Facebook allowing its users to advertise to anyone for as little as $1. It’s never been a better time to master this advertising channel. With the in-depth targeting options available with Facebook Advertising you can get your marketing message to absolutely anyone. However, if you are unfamiliar with how Facebook Ads work you can make some very costly Facebook Advertising Mistakes.
1. Insufficient data
The single biggest mistake that most businesses make with Facebook ads is making decisions based on insufficient data. This is the truth. Most people have when they’re running Facebook ads is they’re making decisions either too early or with insufficient data.
- Whether this means giving up on ads way too early.
- Scaling too early
- Making split testing decisions without enough data behind them
And this is a really dangerous territory. Because it means you could be potentially leaving hundreds, thousands or even millions of dollars on the table.
When someone takes a potentially really high performing ad and cuts it off right away. Or they see an ad that starts to get a little bit of traction and they dump a ton of money at it, only for it to fizzle out just a couple days later. So here’s why this is important.
You see, Facebook is an algorithm and an algorithm means math. And math means numbers. This means you’ve gotta be sure that you’re providing Facebook with sufficient data and sufficient numbers for them to work appropriately. And to go through the algorithm in order to find the best possible combination of things for you and your ad. And what this means is you’ve gotta feed the beast. You’ve gotta give it both time, and money to get sufficient results from it. This is why it’s so incredibly important to have your entire strategy thought out before you spend your first dollar. This full-funnel marketing.
And basically, it means having your strategy mapped out from ad click all the way through to sale, and maybe even up-sales and continuity and all the stuff that occurs after that. So my biggest suggestion and my biggest takeaway point here is that when you’re setting up your ad campaigns, and when you’re designing everything, make sure that you’ve done it all strategically and make sure that you’ve got key performance indicators or KPIs all set ahead of time.
So you know what numbers you’re shooting for. What is a sufficient amount of time, or the budget is necessary in order to decide if this is a winner or a loser? And then have a strategy in place. Meaning whether your ads are meeting your expectations, or falling below them.
2.Pixel not Installed
So the next biggest mistake is all about having no Pixel installed. And what this means is that when you’re running Facebook ads, you need to make sure that the Facebook Pixel that you’re provided is installed across all of your different websites, and landing pages, and anywhere else you’re gonna be running traffic to.
This is especially important if you’re gonna be running conversion ads obviously as you’re gonna be optimizing for the second step in the funnel but regardless, you wanna make sure that the Facebook Pixel is installed across all of your online assets and properties. This is going to allow you to collect and to basically amalgamate as much data as possible so you can use it later to either re-target people or to create audiences based on different actions they’ve taken.
So again, make sure that Pixel is installed everywhere.
3. Not having enough budget
The next mistake comes down to not having enough budget per ad set. So this kind draws on the biggest mistake we talked about which is basically not having enough data in general.
But when you’re deciding how to carve up your budget and which ad set to put it in, you wanna make sure that each ad set gets a sufficient amount of budget. This is because ads are optimized at the ad set level. This means, again, you’ve gotta give Facebook a sufficient amount of data and a sufficient amount of budget so that they can show it to enough people to get good results.
So let’s say you’re working with a budget of $50 a day. Rather than putting it across 10 different ad sets with five bucks in each, you might wanna put it down to two different ad sets with $25 in each which is going to allow you to get more data a little bit quicker and then, of course, you can scale up the winner and cut the loser later.
4.Too many ads per ad set
The next mistake is having too many ads per ad set. Again, this kinda draws on what we just previous mistakes. But when you start to really spread out all sorts of different ads under an ad set. Facebook is will try and pick and choose which ads to show to your audience. And they’re gonna make a decision really quickly which may not be the best one for your business.
For this reason, try to keep it relatively limited so you can actually get a clear indication and a relatively accurate split test with which ad is actually providing the results you’re after.
5.Audience size
The next mistake is all about using the wrong audience size. And this could be either using a really tiny audience of hundreds or thousands or a massive and huge audience of millions and millions and millions. What you wanna do here is you wanna find that sweet spot.
Maybe between 500,000 and two million people. And this is if you’re targeting nationally or internationally. Now if you’re targeting locally, this is a whole other story. And you can get away with much smaller audience sizes of maybe just a few thousand people.
But again, what you wanna be doing is you want to be giving Facebook enough data so they can optimize the algorithm to get you the results you’re after.
6.Custom audiences
The next mistake people make is not using custom audiences. Whether we’re talking about audiences that you’ve built off the Facebook Pixel that you have installed or whether we’re talking about uploading your email list or your customer list.
These are incredibly powerful audiences because basically what you’re doing is you’re giving Facebook the data with exactly who you want and then telling them, look, these are the people that I’m after.
7.Lookalike audiences
And that moves us nicely into the next mistake which is not using lookalike audiences. You see, a lookalike audience can be built off the custom audience that you’ve just built. Basically when you’re creating a lookalike audience, what it allows you to do is to go out there and tell Facebook, look, these customers that I’ve already got that I’ve just told you are mine, well. And I want you to find the top 1% of people that look just like them and then Facebook is gonna deliver your message and your ads directly to those people.
This is incredibly valuable targeting and some of the best results it gives, almost always come from lookalike audiences.
8.Wrong conversion objective
What this means is that if you want someone to take a specific action, well then, you should tell Facebook what that action is and optimize your ads for that. Don’t be shy here. You can afford to be honest and tell Facebook exactly what you want. And it’s in their best interest to try to get that for you.
This means if you simply want clicks and traffic to your website, well, then you get to pick traffic. If you’ve got a video and you wanna get more views on it, well, then you’re gonna pick video views. And if you want someone to register for a webinar or download a lead magnet, well, then you’re gonna wanna pick the conversion objective. Not traffic, not video views, but the one that you’re actually after.
9.Backup ad creative
The next mistake I see is not having a backup ad creative on hand. This means backup ads with text and different images, different combinations of things you can try. If your ad happens to go stale, or stops losing its effectiveness. The last thing you wanna do is have to scramble to come up with brand new creative and find new images and write new copy as your ad is tanking.
Rather, you’re much better off to have a steady supply and a backup supply of really well-crafted ads that you can put out there whenever you need to. The mistake after that is not having backup ad accounts. Sometimes ads get denied. And sometimes ad accounts even get shut down.
This is why if you’re relying on Facebook ads as your source of traffic, you want to have backup ad accounts in place just in case this happens. One backup ad account is great. Two is probably even better. And three, well, may not be a bad choice.
10.Diversifying your ad platforms
And the final mistake that most people make with Facebook ads is not diversifying ad platforms. If you’re relying solely on Facebook ads as your source of paid traffic, you might wanna start looking into other platforms. YouTube ads or maybe even LinkedIn ads or Google Adwords, or display advertising and whatever is best suited for your business.
But putting all your eggs in that one basket and in that one Facebook ad strategy is really risky. So diversify your traffic platforms to get multiple irons in the fire ready to strike whenever you need to.
Alright, so there you have it. The top mistakes that I see people making. So let me ask you, have you ever made any of these mistakes? And are there any takeaways that you’re gonna be able to use in your business immediately? Also, have you ever had an ad denied or an ad account shut down? If so, let me know in the comment section below and let me know what you did about it.