No matter how deligently you follow Facebook ad metrics, if you are a new Facebook marketer, chances are you’re ending up making common Facebook ad mistakes. But that’s only half the problem. The other half is, you won’t know you’ve committed them. So how do you fix a problem without knowing it?
Well, that’s the headache with most Facebook marketers. Many of them blow away in the first spurt simply because they fail to identify the ad mistakes they make. And the ones who survive the blow end up digging their pockets more than required without getting desirable results. Your legs trembling already?
Fret not! Yes, Facebook ads have lots of technicalities to deal with, but you can reach prospects most likely to convert if done carefully. Don’t worry, I’m not letting you repeat these goof-ups.
I’ll mention some of these common Facebook ad mistakes, so you know where you’re heading with your digital marketing plans. So what are we waiting for? Let’s quickly hop on the train of Facebook ad tips.
The list of 15 Facebook ad mistakes you need to stop making immediately
Go on reading the Facebook ad mistakes
Facebook Ad Mistake #1: Undermining the use of Facebook pixels
The world is getting obsessed with data and analytics. Evidence-based decisions have made giants of many small businesses and start-ups. But one area where marketers tend to ignore analytics is the Facebook pixel.
You must have surely worked on Google analytics, Google micro moments, or even heatmap. Who hasn’t? Anyone who owns a website can’t move further without it unless they really want to go broke. But it’s surprising how marketers have undermined Facebook pixels’ use despite being very effective and similar as Google analytics.
Pixels by Facebook is a javascript code that you install. If you’re not a tech junkie, you need one to assist you with its installation. But having it installed once is a huge plus over existing analytics. You’ll have plenty of details to enjoy:
- You can monitor user behavior on your website.
- You can review any type of digital marketing campaign performance and improvise your strategies.
- And you can measure what customers are doing on your website. Just as you use digital marketing KPIs for other campaigns, Facebook lets you measure your campaigns with its ad metrics.
- You can also segment your audience and optimize them effectively.
- You can finally include and exclude your audience from any marketing campaign and re-target them as and when wanted.
Ask yourself: are you doing any of these? Well, yeah! Must have been on Google web analytics. But on Facebook? No? Get on it, today!
Also read: Facebook user: we never agreed to share the information
Facebook Ad Mistake #2: You fail to place right Facebook ad bids
Again, Facebook ad bidding is quite similar to other digital advertising platforms like Google ads— both follow the auction-based system. But finding it out the right ad budget is a tough nut to crack. And its results are extreme.
You either spend too much than the required or your ad doesn’t reach the relevant audience because of the low ad bids.
It’s one of the historic Facebook ad mistakes. No, not mistakes. Blunders. You have to apply the right bidding strategy to make your campaign successful, let alone a massive success. And the budget decides how you’re going to perform with your campaign.
Many nicely-catered campaigns fail because they don’t have an adequate budget to promote their campaigns. But I’ve seen brands setting inflated budgets and failing too. The point being— small or inflated ad budgets— both don’t work as Facebook will have a hard time recognizing accurate people to optimize campaigns for.
So the key is providing a balanced budget where you’re at least converting 50 customers. Another Facebook ad mistake that’s inevitable is changing the ad budget frequently.
Facebook has automated bots. They learn about your audience type and optimize them for campaigns. But changing your budget frequently will compel its bot to re-learn everything from scratch, delaying conversion and ROIs.
Also read:
Facebook Ad Mistake #3: You’re not taking the buyer’s persona seriously
Who are you selling to? “Selling everyone?” Well, good luck with that. Selling everyone is as good as selling no one. Honestly, this won’t get you results in today’s time, not at least in 2021. It’s a three-decades-old marketing technique, and a lot has evolved since then.
The buyer’s persona is like defining who your potential customer could be. I mean… it’s like a prototype that is most likely to buy your products and services. So are you marketing your product to everyone through Facebook ads? You really need to narrow down your ideal audience based on demography (age, gender, religion, etc.), behavior, etc. We wrote 4 levels of identifying audience and marketing them. You’d want to check it out.
Good for us, Facebook ads offer dynamic features to separate all our clientele based on their personas and let us target them most effectively. Remember, creating a persona will need you to market research about your ideal audience initially.
If your customer base is too wide and generic, try optimizing the personas to lesser numbers of groups— this will save you money and help you target the possible converts.
