12 Facebook Ad Mistakes Killing Your Campaign
and Wasting Your Budget!
STOP making the same Facebook ad mistakes over and over again!
Discover 12 errors that can cost your business serious £££ in marketing spend (and how to avoid them)…
A whooping 76.4% of you told us that Facebook is the most effective social network for advertising their business…
e…and yet, we receive the same emails and messages every day, with the same old Facebook ad mistakes.
The thing is, just because Facebook works for us and tons of other experienced digital marketers (and media buyers), that doesn’t mean you can simply start a business page, put some money behind your posts and generate a positive ROI.
Facebook advertising is an art (that anyone can learn BTW). When you’re starting out, keep things straightforward and build your knowledge before trying more complex campaigns.
In this post I’m going to highlight 12 of the most common Facebook ad mistakes and explain how you can avoid them.
Don’t run before you can walk. Understand the basics and avoid these Facebook ad mistakes!
Hitting the ‘Boost Post’ Button
Let’s start with the most criminal action made by anybody who calls themselves a Facebook advertiser, hitting the ‘Boost Post’ button.
I know that the majority of our readers will not relate to this mistake, but trust me, I’ve seen many messages from people who say that they’ve been putting money into Facebook advertising, without seeing any results…
…and after digging a little deeper, we’ve discovered that all they’d done was hit the ‘Boost Post’ button and then give Facebook the cash that they’d suggested.
Businesses have seen the organic reach of their posts restricted in recent years and this has forced many into hitting the dreaded ‘Boost Post’ button.
This looks great on paper, especially when Facebook tell us that it’s going to reach 1,000’s of people, but the fact remains that when you use this option, you effectively relinquish all advertising control to Facebook.
You have no control over the Campaign objective they use, which can make or break your campaign. Facebook will not look into the aims of your business or ask what you’re hoping to achieve from the money you’re putting behind the boosted post. They will just show it to more people.
If you are making this mistake, go over to Facebook Business Manager and set yourself up with an account (it’s easy and FREE).
No Pixel
A Facebook pixel is a snippet of code that tracks and analyses the behaviour (and actions) of your website visitors.
The pixel allows you to optimise your advertising performance and learn more about your website visitors. The older your pixel is and the more data it collects, the more valuable it becomes.
Using a pixel, you can create custom audiences, track events, optimise your conversion campaigns, retarget users based on their actions (e.g. cart abandon), use the custom audience’s data to create lookalike audiences, and many more incredibly valuable things…
…in fact, I’d go as far as saying that the Facebook pixel is what makes advertising on the world’s biggest social network so amazing for marketers.
Why is it then, that I read so many messages from people who clearly don’t have a Facebook pixel installed?
Before going any further with your marketing campaigns, I suggest you read our guide to the Facebook Pixel (A Newbies Guide to FB Ads) and install the Facebook Pixel Helper (this is a FREE Google Chrome Extension BTW). This tool will check if your FB pixel is working after it is installed.
Trust me, every penny you spend on FB advertising without a pixel, is a missed opportunity.
Wrong Campaign Objective
I can let a newbie off for clicking the ‘Boost Post’ button, but something I won’t forgive is when any of our readers pick the wrong Facebook ad campaign objective.
The campaign objective you select at the beginning of the ad building process shapes your entire Facebook ad campaign. It tells the platform exactly what you’d like to achieve from your FB ad and helps them (to help you) achieve it!
There are 11 campaign objectives (at the time of writing) and each of them will target different people, with different aims (e.g. link clicks, post shares, lead generation, conversions). If you select the wrong campaign objective, or just go for the one that ‘sounds’ like it will be most suitable for your ad you’re limiting your chances at the first step.
And the reason that I won’t let any of our readers off is because I created an Ultimate Guide to Facebook Ad Campaign Objectives that holds tons and tons of super-valuable content for anybody starting out in FB ads. (It took some time to put together too!).
If your ads aren’t getting the results they deserve, your problem might lie in the very first step you take. Make sure you’re using the correct objective!
100% Interest Based Audiences
Yes, Facebook’s targeting options are amazing and yes, you can reach a very specific audience using them…
…but you shouldn’t rely on Interest Based Audiences (AKA Saved Audiences) forever.
