see a single Ad account that is running multiple campaigns and has too many Ad sets.

Doing this would only reduce efficiency and lead to a lot of confusion. If you have a very complex Ad account, it would be difficult to keep track of everything that is going on.

To fully take advantage of the Facebook algorithm, you would need at least 50-100 conversions per Ad set per week. To achieve this, you would need a sizable budget so that Facebook can efficiently power your ads.

If you wanted to achieve a $5 per lead conversion rate, you would need to set your budget to a minimum of $35-$50/day. So if you wanted to create 3 Ad sets, your campaign budget would amount to $100-$150/day.

Try and spend a tangible amount on your Ad campaign. That way you can have higher conversions and an improved ROI.

Conclusion

To achieve success with your Facebook Ad campaign, you need to go the extra mile to make sure you create a connection with the audience. Researching your target audience and paying attention to the kind of Ad type that works best is important.

Facebook ads when done right can bring in amazing results and can lead to the fast growth of a business. Use these tips that I have mentioned in this article and avoid making these common mistakes