Facebook Ad Mistake #4: You’re analyzing the wrong Facebook ad metrics
When you’re on Facebook, the social network gives you plenty of Facebook ad metrics at your disposal to measure campaign success. But not all metrics are equal. Each has a fixed role. Most of the time, only these three Facebook ad metrics are important.
What metric did you measure when you wanted to find how many people opened your email? “Open-rate.” You wouldn’t measure click-through-rate instead of open rates. Right? Just as you email strategies for higher CTR and related metrics, Facebook provides multiple KPIs, each standing to mean something. Conversion rates, return on ad spend, cost per click, click-through rate, cost per action, landing page view, reach, etc.
When data surrounds you, it sometimes gets overwhelming. And that’s when you commit another ad mistake. Not saying you will, but there are high chances many marketers re-strategize their campaigns measuring the wrong Facebook ad metric.
Again, picking the right metric as per their roles is crucial and tricky. Define your intent: what it is you’re trying to get from the Facebook ads and then move ahead smartly.
Facebook Ad Mistake #5: Puzzled about Facebook ad campaign objective
You don’t want to belong to such lots where you’re heading as a mindless Facebook ad campaigner. Unfortunately, many marketers do it quite frequently. They don’t define their ad campaign objectives properly, and they jump into the wrong pool.
The error is quite prevalent within the beginners. What’s it you’re setting your Facebook ad for? A sales funnel has four levels: awareness, interest, decision, and action. Facebook ads follow the same AIDA model. Where are your customers currently?
Are they at the awareness level? You’ll help them know about your product and service. It’s where you introduce yourself as a brand. Similarly, are they at the action level? It is where they are close to conversion.
Facebook ads let you select the objective. Is it brand awareness or reach? Engagement or conversion? A neatly-defined campaign objective will have a domino effect on your campaign results.
So wherever you’re in your marketing journey, define your ad objectives, let Facebook know it, and bang— you’re almost reaping the most out of Facebook ads.
Facebook Ad Mistake #6: Poor audience targeting
Facebook has half the earth’s population. With so many users and businesses on the same platform, your chances of targeting the right audience is very bleak— the reason why organic reach on Facebook is next to dead.
So you might try a lot to target the right audience organically, but the odds are quite low; you’ll be reaching the right audience.
But here’s the good part: paid Facebook marketing ads >>>> organic Facebook marketing. The Facebook ads let you laser-targeting on the suitable audience for your business. Behavior, lookalike audience, contacts, targeting based on demography, etc. each feature gives you a permit to target the relevant audience.
That said, if you’re a beginner, you can make mistakes with paid Facebook ads too. Targeting a poor audience group becomes a mandatory mistake if you’re a new entrant: most of us make it. Not literally mandatory, but you’re mostly going to make it. Here are the two common targeting mistakes newbie Facebook marketers make:
Targeting too wide/specific audience group
While Facebook allows you to strip down a large targeting audience into relevant groups using several segmentation features, there’s a flipside too.
If you make your audience group too specific, you’ll be drained of customers. The more the attributes, the individual the customer. With that, the targeting gets expensive, and the audience gets scarce.
So Facebook ads are not about targeting too broad or a narrow audience. It’s about middle-grounds. That’s what you’ve to search for if you’re targeting any audience group through Facebook ads.
Not using the audience exclusion properly.
Did you know it’s not necessary to make a buyer’s persona? Why do I say this? How would you target if you’re not creating the personas? Well, here’s another smarter way to do it: making the non-buyers persona.
That’s right. Audience exclusion is another key feature that many marketers seem to miss. Segment a non-buying audience and stop Facebook ads from reaching them. If you’re not excluding them from your campaign, your ads become ineffective and skewed.
Facebook Ad Mistake #7: Relying too much on the boost post button
The ‘boost post’ button is a strong call-to-action button from Facebook, and it’s tempting to click again and again, but honestly, hitting it more times would only dilute the effective results. It’s like the endless pressing of the lift button; it would come at the pace it is designated to.
Though a boost post is good for promoting your existing posts from your business page to an audience outside of your following list, it won’t get you conversions. What would you have: conversion from the existing followers or more reach? Most likely conversion, because anyway, reach doesn’t guarantee conversion.
Hitting the boost post will amplify your reach, but it won’t accomplish your sales objectives, that is, to get sales. You must be wondering what’s the alternative then?
