Everyone is online nowadays. You are probably reading this on your phone, or you will pick up your phone after reading this to scroll through your social media. Social media has evolved from the humble beginnings of connecting people that hadn’t seen each other in years to a platform for businesses to reach a massive audience through pages, groups, and of course, paid ads.
In the second quarter of 2021, Facebook’s total advertising revenue amounted to roughly 28.5 billion dollars. If you want to reach a new audience and get your name out there, Facebook Ads are the way to go. Their targeting is great, it tracks the behaviors and interests of its users, it will cater ads to people on Facebook, Instagram, and other partner networks, and if you know what you’re doing, it has an amazing ROI. However, most of the time, Facebook Ads don’t perform well at all. We’re going to look at the most common mistakes people make when they run Facebook Ad, and how to ensure you get the most bang for your buck.
These are some common mistakes people make when running Facebook Ads:
- A budget that doesn’t match goals
- Poor audience targeting and overlapping
- Stale ad creative
- Lack of clear objectives
- Using the wrong ad type
- Using the set it and forget it method
Just like with Google Ads, budget is everything for Facebook Ads. You can still do a lot with a smaller budget on Facebook, but you might not get the results you want if it’s too low. Make sure you have a good daily budget set to get the most out of your campaigns. If you are running multiple ads, you need to make sure each ad has the correct budget set for your desired outcome. If you want to achieve a $5 per lead conversion rate, your minimum budget for one ad should be between $35-$50/day. Running three ads simultaneously with the same expected outcome means your budget will need to be at least $100/day for optimal performance. This might be confusing, but Pareto PPC is an expert in the PPC field, so we are always happy to help with your ad campaigns.
Much like real estate’s mantra is “location, location, location,” Facebook Ads’ mantra is “audience, audience, audience.” Your audience should be somewhat big. If you try to get too specific with your audience, it could significantly restrict the reach of your ad. On the other hand, if you cast too large of a net, then the wrong people will see your ad, leading to poor conversions. You have to know your target audience and where they are. For example, don’t pay to advertise your winter parkas to someone living in Hawaii. They most likely won’t need what you’re offering. Overlapping audiences happens if you are running multiple ads simultaneously. You can create custom audiences for Facebook Ads, but overlapping audiences can reduce your deliverability. Here’s an example of audience overlap:
Your business sells computers, and you are running three different ads with “unique” audiences.
- For the first audience, you use interests to target specific people: you know many of your customers are gamers, so you create a targeted audience with an interest in gaming.
- Your second audience is based on a demographic of 21-35-year-old males since they are some of your best customers.
- Using Facebook’s lookalike tool, you create your third audience by uploading your current list of customers. Facebook generates a lookalike audience of 1% of its users.
So what does this mean for audience overlap? Well, among your interest in gaming, you’ll likely find males between the ages of 21-35. With the demographic of 21-35-year-old males, some will have an interest in gaming. And since your customers will be similar, your lookalike audience will have both males 21-35 and people interested in gaming. This causes an overlap in your audience and could make your campaigns compete against one another.
Although overlapping is not a bad thing, you want to make sure your ads won’t compete. Competition between your ads will cause you to pay more for fewer results. P.S – Did we mention we’re pros in the PPC game so we can get your audiences set up for you, as well to make sure your ads are shown to the right people in the right place at the right time without overlap? Well, we absolutely can!
The last four mistakes we’ll talk about can all have an impact on each other. We’ve all had ad fatigue. Looking at the same style of ads over and over makes people less likely to click on an ad. Look at what material is out there and think outside the box. You want your creative to be thumb-stopping. There are sites out there to help with keeping your creative new, fresh, and exciting. Step out of your creative zone and explore new ad styles if you notice performance is going down.
However, if you have a great creative but unclear objective, you still won’t get your desired results. Knowing the outcome of your ads is one of the biggest factors in what and where you run your ad. Do you just want more people to view your website, or do you want more conversions? Make sure you know your objective, have an exciting creative, and a clear value prop.
So, you have your creative and objective. Now you can run your ad and walk away until it’s done, right? WRONG! You need to make sure you have the correct ad type. Do you want a single image, video, carousel ad, slideshow? Knowing which ad type will perform best for your audience is crucial in your ad performance. You also need to have your ads set up to display on desktop and mobile devices. Facebook will normally offer a preview of both, so check that before you start your ad. Once you start your ad, don’t just let it run its course. Check every day to see how your campaigns are performing. When looking at your ad insights, you should check the following:
- Click-through rate
- Conversion rate
- Number of leads generated
- Ad frequency
- Clicks by interest
- Ad performance by type and placement
As easy as it is to set up a Facebook Ad campaign, it’s not that simple to set up a highly successful Facebook Ad campaign, and we see mistakes made all of the time. We’ve worked with numerous clients across various industries on many Facebook Ad campaigns. Pay-per-click (PPC) is in our name, and it’s what we excel at. If you want help with your ads, we’re here for you!
