20 mistakes in paid promotion on Facebook
Updated: Mar 3
ost of us are on the Facebook social network and use it not only for personal reasons, but within the professional purposes as well. A part of your target group can be easily reached through this social network.
What we'll be having next is about:
frequent errors on Facebook ads
obtaining the desired results
starting using ads for your business, yet you don't want to make costly errors
First things first: it is highly important to reach those that are suitable for your business with small costs, but with concrete results that you can work with.
How an Facebook help you in this?
it will make you get a bit more organised - you will definitely need to set some objectives and know clearly what you want to obtain, whom to reach
it helps you get to the desired audience - once you know your target group's profile, its algorithms will support you in getting to them easy
it helps you create easy the ads - it has directive tools and a simplified interface that guides you through the entire process
it gives you measuring tools - you have all the numbers of the insights of persons reached, engaged, links clicks and so many others
it helps you monitor the ad easy - you can stop it or increase it at any time, as well as you can adjust it on the go
it optimises itself the ad too - it will offer you the possibility to let the algorithms optimise the ad for you
it brings you new clients - you might have not reached all the people your ad targeted if it wouldn't be for this network
Enough with the introduction. Let's see the top 20 mistakes:
Wrongly setting the marketing objective - Be honest, study the options available and chose the suitable one for you.
Setting the audience - decide on the age, location, functions, interests, etc (as many details as you give, as better, as it identifies the specific people); you can easily overlap audiences or exclude certain criteria that can simultaneously be fulfilled; the failure in Facebook promoting starts with the moment you set the wrong audience!
Good audience, but wrong message - adjust the message to the profile set for your audience as language, objects to promote, information offered; mind the relevance and connection between the photo, title, text and button (call to action); it must raise the curiosity and to engage the people seeing it and making them click on your ad; offer something special, unique that can be reached only through you; include the urgency, where possible (these are the 0 things to know before...)
Good audience, good message, but wrong product - this is the main reason why you cannot sale; adjust the products offered in agreement with the audience; if you can't change the product, change the audience
You don't do A/B testing - you can run 2 campaigns at the same time in order to see which one brings the better results (those that convert better); test the audience with difference locations, positioning, photos, text, products, whatever you want to try out; make sure though you do change the settings in order to really be able to compare the 2 campaigns
You test too many things at the same time - for the A/B testing you try only one category at a time (either the audience, either the age, either the location, etc.
You don't optimize nor measure it permanently - everything is measurable and taken into consideration so read the stats frequently and see how it goes; something goes wrong? adjust it; everything is good? see what else can you add to it to make it better and reach more people with those characteristics; feel free to use Pixelcode once you connected it to your account (it helps you measure in real time those that clicked your ad, Facebook can help you optimize automatically your campaigns, you can see the real results of your ads, you can reach clients that visited your website, but of whose contacts you don't have, you can contact the visitors based on what they did or did not do on your website, or you can scale the campaigns starting with the minimal data)
Optimizing in a wrong direction - you reset the audience wrong, you don't take risks, you optimize just a parameter (just the photo, just the audience, etc.), you lack to understand Facebook's algorithm, you set the budget too low or too high, you are in a hurry or delayed, you don't know how to optimize, you don't try
Lack of measurements - you don't monitor the numbers that do matter: frequency (how many times the ad is shown to each audience), importance (what is important, what is being followed, frequency, click rate, spent budget, actions, purchases)
Wrong interpretation of the data Facebook offers - the scores are from 1-10 and is relevant in accordance to whom you target, the matching between the ad and the audience, the received feedback, testing it
Insufficient budget for testing - Facebook needs 24 conversions in order to be able to know what is the best for you (for automatic optimization)
Lack of re-targeting - save your audiences and compare them to see which features had the most successful and start combining the characteristics until you reach your great audience
Lack of similar audiences - you need a minimum of 100 in order it to work, yet the recommended minimum is 500 persons
Your audience doesn't want your product - the audience is right, the message is right, yet the audience does not want this product or solution, is not ready for it yet
Lack of optimizing beneath Facebook - the traffic sources or the website are not well optimized, it takes too much time to get to the page from where to buy your product (speed, several number of pages to get to the page wanted, automatizations, etc.)
Lack of matching between the ad and where it leads - the land-page should be similar to the message you have in the ad
Too much/few steps in the conversion process - the eased way to reach from the ad to the selling page, maximum 5-6 steps
You try to reinvent the wheel - learn from experts, use the strategies that work, select what works for you and adjust them to your purpose; don't waste your time in creating something unique
Not knowing Facebook's algorithm - you don't pay for the number of showing to your audience, but for the result you want; the time and costs should be connected; there is a perfect flow that goes from objective (chose right and honestly your objective) - budget and time (allow enough time and adjusted budget) - audience (go to the right set audience) - ad (match the ad with the audience and the desired result) - desired result (have it permanently in execution)
Not to promote on Facebook - as we said, there is a part of your audience on Facebook too and its tools can easily help you to get through them; would be a pity not to use it in your advantage
Facebook ads might work or might not. It depends on you and what you do to make it work. In the end, Facebook it's just a tool and it's up to you how you use it in your advantage.
You don't need to go with high budgets from the beginning. For example, 100 euro can easily reach about 100,000 persons of your audience. Start with 10 euro to test and to have metrics to analyse while learning on the go.