When you’ve avoided the first 3 mistakes in this list and you’re set up with a Business Manager Account, working FB Pixel and you understand your Campaign Objectives…
…you can begin to build Custom Audiences, and follow that with Lookalike Audiences.
Interest Based Audiences are great for learning more about the responsiveness of your ads, building your awareness (and reach), as well as firing your pixel (to learn more about your audience), but, the majority of your Facebook audiences that will actually make the most valuable contribution to your marketing aims, are not Interest Based.
I’ve written a MONSTER eBook guide about every type of Interest, Custom and Lookalike Audiences (including how to create and target your perfect audience), so if you’d like to learn more and discover how to build them, get over there…
…but just make sure you use a VARIETY of audiences (at least until you know what works).
Wrong Audience Size
Now that you know how big a mistake it is to only use interest based audiences, it’s time to cross another Facebook ad problem that we see all the time (with the same audiences)…
…the wrong size!
This mistake can go one of two ways, either too big or too small.
We receive lots of questions about the size of audience that an advertiser should target. There aren’t any specific rules, because it really depends on your FB ad objective, budget and industry, but most of the time I’d suggest somewhere in the 500,000 to 1 million ball park, or 1-2 million for those businesses with bigger budgets (and wider appeal).
BTW: These numbers are only a suggestion, the audience you target is specific to your business and FB ads.
When you do make this mistake, you’ll encounter one of two problems:
- Facebook audience too big: You’ll end up wasting a lot of your budget on people who are unqualified, because you haven’t ‘niched’ your target audience down enough.
- Facebook audience too small: Your budget won’t be spent or your ad will quickly suffer from ad fatigue.
If you’re struggling to find your optimum audience size, contact us for some free advice. (But please, make sure you aren’t making any of the other mistakes in this article first!).
Setting and Forgetting
This is one of the most frustrating Facebook ad mistakes, because the only reason it happens is laziness.
If you do everything correctly, set-up your ad perfectly and use all the knowledge you’ve learnt to create your ad and get it running, it doesn’t mean you’re finished! That’s just the beginning.
Setting your ad and forgetting is another mistake that we see all the time. Every time your ad delivers to a new prospect, it’s an opportunity for you to learn and optimise.
It doesn’t matter what type of campaign you’re running, who you’re targeting or how much you’re spending, you need to check up on your ad regularly. Some ads will work and some won’t, no matter how perfect they seem.
Always return to Business manager to check on their performance!
Creating New Ads When You Already Have a Winning Campaign
If you’ve found an audience who are responding positively to an ad and you’re generating cheap leads, high engagement or conversions, why would you want to waste loads of time, effort and money creating new ads to achieve the same target?
A lot of the intermediate Facebook advertisers (that we see) make this mistake. Instead of analysing how they can optimise and scale a successful campaign, they go about trying to improve upon it with a new ad and audience.
If you’ve been running Facebook ads for a little while and you understand (at least) the basics, you should have multiple ads and audiences, and I bet, whilst you’re trying to build new ones, there’s probably a winner already in there somewhere, you just haven’t seen it or thought to optimise.
Winning campaigns can take time and tests to uncover, so it’s incredibly frustrating when we see advertisers who have already found a winner, but have left it in order to create new ads.
The grass isn’t always greener on the other side, sometimes it’s better to improve (and scale) what you’ve already achieved.
Too Much Text (on Ad Images)
Facebook used to have black and white rules about the amount of text that they allowed in their ads.
If your ad image contained more than 20% text, you’d receive an email informing you that your ad had been disapproved and you’d have to change it before it would be approved.
However, this has changed and that’s why it makes our list. Facebook now classify their text-in-images rule into 4 different categories:
- Low
- OK
- Medium
- High
The problem is that Facebook won’t necessarily disapprove your ad because it has too much text anymore, instead they will penalise its reach. And, the further down their 4 step scale your ad is, the fewer people it will reach.
If you’re unsure how FB will view your text-in-image ad, use Facebook’s Text Overlay Tool.
No Ad to Landing Page Consistency
Credibility is earned, not given. If you’re running ads that look nothing like your landing pages, you are immediately confusing your prospects and questioning your credibility.
