Traditional advertising is becoming more expensive and it isn’t flexible, so it's no wonder marketers are using Facebook ads to reach their customers. With more than 2 billion active users, this social network is a great platform for business development — ads help companies to grow and introduce potential customers to a variety of offerings.
Often, the time and money invested in creating Facebook ads may not give the expected results. The key is to identify and fix mistakes to achieve better advertising results.
1. Not Being Specific Enough with Targeting
Businesses should be realistic in targeting the product, service, or brand. If your audience is too large, it's best to narrow it by age, location, or gender. The same goes for an audience that is too small because in this case, you are not using the full potential of advertising.
On Facebook, you can show your ad to existing customers and followers of the page, or to people who are not yet following your business. There is an opportunity to use automated Facebook ads, which can help you achieve various business goals, such as attracting people to your website or gaining more potential customers. Over time, these ads will "learn" what might work best, making improvements and suggestions.
2. Wrong Type of Goal for the Intended Action
When you start planning an advertising campaign, you need to understand what the company's core values and advertising goals are. The goal of the campaign is essential to help Facebook understand what you want to achieve with your ad. Facebook offers several goals to choose from — each of which focuses on a specific result and action from the audience. For example, do you want customers to install your app, purchase products from your e-commerce store, or provide contact information?
Choosing the right goal is very important for a successful campaign because it determines the outcome of the ad. If you choose the wrong goal, there is a possibility to spend time and money on something that will not give the desired results. If you're not sure when choosing the right goals, use A / B testing - two campaigns that run at the same time, but with a different goal. After such a test, you will be able to see which goal works better.
3. Too Much Experimentation
The ads you create should be tested and verified to understand the details that attract the most customers and deliver the best results. It is necessary to examine very carefully the different types of Facebook ads for the chosen audience. If too much experimentation or correction is done, it will be difficult to determine exactly what your audience has attracted the most. Advertising takes time to show its potential. Once data for a longer period is available, you can make strategic decisions about changes.
4. Spending Too Much Money
If your ad doesn't deliver the results you want, you may be tempted to spend the extra money to do something about it. However, this should not be rushed. First, you should identify the problem. By understanding exactly what problem is responsible for the missing result, you can react and correct the error.
For your advertising campaign to be successful and your advertising budget to be spent meaningfully, we recommend that you carefully analyze your customers and choose your target audience. You also need to understand what your audience likes the best. If your ad is performing poorly, you should stop running it, resolve the issue, and only then reactivate it. It's only worth investing in ads that work. If this does not happen, spending will become uncontrollable and the company may incur losses.
5. Static Ads Only
Facebook ads should not be limited to static visuals. We recommend diversifying your ad content to include video or GIF. Moving images attract much more attention, which increases the chance that the audience will click on the ad. One of the reasons why video and GIF ads are more compelling is that they can help you tell a story, no matter how short. In this way, it is possible to intrigue the viewer and create interest in what will happen next.
6. Non-catchy Content
It is important not only to define the audience and test different methods but also to provide attractive content. Otherwise, potential customers will miss it. Advertising must be clear, pleasant, visually appealing, interactive, and, most importantly, engaging. If the ad is successful in terms of content, the audience is more likely to pay attention to it and possibly become customers. Avoid boring scenarios, dull colours, and long text. Advertising must visually express emotions and inspire.
7. Not Taking Advantage of Optimization
Facebook ads are complicated. Many different things can affect your ad performance. Without knowing how effective your ad has been, it's not possible to analyze and optimize your ads in the future. In this case, Facebook ad reports can be a great help, showing you the data you need to create more successful ads. You should also look at where your ads have performed best, how often your ad has appeared, and other metrics. Besides, you can set auto-optimization by specifying your audience and budget.
If you want to start creating ads on social media such as Facebook or Instagram to reach the widest audience in Latvia and the world, we invite you to choose the services of Facebook certified specialists, which will help you to achieve better sales results in a relatively short period. Read more about our service here Facebook Advertising.