Well, the Facebook ad manager brings engagement and conversion on the table together. Let me remind you once again: every feature in Facebook ads has a certain role to play. You got to have a bird’s eye view to understand this.
Facebook Ad Mistake #8: Brushing off the importance of visuals
I’m not sure whether you’re reading this or not! You know why? Because what I’m writing is a text. Had it been visuals, I would have been 70% more confident you’d interact with my content.
The point is: visuals have captured social media. It’s the very reason why Mark bought Instagram. And so are things turning pretty similar to Facebook. Visuals are easy to absorb and quickly retain in our memories. Facebook ad campaigns that use visuals have better engagement than texts alone.
Despite that, Facebook ad marketers have skipped the fact and relied too much on texts and copies to compel readers. The ad mistake could cost your campaign and keep you from achieving your business goals.
Facebook has quickly evolved into a visual-oriented platform that lets you put highly engaging ad formats. Photos, carousels, slideshows, etc. are great ways to have engaging posts that not only get queries but convert. And then as you add effective CTAs on your blog posts, you can add effective CTAs on Facebook ad.
Brushing off this powerful weapon is greater than Hitler’s historic blunder— and I really mean it because many marketing careers are seemingly dead after ignoring it.
Facebook Ad Mistake #9: Take no notice of video marketing
Photos >>>> copies. Videos >>>> Photos. If photos bring 70% more engagement than texts, videos bring 20% more engagement than photos. Yeah, I know each has its own place in the sales funnel; however, if you’re not taking any notice of video marketing on Facebook ads— you’re missing the major fuel in Facebook marketing. The extent of video marketing has gone so far that brands are engaging in live streams to interact better.
Don’t be radical with marketing. Nothing lasts in it. In fact, short videos are on the verge of killing the engagement of long videos. So you understand the crux of my argument. Don’t you?
Things are always evolving. Having it realized, Facebook ad manager gives you an option to measure your video’s performance. The Facebook video ad metrics give enough data to act upon your marketing campaign in the moment’s spur. Here are some of these video KPI’s: Average watch time, Reach, Video views, Amount spent, Cost per Thru play, Thruplays, Video watches, etc.
Facebook Ad Mistake #10: The dull misleading headlines
Marketing copies are not taken too seriously. I wonder why many marketers don’t show the same enthusiasm they put in videos and photos. Dull, misleading headlines cost your readers more than you because they aren’t spending worldly-time absorbing the marketing ad that’s not relevant to them.
So relevancy is the key while you put any Facebook ad for your business. Take an example: What sounds fascinating more— “Give me 2 minutes and I’ll double… triple.. Or even quadruple your bank balance,” or “Earn money”?
Obviously, the first one is very compelling, and you’re creating mental visuals with strong emotion-provoking words. That’s what you need to practice when you’re putting an ad on Facebook.
Another smart way to write a compelling copy is by adding benefits to your headline because that’s the rule of means-end-chain— benefits sell. Would you buy a phone if Apple kept boasting its phone memory? Absolutely no. You buy an expensive phone because Apple promotes benefits over features. It tells you how you can store 1000 audio and videos on its device rather than focus on features.
It’s a good way to tap into human desires and make the most of Facebook ads when you’re already spending too much. By tapping customers’ pain points, you’ll be more than just a faceless and nameless brand.
Facebook Ad Mistake #11: Shutting your eyes to Facebook analytics
In the past decade, Facebook has strongly locked horns with Google to be home to the most active users. But that’s not the only thing it’s good with. Facebook paid marketing has become a great success because it offers as good analytics as Google.
Marketers are aware of how Google analytics, AhRef, and SEMrush, have added dynamism to online businesses. But like Facebook pixels, they’ve been missing a big-time on Facebook analytics. Just as you use these analytics for SEO services and PPC services, you can use Facebook analytics for social media marketing services.
The analytic allows advertisers to monitor any user’s purchase journey on multiple suites of Facebook channels— whether on mobile, desktop, Facebook messenger, and many more.
The custom-built analytics by Facebook gives you insightful data on how customers behave with your brand to have an actionable plan ready to convert these people. With data, you optimize, and you grow.
