5 Mistakes When Running Facebook Ad Campaigns
Fortunately for many businesses that invest in online advertising, Facebook advertising is one of the least expensive platforms to advertise on.
Facebook advertising should be included in every businesses’ digital marketing strategy for following reasons:
- Reach new customers
- Target a specific audience
- Advertise to people by location, age, interests, and behaviour
- Ads tailored to your specific goals
- Various ad placements
- Multiple ad creatives to choose from
How Facebook ads work
You need to know what you want your Facebook ads to accomplish. This is done by identifying campaign objectives.
Would you like to drive more visitors from social media to your website? Or do you want to maximise the number of people who see your ad? Maybe you just want more likes on the page.
Once you’ve identified your campaign objective(s), it’s time to create or select your audience and choose the demographics and behaviours that represent your audience.
Facebook also allows you to create refined audiences called Custom and Lookalike audiences.
The next step is to decide where you want to run your ad – either on Facebook, Instagram, or the apps…
Set your budget, pick a format, and voila – you are ready to start running ads to meet your business goals.
Common Mistakes When Running Facebook Advertising Campaigns
On the surface, Facebook advertising looks straightforward: You simply create and publish the ads. The truth is that Facebook advertising still requires a level of expertise and strategizing.
Here are five common mistakes when running Facebook advertising campaigns:
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Not having clear Facebook marketing goals and objectives
Having defined Facebook goals matters. Only by setting clear goals can you justify the actions you’re taking to meet the needs of your business. Social media objectives are contingent on KPI’s and metrics. You need to have goals and measure outcomes to know what’s working and what needs to be improved.
Your social media strategy needs to be thoughtful and on-point. You will need to do some research and adjust your tactics based on performance over time.
Top goals for social media advertising campaigns:
- Increase brand awareness
- Lead generation
- Increase engagement
- Increase web traffic
- Facebook page like
2. You don’t know who your audience is
Your current and potential customers are probably among the more than 2 billion people on Facebook.
How do you reach the segment of this audience that is relevant to your business?
Target by interest is one approach. Facebook analyses behaviours on the platform and categorises its users according to indicated interests. You can then use these broad interest categories to focus in on your audience.
For example, if you’re in the business of selling car tyres, you can target customers in the sub-category Off-Road Tyres. You can narrow that even further by targeting specific tyre manufacturers.
Facebook recommends narrowing your audience and searching for clear niches.
Facebook ads will be of little value unless you know who you are reaching out to.
Creating a buyer persona for your business will help you define your target market.
Create a profile of your ideal customer as if he or she were a real person.
Give your personas names. That will remind you that you’re speaking to an actual person!
3. Using the wrong Ad Format
There are different Facebook ad formats for different goals.
You can choose from Photo, Video, Stories, Messenger, Carousel, Slideshow, Collection, and Instant Experiences.
Choose the ad format you think will best suit your audience and goals.
Extra tip: test different ad formats!
4. Running too many ads at the same time
Running too many ads at the same time can be a costly mistake. This leads to confusion, a lack of efficiency, and, in the end, poor results.
If you have a very complex ad account, how can you even keep track of everything that’s going on?
Facebook needs at least 50–100 conversions per ad set per week to fully leverage the algorithm, so your ad sets need a reasonable budget if you want the Facebook delivery system to power your ads.
5. Not using the Facebook Pixel
The power of a single piece of code can be tremendous, especially when it’s a piece of code provided by Facebook.
The Facebook pixel allows you to track your website visitors or create retargeting audiences, track custom conversions, and optimize ads.
The time to install and utilise Facebook pixel is now.
Not only will you create better ads, but you will have the opportunity to target your audiences more accurately.
Install the pixel on your website and start collecting data so you can be ready to use it when launching your Facebook campaigns.
Facebook advertising can take some time to get the hang of, but by keeping these common mistakes in mind, Facebook ads will bring in amazing results and can even lead to faster growth of your business.
