Social Media ads are a tempting opportunity for any business owner – advanced targeting options and relatively low costs (when compared to many other channels) make it almost impossible to resist the urge ‘to test’ things around. And whilst creating a campaign on Facebook, after a while, may seem like a can-do task, it is still important to make sure your Facebook Ads performance is optimised, bringing you good results and not just ‘dripping money away’. Especially now that the budgets are a little tighter than usual.
So, here are 5 mistakes that you want to avoid to guarantee a proper Facebook Ads performance, should you decide to start with this type of advertising on your own:
1. The ‘set up and let it run’ approach
One of the most frequent mistakes we see advertisers do, is to set up a campaign, schedule it to run for a month, and forget all about it until the next month. Facebook Ads are very visual. Your image or video can be a decisive factor when it comes to success and failure. But even with the best creative, if you show it to the same people (your target audience) over and over again, guess what will happen? Exactly, the audience will get tired of your ad and develop a kind of ‘blindness’ towards your advertising or brand as a whole. Facebook will not stop showing your ads at that point. You will not even receive any type of notification. On the contrary, Facebook will continue to show your ad and spend your budget, which will make the cost-per-result (CPR) grow significantly towards the second half of the month. This is caused by what’s called audience fatigue. And that is why you need to make sure that you regularly check how your campaign is doing. If you see that the CPR starts to grow, check your ad frequency metric (how many times on average each person saw your ad) in Facebook’s ads manager. If the ad frequency is very high, it’s time to refresh your texts and change your creatives (images or videos).
2. Not using the Facebook Pixel
At the end of the day, when setting up any type of advertising, what every business owner wants to know is “how much profit did the campaign brought me”. Usually, the fact is that any actual purchase (or lead generation) is likely happening outside Facebook, on your website. If you don’t have the Facebook Pixel set up on your website, you will never know exactly which campaign or ad resulted in a sale and which didn’t. Sometimes, a small budget on an effective campaign can bring more results than a large-budget campaign, and this would be a good reason to rethink your budget allocation. But you cannot make an informed decision without statistical data to prove your point. Facebook Pixel will give you that data, as it will track the behaviour of users once they’ve left Facebook and landed on your website.
3. Not having a big-picture strategy
Creating one campaign, with one ad message for all the users, and letting it run, might not bring you the results you are looking for. You should create different campaigns for users that are in different stages of your sales funnel (thanks to Facebook’s advanced targeting, you can create different audiences, for users in diverse phases of the sales process). For example, you can create a brand awareness campaign for a larger audience of people that still don’t know about your business, bring them to your Facebook page and let them know how you can help them. Then, you can create a traffic campaign to bring those people to your website and you can adjust your message, knowing that that audience already knows your company. You can later retarget those who didn’t convert on the first attempt with exclusive discounts available only for them. You can use this as a basis, or create your own strategy, but try to tailor your message to each group of users, according to their place in your sales funnel. There is no ‘one size fits all’ when it comes to a digital advertising message.
4. Using random visuals from free stock photos suppliers
Using visuals from free stock photos providers is not a bad option for a small business. The problem is that you need to find an image that will either showcase your product / service, or very accurately pass on your message to the user. You need to always remember that users on Social Media are not searching for any kind of product, they are just scrolling down their news feed, so if you don’t grab their attention with your creative, or if your visual is confusing, you will never be able to make them stop scrolling and actually click on your ad.
5. Not doing A/B Tests
Digital marketing is all about data and statistics. You may feel things are that way or the other, but when your ad is seen by lots of people, they might not react the way you are expecting. You never know for sure what will and will not work. That is why Facebook has an A/B Test functionality that you can use to test two or more variants against each other, and receive a data-based response that will clearly answer the question of what really works best for you. Facebook lets you test your creatives, ad delivery options, audiences, and ad placements, so don’t try to guess – test everything and apply the winning variants to your future campaigns.
If you’re still not feeling confident enough about Facebook Ads, please feel free to reach out to us to get professional help for your Facebook Ads performance. And if you found this article helpful, check out our other one on mistakes in Google Ads that can gravely impact its performance.
For more information, bespoke strategies and efficient digital marketing solutions, just contact the Clarity’s girls through info@yourdigitalclarity.com or visit our website at yourdigitalclarity.com.
