The landscape of Facebook Marketing has evolved throughout the years with the days of organic-only content well behind us. Between increasing saturation and brand involvement – Facebook Ads have become the go-to growth avenue for businesses of all sizes and industries.
But with all of the changes in trends, data management, and bidding – many brands don’t know how to get the most from their advertising budgets. That’s where we come in!
Let us break down the 6 common (yet fixable) Facebook Advertising mistakes most businesses make.
You’re Not Testing Enough
If there’s one certainty in Digital Marketing, it’s that successful campaigns are built, not thought up. This is because true success stems from data-driven efforts. Regardless of how many years of experience you may have, you don’t know it all. You may think a certain idea is good – but until you’ve tried it, you’ll never know. As an example, you shouldn’t allocate a large budget towards an eCommerce campaign without testing the audience first, as that would be very risky.
This is why we test and let the data speak, not our human biases. After all, would you invest your life savings in a “maybe”?
Probably not…
You’re Relying on Cookie-Cutter Targeting Practices
In a perfect world, we can throw together generic targeting parameters, click “Publish” and move on to the next task. If only…
The truth is, even the strongest advertising budgets become weak without powerful, in-depth targeting and it’s up to your Digital Marketing experts to make the most of every Euro. Given the saturated world of Facebook, the level of competition is undeniable. Everyone, from your competitors to your friends and everyone in between is competing for attention. So when we target, we have to do so mindfully, so we don’t share our ads with non-potential customers, thus wasting ad spend. The slightest target pivot can lead to BIG results.
Of course, every campaign is unique. Depending on your brand and industry, broad targeting may very well work. Though in some cases, overlooking in-depth targeting can deprive your team of valuable insights that can serve your long-term goals. In short, because successful Facebook Advertising campaigns take time to develop, marketers should place value on what they’re able to learn from both successful and failed campaigns. This is what separates the professionals from the amateurs.
You Aren’t Aligning Your Campaigns and Goals
Facebook provides various Campaign Objectives for a reason and it’s wise to use them. The Campaign Objective you choose will impact the way your ads are delivered, as well as how Facebook quantifies something as a “success”. For example, if your goal is to build a custom audience for a long-term remarketing campaign, you’ll want to choose “Engagement” for your first batch of ads.
Since you’ll be looking for low-commitment reactions, you’ll want to measure and have Facebook’s delivery system optimize for engagements so you can get more for your budget. If you were to set it to, say Conversions, you’d find yourself paying much more for fewer results.
Additionally, advertisers should consider the experience of their customers and page visitors. KPI (Key Performance Indicators) such as “Landing Page Views” or “Add to Cart” can provide some much-needed insight into your customers’ on-platform behavioral habits. This information is almost-priceless when it comes to building retargeting audiences down the line – something that can make or break a long-term campaign.
You’re Not Considering Residents vs Visitors
Geotargeting is very important in the world of Facebook Advertising. Still, many people pick the locations they want and consider themselves finished. This can damage the effectiveness of your delivery, causing you to once again, spend more for less.
As an example, depending on your industry, there can be a BIG difference between targeting people IN Berlin vs people that LIVE IN Berlin. Berlin is a known tourist attraction and if you’re promoting something that would only appeal to Berlin residents, you’d be wasting valuable budget by serving your ads to non-qualified consumers… all while raising your CPC (Cost Per Clicks) in the process.
Assuming you have a large enough audience for testing purposes, the more you can narrow down your audience, the better!
You’re Not Investing Enough in Creative
The world of Digital Marketing is a competitive one. Everyone from brand pages to personal accounts is fighting for attention – something that must be earned. Given how saturated the average News Feed is, it’s vital for brands to invest in creative that gets people to stop scrolling, even if it’s just for a second.
Uninspired creativity will yield uninspired results. You’ll have to stand out if you want to increase awareness and sales at a profitable rate.
When you combine intuitive design and creative copywriting with rigorous testing that we mentioned earlier, you’ll have data-driven ads that convert at a high enough rate that easily justifies the initial investment.
You always use Automatic Placements
[Update 02.09.2021] Placements can be confusing, so I decided to reword this paragraph to make it more straightforward.
Automatic Placements are great! I mostly stick with them because they work well and give the algorithms the most room to learn. We may worry that Facebook will push tons of budget on ineffective placements, but algorithms are smart, and as long as we have the right campaign goal, they will favor placements with the highest probability of conversion. Suppose you check your campaign in Ad Manager and select Placement under Breakdowns. In that case, you’ll notice that most of the budget goes to the (traditionally) most effective placements (e.g., feeds, stories), while some less popular ones are allocated just a few dollars per month.
In the past, marketers opted to hand-pick placements to optimize resources for different formats – stories, feeds, right column. Nowadays, this is no longer an issue as Facebook has provided tools to customize your creative for placements at the ad settings level.
So when should you choose Manual Placements? For example, when you want to get more engagement under your organic Facebook post. If you use the “Boost Post” feature or use Automatic Placements in Facebook Ad Manager, you will find that Facebook will easily spend your budget and generate a lot of engagement. With Automatic Placement enabled, Facebook will copy your post and create a dark post on Instagram. It will look great on paper (in the ad manager), but you won’t see too many new reactions or comments when you look at the original post. It will often generate many cheap reactions, but it will be completely useless for you and your original Facebook post. In this case, I recommend making sure you go with Manual Placements and only Facebook Feed activated.
Seeing Facebook Ads Clearly
Running a business can sometimes feel like running on a treadmill. No matter how hard you work, you’re still on an endless road. Managing your own Facebook Ads campaigns can take you away from running your business effectively and when you consider how often Facebook changes its rules and best practices, your treadmill might feel like it’s moving a whole lot faster.
So with that said, you should ask yourself if it’s worth investing countless hours running your own ads when you could just partner with an agency with a proven track record.
If you’re ready to start seeing more progress with your business, contact one of the experts at the Monsoon Agency. Our seasoned Facebook Ads experts will turn over highly-profitable, conversion-happy campaigns so you can focus on running your business.