It’s easier to turn off your eyes to Facebook analytics because I believe Facebook hasn’t marketed its web reporting tool as much as Google. I hope they aren’t missing out on their analytics. :p
Facebook Ad Mistake #12: Not excluding the converted audience
Well, it’s a funny Facebook ad mistake on so many levels. Imagine you’re a converted customer. Would you still take the same ads again and again on your feed? That’s hell annoying for you. Right?
If you replicate the same with your customers, you’re not only disrupting their experiences with the same ads but also losing important budget to the hands of already converted consumers. It’s a redundancy that suffocates many marketing campaigns, and you want to be out of it. That’s not how you build eCommerce customer services. If marketing is a customer service, you have to be right on the money.
Your main goal is to promote ads in such a way that you’re not redundantly targeting the converts. You must be thinking, how do you separate the wheat from the chaff? How do you exclude these existing converts?
The Facebook ad allows you to create a list of those guys who have converted. Conversion could be anything; it’s not always about buying the product. Reaching a thank you page can be one type of conversion. Filling a sign-up form or signing up for a newsletter is a conversion too! So when you set your conversion point on Facebook ads, you’ll have the users’ list.
You can then use the Facebook custom audience option and bar these individuals from seeing your Facebook ad. It’s a perfect way to put a chain to mad spending or to annoy your loyal customers.
Facebook Ad Mistake #13: Disregarding re-targeting Facebook ads
Okay, who’s easy to convert— a customer who is aware of your brand/products or the user who has no clue the hell you’re? Well, that’s what targeting ads to new customers get you, an annoying message from them “who the hell you’re?”
Well, customer acquisition is important, but customer retargeting is importanter (if the word exists). I’m not shooting guns in blank spaces. Dead serious, I’m. Many stats show re-targeting gets a 10X higher click-through rate than regular ads.
It’s because customers are simply beyond the awareness stage of the AIDA model. They may be in the interest or desire stage where they’re willing to buy goods or services from you.
Facebook pixel again takes up the re-targeting job quite brilliantly. You can promote new content/product/service on your site to the visitors who already know you or have dealt with you in the past.
The tool also allows you to target those customers who couldn’t move beyond the cart. Compelling headlines using scarcity-psychology can convert potential customers. You can achieve endless opportunities with it.
Facebook advertising is about deploying your tool creatively. It’s part science, and art altogether! I’m not saying go for mindless experimentations, but sometimes, they’re good. Mounting the right tools in the right place can help you avoid facebook ad mistakes.
Facebook Ad Mistake #14: Setting and forgetting Facebook ad campaigns
Unlike forest trees, Facebook ads are like your house’s plants. They need your attention throughout the campaign. But forgetting them has to be one of the most common Facebook ad mistakes because beginners or even intermediate marketers think: setting a campaign on Facebook is enough; the digital marketing platform will do the rest of the job for us.
It’s a bogus theory. No, you’re not favoring Facebook by targeting paid ads. Setting up the ad campaign and shrugging off all the responsibilities on Facebook will have you a result of bad taste. And Facebook’s robots haven’t gotten smart enough to do the jobs you’re supposed to take on.
So you need to be right on your feet to keep up with what’s happening to your campaign. It’s a regular habit that you need to harbor to optimize and win more business chances.
The Facebook ad manager tool grants you access through the ads reporting where you can review the ad campaign’s performance and have a controlled study to compare with your objectives. This way, you’ll have control over your budget spending and direct your money carefully on the relevant ad campaigns.
Facebook Ad Mistake #15: Creating ads after ads despite having relevant ads
No theory supports ads after ads get you more conversion. It is how we perceive: “content is king!” So we ad recklessly, overspending, unless we’re doomed. No, content is not king. Relevant content is. One relevant ad >>> 10 irrelevant ads.
Suppose you’re already winning lots of web traffic, engagement, and conversion from any ad. In that case, you should spend time focusing on the same campaign rather than structuring a new content and campaign altogether.
It will save you time and money, and from the adversity of a new-ineffective campaign. If an ad is already accomplishing your goals, you need not produce another ad to achieve the same goals.
So, what can you do with the existing winning ads when they are already performing well? Uhh! You can look to optimize and improve their performances. No ad is perfect. Though your ads are getting you the desired results, try improving it with the analytics.
Improving the existing ad costs you less than creating and strategizing new ads. And it guarantees you sales in a quick time, rather than expecting sales where a lot of doubts lurk around the new campaign. So working on such facebook ad mistakes can really clean the slates for you.
