Advertising on social media platforms has become an essential part of any marketing strategy. With over 2.8 billion monthly active users, Facebook offers a massive audience for businesses to connect with potential customers. However, running successful Facebook ad campaigns requires careful planning and execution. In this article, we will explore the seven common mistakes advertisers make when running Facebook ads and provide valuable insights on how to avoid them. Whether you are a seasoned marketer or just starting with Facebook ads, this guide will help you optimize your campaigns for maximum effectiveness.
Table of Contents
Below 7 Costly Mistakes to Avoid When Running Facebook Ads
#1: Letting your ad creative get stale
One of the biggest factors that affect your ad performance is your ad creative. This includes your image, video, headline, text, and call to action. Your ad creative should be eye-catching, relevant, and compelling to your audience. But it should also be fresh and updated regularly.
Why? Because ad fatigue is real. Ad fatigue is when your audience sees your ad too many times and becomes bored or annoyed by it. This leads to lower click-through rates, higher costs, and lower conversions. To avoid ad fatigue, you should test different variations of your ad creative and see what works best for your audience. You should also monitor your frequency metric, which shows how many times your ad was shown to the same person on average. A good rule of thumb is to keep your frequency below 3.
#2: Optimizing for the wrong objective
Another common mistake advertisers make is choosing the wrong campaign objective. Your campaign objective is what you want people to do when they see your ads. For example, you can choose objectives like traffic, conversions, video views, lead generation, etc.
Your campaign objective affects how Facebook optimizes and delivers your ads. For example, if you choose traffic as your objective, Facebook will show your ads to people who are more likely to click on them. If you choose conversions as your objective, Facebook will show your ads to people who are more likely to take a specific action on your website or app.
Choosing the wrong objective can lead to poor results and wasted budget. For example, if you want people to buy your product, but you choose traffic as your objective, you might get a lot of clicks but few sales. To avoid this mistake, you should align your campaign objective with your marketing goal. You should also use the Facebook pixel or SDK to track and measure the actions people take after seeing your ads.
#3: Failing to understand budget controls
Facebook ads can be expensive if you don’t know how to control your budget. There are two types of budget controls you can use: daily budget and lifetime budget.
A daily budget is the amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign per day. A lifetime budget is the amount you’re willing to spend on a campaign over its duration.
The difference between these two types of budget controls is how Facebook allocates and spends your budget. With a daily budget, Facebook will try to spend your budget evenly throughout the day. With a lifetime budget, Facebook will try to spend your budget optimally throughout the campaign duration. Both types of budget controls have their pros and cons. A daily budget gives you more flexibility and control over your spending. A lifetime budget gives you more efficiency and performance.
To choose the right type of budget control for your campaign, you should consider factors like:
– Your campaign duration
– Your campaign objective
– Your audience size
– Your expected results – Your bidding strategy
#4: Over segmenting audiences
Facebook has a lot of targeting options that allow you to reach specific audiences based on their demographics, interests, behaviors, locations, etc. This can be very useful for creating personalized and relevant ads for different segments of your market.
However, over segmenting audiences can also backfire if you’re not careful. Over segmenting audiences can lead to:
– Creating too many ad sets that are hard to manage and optimize
– Diluting your budget across too many ad sets that compete with each other
– Reducing the size and quality of your audiences – Increasing the complexity and cost of your campaigns
To avoid over segmenting audiences, you should follow these best practices:
– Use broad audiences when possible and let Facebook’s algorithm find the best prospects for you
– Use narrow audiences when necessary and make sure they are large enough to deliver results
– Use lookalike audiences to expand your reach and find new customers who are similar to your existing ones
– Use custom audiences to retarget people who have already interacted with your business – Use exclusions to avoid showing ads to people who are not relevant or have already converted
#5: Not checking audience overlaps
Audience overlap is when two or more of your ad sets target the same or similar audiences. This can cause problems for your campaigns, such as:
– Increasing your costs due to bidding against yourself
– Reducing your reach due to frequency capping
– Confusing your audience due to inconsistent messaging
– Lowering your performance due to poor optimization
To avoid audience overlap, you should check and monitor your audience overlap percentage using the Audience Overlap tool in Facebook Ads Manager. This tool allows you to compare up to five audiences and see how much they overlap with each other.
