This blog will steer you in the right direction and stop you thinking quizzically ‘is Facebook Ads effective?’
There are some common mistakes that I see time and time again, luckily, these mistakes are easily avoided! And I also see some people unknowingly make a mistake.
But Facebook doesn’t care if you make a mistake through a lack of knowledge or through a simple administrative mistake. It’ll treat all mistakes the same and your Facebooks ads won’t perform well.
Don’t think that Facebook Ads are just for experts – when you learn the ‘Facebook Ads for beginners’ stuff you’ll be armed with the information you need to really succeed!
Let’s dive in shall we and see the benefits of Facebook Ads for small businesses?
Fab, here are the most common Facebook Ad mistakes you need to know about. And what you should be doing instead to help your business grow by using this valuable marketing tool.:
1. Don’t run the ad from your personal account
Make sure you’re running the Facebook ad from a Business Account.
Like me, you’ll need to create an account with Facebook Ads Manager from your Facebook Business Page. You can create this in Facebook Business Manager, above, you’ll see a screenshot of what that page looks like.
To the right of the image, you’ll see the Ads Manager heading. Directly underneath that, you’ll see my business profile account next to a dropdown list arrow. Hurrah – I’m definitely about to run an ad from my business account!
You can also see my personal profile highlighted in yellow. It’s always best to check that your personal account is there and NOT at the top!
Whilst you can run a Facebook Ad through your personal profile you run the risk of Facebook taking action should something go wrong. If you get banned from Facebook advertising that’s it you don’t get a second chance on your personal profile. You may also end up with a Facebook profile that is limited on the actions it can perform or deleted!
2. Don’t think that ‘boosting’ is the same as running ads.
We’re all familiar with the blue box that appears on the bottom right of our most well-performing posts. The text within the blue box says ‘Boost Post’.
Don’t click it!
When you click Boost Post, and pay a small fee to Facebook, the social media giant will send your post to people who are most likely to interact with it. At the most, your post will attract more likes and comments, but you may not get any business from it.
The options when you boost are very limited too and you can only really suggest what kind of audience you want. Facebook will understand your request, but again will only send the post to those they know are most likely to engage – the prolific likers!
When you run a Facebook Ad you get so many more options plus you can create several versions of the same campaign.
And your Facebook Ads will never appear on your page – they’re a completely separate tool where you can create a post for a specific audience. Brilliant, this is why I love them, and this is why they work so well.
3. Don’t forget to create multiple Facebook Ads and test them
As mentioned in point 2, you can create more than one version of an advertising post. For example, you can choose different audiences, create varying captions, and use different images. This really is key to learning what Facebook Ads work best.
This is the plethora of data you’ll see when you go into Business Manager. It’s fantastic, isn’t it? You can see how well an ad has performed or is performing – you can see its reach, how many click-throughs to landing pages, its impressions, its costs, and more.
Always analyse this data – it really is your best friend. You really can drill down to discover your perfect audience and the type of image and content that resonates the most to influence a positive action.
So, imagine making the mistake of just targeting one group of people with just the one Facebook ads campaign. You’ll never learn from that, and you’ll hit an obstacle that prevents you from continually improving. It also cost you a lot more money in the long term
4. Don’t sell every time!
It’s key to remember that most people head to Facebook to relax, to catch up on what their friends and family are up to and to be entertained. Very few people like to be sold to when they’re just chilling and scrolling.
To explain this easily, I’ll split this into two scenarios.
With Facebook Ads you decide on the audience, so it could be that you want to target people who have already seen your posts, like your business page, and even visited your website. This can be a bit more salesy as you know they are already interested in what you have to offer, may know a bit about you as a person and you’ve built that trust.
But if you’re going to run a Facebook Ad to a mass market where the receivers of the ad will not have heard of you before, they won’t be impressed that a stranger has landed in their newsfeed telling them that they need to buy off them. For this approach to work you need to put in a lot of effort before providing them with the ‘sales’ ad – you’ll need to send them ads at the start of your campaign where you can add value to their lives and send more Facebook ads to build up a bit of rapport with them.
5. Don’t expect a quick win. And don’t give up if you don’t see instant results.
If you create a Facebook Ad thinking that you’ll see immediate gains you’re going to be disappointed.
Facebook Ads and marketing go hand in hand so you’ll need to embed your Facebook Ad campaign into your overall marketing strategy.
- Create a sales funnel.
- Know what your customers will want to hear at every stage of the funnel.
- Write posts to establish trust.
- Plan how you’re going to guide them through the funnel.
- Identify the right time to offer your product or service and make it clear how they will benefit from it.
6. Don’t assume that your Facebook Ad will work first time.
If only it was that easy! But like most things in life, you need to work at it. You’ll need to identify the content that resonates with your ideal customer and keep studying your data. I suggest that you set aside at least three months to test a Facebook Ads campaign and see what content and audiences give you the best return on investment.
7. Don’t sprout Jargon
If only it was that easy! But like most things in life, you need to work at it. You’ll need to identify the content that resonates with your ideal customer and keep studying your data. I suggest that you set aside at least three months to test a Facebook Ads campaign and see what content and audiences give you the best return on investment.
Further reading
To learn more and to stop the confusion, head to my blog, ‘What Is The Difference Between Facebook Ads and Boosting?’
Do you need some inspiration for your ads campaign?
Have a look at my Special Days of the Year Wall Planner and plan your campaigns for 2022!
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Bye for now,
Becs
