4 Most Common Facebook Ad Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

I have tried & tested all the different ways social media marketing works & monitored what platforms produce the best results. When it comes to social media marketing, Facebook is easily the best advertising platform. With over 2 billion monthly active users and its partnership with Instagram—who also boasts having over 800 million monthly active users—the amount of potential ad reach on Facebook is staggering. Facebook also makes it easier for businesses to advertise on their platform through its analytics integration and numerous advertising tools.

However, despite all the robust advertising features, not all businesses who choose to advertise on Facebook reap the rewards of their efforts. The success of your Facebook advertising relies heavily on the strategies you implement and not entirely on the platform and its tools itself. Here are some of the most common Facebook ad mistakes that many businesses commit, and a few tips to help you avoid them:

1. Targeting an audience range that’s too broad or too narrow

A common mistake with paid advertising is going too broad or too narrow with your target audience: Having too broad or too big an audience, you will likely waste advertising budget on the wrong people; too narrow or too small an audience, you will also likely miss out on a lot of potential customers.

How to avoid: An audience between 500,000 to 1 million is often a good range to start when launching a Facebook ad campaign. The key is to find balance between the numbers and to aim for a potential reach that’s big enough so that Facebook’s delivery system can automatically optimize and streamline your campaign. Other techniques that you can implement to measure out the perfect audience number are the following:

• Add more “Interests” into your targeting to add more people to your audience, or use “Exclusions” to filter out and reduce the number.

• Split and categorize your audience into different audience personas according to age, gender, location, interests, and other demographics. You can also create custom audiences based on varying stages of your sales funnel: Those who haven’t heard about your business yet, those who are already familiar with you, and those that are very likely to buy from you.

• Rotate your target groups. For example, target Audience 1 this week, then Audience 2 the next, and so on.

2. Running the same ad for too long

Ad fatigue is among the most common advertising pitfalls, even outside of Facebook—audiences will eventually become “blind” to your ad for seeing it too frequently than warranted. Running the same ad for too long is one of the main causes for ad fatigue, and this can diminish your click-through rates (CTR).

How to avoid: There are numerous ways to combat ad fatigue, but among the best and efficient strategies is to simply rotate your ads. If you opt to use the same campaign objective, use different visuals, play with the layout and the ad copy, or change your ad’s background color. You can also do the following:

• Use the Power Editor to set the “daily unique reach optimization” option. This enables Facebook to show your ads to people only once per day.

• Keep your ad frequency low. Go to Facebook Ads Manager and create an Automated Rule to pause your ad campaign if it goes over a frequency of your choosing.

• Exclude people who have already engaged with your ads. You need to set up Facebook Pixels first to create a custom audience. Then use Power Editor to exclude those particular audiences from your ad campaign.

3. Using low-quality visuals and ad copy

With so much focus and concern on the results of an ad campaign, many marketers often overlook the very essence of an ad: its content and its visuals. Using low-quality visuals and an ad copy that’s too long and simply not compelling enough will definitely not  help your campaign. Your ad will more than likely be ignored amidst the sea of eye-catching information available to them on the newsfeed.

How to avoid: Focus on delivering high-quality content and compelling visuals. Don’t rely too much on stock photos; professional photography works best for businesses, as it’s essentially more tailored and significantly unique to your brand, and is a reflection of your company as a whole.

• Images that tend to work best in Facebook ads include those with zoomed-in product photos, faces of people, striking colors, and stunning landscapes.

• Be mindful of the appropriate image sizes and aspect ratios. For more information, check out Facebook’s ad image guideline here.

• The recommended length of your ad copy should be around 90 characters, including spaces. Longer than that and Facebook will truncate the text. Also, be sure to place the most important message at the beginning of the copy.

• If you’re considering including text in the ad image, be sure to keep the text at a minimum. Ad images with more than 20% of text may experience reduced delivery/reach.

4. Skimping on the ad budget

With Facebook’s recent algorithm change on their newsfeed, it’s more challenging now for businesses to get organic reach. This means that if you want to reach the number of audience you’re targeting and fulfill your marketing goals, you need to be prepared to invest in your ad campaigns. The problem is, many companies often skimp on the ad budget—the lesser your ad budget, the fewer is the ad reach and the lesser chances you have in optimizing your ad.

How to avoid: There is no hard-and-fast rule as to the ideal budget for Facebook ads. However, according to the US Small Business Administration, small businesses should allocate 7% to 8% of their revenues to marketing. Here are other tips that can help you determine a reasonable budget for your Facebook ad campaign:

• Consider your company’s gross annual revenue, overall business goal, and specific marketing objectives when calculating your ad budget.

• Allocate certain percentages of your total ad budget for different goals. For example, 70% to drive opt-ins to your newsletter and therefore generate leads, 20% to boost posts and drive traffic to your landing page, and 10% to get new likes to your Page.

• To maximize your ad budget, build organic traction by letting your posts run for 24 hours before boosting them. This way, you can determine how much more you should spend in promoting your ad.

With all that’s been said, it’s equally important to note that it takes patience and perseverance to see significant and favorable results from your Facebook ad campaigns. Monitor the performance of each of your ad campaigns and adjust accordingly—it’s essential to take cues from your audience and see what works best for them. After all, the success of your ad campaign is determined by how your audience responds to it.

If you want to know more about social media marketing, or if you’re interested in working with Bespoke Media Management on any of your marketing needs, please get in contact with us.

Written by Nic Fren