When you see an ad, you expect the landing page to look like it was created by the same company, otherwise it can instantly turn you off the proposition.
If you are using images in your ad, there is no excuse for them looking completely different to your landing pages!
By running an ad image that doesn’t do this, you are jeopardising your conversion rate. Gaining link clicks on your front-end ad is all well and good, but it means nothing if you aren’t converting!
Make sure your ad and landing pages are consistent!
No Ad Creative Split Tests
Creating an ad is great, it’s a step in the right direction, but when you don’t run split tests, you have little chance of optimising your ad (particularly the ad creative).
There are tons of different split tests that can be ran on any campaign and you’d be shocked at the difference a colour, headline or photo vs illustration change can make on your campaigns.
Split tests are the best way to optimise your ad creative into a streamlined, conversion machine. On top of this, they’re the best way to understand more about your audience’s preferences.
When you understand what type of ad creatives attract your audiences attention, you can use this knowledge in all your future campaigns.
Equally as bad, is testing too many things at once. Stick to one or two tests at a time, pick a winner and test again.
If you’re stuck for ideas, check out these 20 Ways to Split Test Your Way to Facebook Ad Success.
Running Conversion Campaigns Without Enough Data
I know that you’re really excited about making sales from your Facebook ads and the best way for you to do this is to create a campaign using the Conversions (especially when set to purchases) ad objective.
However, if you haven’t made enough sales, this campaign simply will not perform as you’d like it to and this is a massive Facebook ad mistake.
When you create a Conversions (purchase URL) campaign, you tell Facebook to target your ad at the people who are most likely to ‘buy’ on your landing page, and when your pixel has enough data, these can produce an incredible ROI.
And this is why so many beginners rush into a Conversions (purchase custom conversions URL) campaign, only for it to fail, waste their budget (which would be better spent elsewhere) and put them off FB ads for life.
Facebook need at least 50-100 conversion per week to fully optimise their conversions algorithm. Don’t run Conversion for purchase campaigns before your pixel has enough data to work with. For some of you, this may mean running other campaigns until you are able to increase your ad budget to generate enough conversions for this type of campaign.
No Videos
Videos are engaging, make viewers stick on your ad for longer and give you more time to get your core value propositions over…
…and Facebook love them.
When running ads, you’ll soon discover that videos can have a much larger reach than images (on the same budget).
This is due to a variety of factors, but particularly if Facebook notice that people are watching your video ad for longer. The platform prefer to show video ads to their users, because it keeps them on their platform for longer and people engage with them more, which tells Facebook that their users like them.
If you aren’t running videos in your ads, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. I have heard loads of different excuses from people who don’t run video ads, they usually look something like these:
Problem: I don’t have the budget to afford a camera or recording equipment.
Answer: Smart phones have amazing cameras. A video doesn’t need to be super high budget to achieve your aims.
Problem: I don’t know how to edit a video.
Answer: Watch a YouTube video on editing, download an editing tool (there are LOADS) and learn from playing around with it, get someone on Fiverr to do it for you (for a really low price) or do enough takes of your video until you don’t need to edit it.
Problem: I don’t want to be on video.
Answer: Be brave, or use one of the many video tools out there to create one for you, whether that is a whiteboard, illustration or slideshow style video.
Problem: I don’t know what to make a video about
Answer: Create something that your target audience would want to watch, that matches up with your advertising aims. Simple!
Conclusion
Facebook advertising can seem like a minefield, but if you set up the basics correctly, learn from people who know what they’re doing and keep a close eye on your ad performance, you’ll get the hang of it quicker than you know.
We have put together tons of different guides and articles about how to get the most from your campaigns, if you can avoid the Facebook ad mistakes in this article and don’t try to run before you can walk, you’ll get there.
Before you take your first steps towards any goal, it’s important that you invest in yourself, that means learning! Everyone has been a beginner at some point…
…but that doesn’t mean we’ve all had to fail a million times to reach the top (just a few times)!
By coming to the Facebook ad party now, you can learn from others and avoid the mistakes they made when they started out.
Josh Barney - https://www.einsteinmarketer.com
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