Once you have fixed all the mistakes, you can use facebook ad metrics to ensure your efforts pay off. Here are our favorite Facebook ad metrics to measure our efforts.
Three most important facebook ad metrics
So here are the three new metrics you must consider when running your Facebook ads campaign in 2022.
Facebook ad metrics #1 Engagement Ranking
Engagement is one of the best Facebook ads manager practice you must adopt when running your Facebook ads campaign. Engagement ranking enables you to measure how many times someone took action on your posts. By this we mean, clicking a link, making a reaction to your post, sharing your post or leaving a comment. Though you should incorporate other digital marketing KPIs to measure your Facebook marketing efforts, engagement is our favorite opt-in.
There are several options you can use to track engagement. The first option is going through Facebook Insights. Facebook Analytics Tools is another option you can use to keep track of engagement. Report from such tools shows you adequate engagement, including the type that your posts and pages receive.
Just as it is important to learn how to run Facebook ads, tracking engagement is also a very important Facebook metric. You also avoid Facebook ad mistakes by tracking your engagement metrics.
First, engagement is a sign that tells people are in love with the content you are sharing. Secondly, with engagement, your posts are given more exposure to your audience.
It is no hidden secret that Facebook uses an algorithm to define where your posts will display in the News Feed of your followers. The primary aim of the algorithm is to bring to the surface posts that users are most likely interested in.
Out of all your posts, if one receives higher engagement, it tells Facebook that it is popular. Thus, they will most likely surface it to your followers/users. Engagement rate helps you to gauge the competence of your ads and business strategy against similar ads and strategies competing for the same audience.
Facebook ad metrics #2: Quality ranking
The quality ranking represents how Facebook view the quality of your ad in comparison with other ads targeting the same audience as yours. Facebook is committed to providing a good ad for advertisers and their audience alike. That means, if the ads you put up are low in quality, they will only surface to a fewer audience.
To make sure the quality of your ads is high; you can use the following tips to your advantage:
- Use very high-quality visuals, and skip blurry, res, and stock-quality images. Consider using video ads as more and more people now love watching videos online to find new products and services in the US.
- Maintain direct copy. Keep it short and simple—such is always the best copy.
- Limit text in visuals. Make use of Facebook Image Text check Tool to verify your image passes the test.
- Optimize your contents for mobile accessibility. You’re not only optimizing content for search engine, but also social media. More than 88 percent of Facebook users are on mobile.
- Select the right Facebook ad format that is suitable for your needs.
- Minimize the frequency of your ads. Don’t wear out your audience by showing the same ad repeatedly.
- And most important of all, avoid these facebook ad mistakes
Facebook ad metrics #3: Conversion rate
You can’t talk about Facebook ads traffic vs conversion without first measuring the conversion rate of your ads. Just as you measure conversion rate to minimize cart abandonment on your website, you do the same stuff on Facebook.
Have you taken the time to map out a prospect’s journey after someone views your Facebook ads? If no, then you need to choose your relevance score metric and start evaluating your campaign’s performance.
To measure the relevance of your campaign, the total conversion rates you should measure, which would typically involve making the visitor click on CTA, are:
The wrapping words
Facebook ads are a practice ground, more like an exploratory phase. You might not learn about mistakes until you make them. But reading about these common Facebook ad mistakes can keep you calculative with each marketing step.
Having said that, it’s good to make mistakes on your own. That way, it burns into your memory, and your probability of repeating the mistake turns to zero. If you’re really adamant about making these mistakes, I recommend you to go slow the Facebook ad tools. Don’t be too overambitious, because that can crush your business growth.
But I’m assuming why would you want to make mistakes when you have Facebook ad tips on your disposal. Avoid them as much as you can. The list is yet not complete; I might have to cover it in the new post.
Please note some mistakes are unavoidable even though you take necessary measures. But the real catch lies in being proactive with your campaign. Reports, analytics, tools, they’re here to save you from making blunders. Not using them is a blunder over the blunder.
Facebook marketing with Huptech Web
Finally, if you’re not a marketer, I would ask you to leave expertise with experts. Good digital marketing services should be able to handle your Facebook ad and all the related Facebook ad mistakes so that you’re positively accountable to your stakeholders.
HuptechWeb is one such Facebook marketing service that has rocked the websites and eCommerce seo services for several brands.
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wow good work
Thank you! Glad you liked it 🙂