It’s (once again) time for another Facebook Apocalypse!
If you haven’t heard the latest, you can read about it here. In this post, I also included 7 recommended ways to respond to the latest annihilation on the organic Reach of Facebook Business Pages.
Ultimately, we can’t change these or any future changes Zuckerberg is going to throw our way, so it’s best to work around them.
One way to deal with the changes is to focus on your Facebook ad strategy.
Having at least some budget to put to Facebook ads has been a recommendation of mine for some time, but I know that saying to “run Facebook ads” doesn’t mean you or anyone else can snap their fingers and – BOOM – do them well.
Because Facebook ads is a very deep topic, we’re going to break it down a bit. This post is focused only on the biggest mistakes I see people make. I hope this can be a good start for those who have already run some ads and didn’t have the success they hoped.
5 Biggest Facebook Ads Mistakes
- Using only the blue Boost Button Facebook makes it really easy to click the blue Boost button on published Facebook posts. But the truth is, the capabilities and usefulness of the Boost Button pales in comparison to what Facebook’s Ad Manager can do for you. You have much more control, can select from over 10 types of ad objectives, and unleash tremendous targeting power (plus use of custom audiences!) by using Ads Manager
- Choosing the wrong ad objective Facebook knows a lot about user behavior. That’s why once you open your Ads Manager, your first step is to choose what ad objective you want. Tied into the previous point, Boosts are “engagement” ads, meaning they are ads that tell Facebook to show it to people who tend to click “like” or leave a comment or share. What I see time and again is that a client will use the Boost button for a post where they want someone to click a link. But by doing so, you are pairing up an objective with a desired action that doesn’t match. And that’s why you aren’t getting the desired results (link clicks) that you want. So, if you want video views, choose that ad objective. If you want people who will click on your link, choose traffic. If you want people who are likely to install your app, choose the app install objective. If you want people who are more likely to convert (e.g. sign up or purchase after visiting your sales page), choose the conversion objective. You will see a big shift in your ad results simply by correctly pairing up the action you want people to take with the corresponding objective.
- Targeting too broadly You might feel like anyone could buy your product, but the truth is, you have a much smaller, more targeted ideal client than all males and females ages 18-65+. Taking that one step further…you aren’t even touching all the ways you can target your ideal customers if you aren’t utilizing the Interests and Behavior ad options within Ads Manager. Are you wanting to reach moms? There are demographic options for that. You can even drill down to the ages of their kids for your targeting! Opening a coffee shop? Why not select to target fans of Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts within a reasonable driving distance around your business? Interior designer? Try targeting people who like the HGTV and Pages of larger furniture and home decor retailers like Pottery Barn, Ethan Allen, and Crate and Barrel.
- Not looking at ad analytics Once your ad is running and after its conclusion, the ad’s data is available to you, including additional ways to break down what you are looking at. Breakdown the data by age and gender to see if you can fine tune your targeting that way. Compare the cost per click (or video view, etc.) of 2 or more of the same type of ad to see what resonated best with Facebook users. Test 2 different images or 2 sets of copy against each other, and then look at the data to see the performance of each so you know how to improve for next time.
- Running the ad for too short of time Facebook more recently introduced a “learning phase”, and the learning phase of a newly-started ad can last 3 days. Plan to let your ad run for at least 4-5 days to see what the stabilized, expected performance trends are going to be. If you turn it off or try to change it too soon, you could make the wrong determination about how well that ad (would have) worked for your target audience.
Hopefully at least 1 of these common mistakes will help you in your Facebooks ad strategy.