If you find that your audiences overlap too much, you should take action to reduce the overlap, such as:
– Combining or merging similar ad sets into one
– Changing or refining your targeting options – Using exclusions to avoid targeting the same people across different ad sets
#6: Controlling placements rather than customizing
Facebook offers a variety of placements where you can show your ads, such as:
– Facebook News Feed
– Facebook Stories
– Facebook Video Feeds
– Facebook In-Stream Videos
– Facebook Marketplace
– Facebook Right Column
– Instagram Feed
– Instagram Stories
– Instagram Explore
– Instagram Reels
– Audience Network
– Messenger Inbox
– Messenger Stories
By default, Facebook uses automatic placements, which means it will show your ads across all the available placements that are suitable for your campaign objective. This can help you maximize your reach and results while minimizing your costs.
However, some advertisers prefer to control their placements and choose specific ones where they want their ads to appear. This can be useful for testing and optimizing different placements for different goals.
But controlling placements can also limit your potential and increase your costs if you’re not careful. Controlling placements can lead to:
– Missing out on opportunities to reach more people on other placements
– Paying more for competitive placements that have higher demand and lower supply
– Showing ads that are not optimized for different placements and devices
To avoid these pitfalls, you should follow these best practices:
– Use automatic placements when possible and let Facebook optimize your ad delivery across all the available placements
– Use manual placements when necessary and make sure you have enough budget and audience size to deliver results on each placement – Use placement asset customization to create different versions of your ad creative for different placements and devices
#7: Failing to nurture top of funnel audiences to bottom of funnel
Facebook ads are not a one-and-done deal. You can’t expect people to buy from you or sign up for your offer after seeing one ad. You need to nurture them through a funnel that takes them from awareness to consideration to conversion.
A funnel is a series of steps that guide your prospects towards a desired action. A typical funnel consists of three stages:
– Top of funnel (TOFU): This is where you attract and educate your prospects about their problem and your solution. Your goal is to generate awareness and interest.
– Middle of funnel (MOFU): This is where you engage and persuade your prospects to take the next step. Your goal is to generate leads and prospects.
– Bottom of funnel (BOFU): This is where you convince and convert your prospects into customers. Your goal is to generate sales and revenue.
Many advertisers make the mistake of focusing only on the bottom of the funnel and trying to sell directly to cold audiences. This can result in low conversion rates, high costs, and poor ROI.
To avoid this mistake, you should create a funnel strategy that nurtures your prospects through each stage of the funnel using different types of ads, offers, and content. For example:
– For TOFU, you can use video ads, carousel ads, or collection ads that showcase your brand story, value proposition, or customer testimonials. You can also use lead magnets, quizzes, or webinars that provide valuable information or education.
– For MOFU, you can use dynamic product ads, catalog sales ads, or conversion ads that showcase your products or services. You can also use lead forms, landing pages, or email marketing that capture leads or prospects.
– For BOFU, you can use retargeting ads, offer ads, or catalog sales ads that show relevant products or discounts. You can also use urgency triggers, social proof, or guarantees that overcome objections or fears. By creating a funnel strategy, you can increase your chances of converting more prospects into customers and maximizing your ROI.
Additional Resources:
- Facebook Business Help Center: https://www.facebook.com/business/help
- Facebook Ads Guide: https://www.facebook.com/business/ads-guide
- Facebook Blueprint: https://www.facebook.com/business/learn
Conclusion
Facebook ads can be a great way to grow your business online. But they can also be a source of frustration and disappointment if you make these common mistakes.
By avoiding these mistakes and following the best practices in this blog post, you can create more effective and profitable Facebook ads campaigns.
If you need help with creating or managing your Facebook ads campaigns, feel free to Impact Digital.