Are you tired of spending your Facebook campaign money without getting the desired results? You are not alone! According to Weebly, up to 62% of small business owners say that their Facebook ad campaigns never work out well. We talked to Simon Solotko, Executive Chief Marketing Officer at IdeaPros, about the top five Facebook ad mistakes that people make and what you can do to avoid them.
1. Lack of Clear Objectives
Before you start spending your marketing money, ask yourself what you want to accomplish with your ads. Define your goals, create an action plan, and set KPIs so you can track them.
The most common goals marketers have are:
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- Increase brand awareness
- Increase community engagement
- Increase sales and lead generation
- Increase web traffic
- Improve the efficiency of the recruiting process
- Improve ROI from Facebook ads, etc.
“If you are trying to drive transactions, but you’re optimizing on views, those two goals may not be well aligned which can lead to a significant decrease in efficiency.” – Simon Solotko
2. Poor Audience Targeting
Facebook has an AI algorithm built in the system so it can learn from your campaigns, but you have to do them right. If you put multiple audiences in one ad campaign, Facebook will look at data from all of them and give you the best results. These are some of the key points to keep in mind when defining your target audience.
Welcome things when they happen and look at roadblocks as an opportunity to pivot and make necessary changes early in the process. A lot of times the biggest roadblocks are not unique to your organization. Take this pandemic, for example, it has changed the world around us considerably and made many good ideas look bad under the new circumstances. It’s important not to take it personally and focus on how you can take advantage of the world that has stopped. At IdeaPros, we took the time to rethink and come up with a better plan, so we don’t end up with a product or app no one wants.
3. Using the Wrong Facebook Ad Type
Know your audience before you choose your Facebook ad type, as different formats work better with different products and markets. Facebook gives you the option to use photos, videos, carousels (multiple images or videos in one ad), slideshows, canvases, and collections (a single ad that would display all of your products). Videos tend to do very well and are a huge asset. With photos, there is a limitation on the amount of text on them. The best way to check what works best for you is by trial and error.
You can use lead ads for mobile that use a pre-populated form to get the information of the user. Facebook is favoring this type of ad because people are not leaving the site. Also, you can use a link ad which would have a link to your website and a CTA button like sign up, download, learn more, shop now, etc.
4. Abandoning your Ads
Facebook ads are a long-term thing as Facebook needs time to learn from your audience. It learns from the clicks and actions and optimizes your ad. Marketers often make the mistake of abandoning their ads or stopping them if they don’t show results in three days. Don’t be impatient and analyze the performance of your ads daily. Things you should have in mind are ad frequency (average number of times a person sees your ad), click-through rate, conversion rate, number of leads generated, ad performance by type and placement, click by interest. Monitoring your ads helps you make changes and achieve the set out objectives.
Have in mind that authentic engagement in ads is crucial. Don’t try to trick the system with fake engagement. Ask yourself if the ad is speaking to the audience or not. If there are no results, this may mean you are not capturing the attention of your audience. Create a captivating, magnetizing ad, and you will see improvement in its performance.
“The key thing in your engagement online is authenticity.” – Simon Solotko
5. Lack of A/B Testing
A/B testing is when you have two ads with one or two differences running head to head, which helps you see which one does better. Don’t change too many things, as you won’t be able to decide what made the performance better or worse. You can change the amount of text, creative text, action, or destination. Image formats and texts can vary depending on the platform, so don’t forget to provide the images in a couple of formats.
The “Idea Pros” at IdeaPros have the resources, experience, and tools to help you at this step or any step in the entrepreneurial journey.
We partner with entrepreneurs at any stage and who are ready to invest their ideas. Apply for an interview and let’s explore partnering together.