Top 5 Facebook advertising mistakes and how to fix them

Are you advertising your business on Facebook?

If you aren’t seeing the results you expected then it could be down to one of these 5 simple mistakes.

When I first started using Facebook advertising, for my previous business, I made a lot of mistakes that cost me time and more money than I care to think about. I wish I had a guide like this when I first started as it would have saved me a lot of headaches.

In this article you’ll learn the 5 Facebook advertising mistakes that are killing your chances of campaign success and how to fix them. These are mistakes I once made and are by far the most common I hear from the hundreds of business owners I’ve spoken to in the last month alone.

Mistake #1 — Not using the full Ads Manager

What do I mean by not using the full Ads Manager?

I mean that you’re boosting your posts straight from your Facebook page.

Or as I like to call it participating in Facebook’s easy money grab, where you can spend the same amount of money but get less functionality and therefore see worse results.

Boosting posts is just 1 of the 12 advertising objectives (link to how to FB objectives blog post) at your disposal but you wouldn’t know that if you just looked at your Facebook page and not specifically within the Ads Manager.

The best results from Facebook advertising campaigns come from using the full Ads Manager. Period.

When you use the Ads Manger your campaigns have a proper structure (Campaign, Ad Set, Ad) and at each level you have more functionality.

For example; at the Ad Set level, you have greater placement options, (where your ad is displayed) you also have access to the detailed targeting feature which allows you to refine your audience targeting by including “and” interests as well as adding exclusions (more on targeting later)

The Fix

This is by far the most common mistake I hear from business owners and it’s the easiest to fix. Don’t boost your posts, instead create proper advertising campaigns in the Ads Manager using the most effective objective for your desired end result.

Mistake #2 — Choosing the wrong advertising objective

When you use the Ads Manager, the first thing you have to do when you create a new campaign is decided what advertising objective to use.

This is crucial because if you choose the wrong one, your campaign is setup to fail even before it launches.

The best way is to choose the right advertising objective is to work backwards from your desired end result.

For example if you want to run an ad campaign that will build up your email list, your end result is signups, you therefore want to run a conversion campaign as users are taking a specific action that you can optimise for.

The Fix

Know your advertising objectives. For a full breakdown of the different advertising objectives and when best to use them click here.

Mistake #3 — Not refining your audience targeting enough

At the Ad Set level of a campaign you choose your audience targeting amongst other things like campaign schedule and ad placement.

Your targeting is the most important element of your ad campaign and it can either make it or break it.

It’s a simple question:

Who’s your target audience?

Don’t just say: “well everyone really”

The more specific you can get with your targeting when running Facebook ad campaigns the better results you’ll see.

I referenced to this in Episode 1 of The Social Media Show.

The Fix

When it comes to targeting your ideal customer think about their:

• Location
• Gender
• Age
• Interests (e.g types of people they follow as well as tools they use)
• Income & Affluence
• Behaviours (e.g small business owners)

Go one step further than just adding a list of interests. Use the detailed targeting feature to include “and” based interests, so someone has to match both x and x to be in your audience. In addition, use the “exclude” targeting to refine your audience and reduce audience overlap.

Mistake #4 — Not installing conversion tracking

All the work you do researching and setting up a new Facebook ad campaign can be worthless if you aren’t tracking the results and then optimising the campaign.

If you don’t install the correct tracking then you are flying blind. You won’t know if your campaign is delivering the desired results and you won’t be able to track your ROI down to the penny.

Campaign tracking on Facebook comes from your Facebook Pixel. This is a piece of code that you install on every page of your website.

Then, when someone then visits your site, (from any source: search, social media, email etc) they get tagged by the pixel, matched on Facebook and you can then start building up custom audiences of people who have visited your site.

That’s the basic Pixel.

In order to track conversions you have to add some conversion code to the Pixel which will record specific actions such as: registrations, content views, leads, and all ecommerce actions from add to cart, through to checkout and final purchase.

This conversion code is called Standard Event Code, and you can find out more about it here.

The Fix

Simple. Make sure you install the Facebook Pixel, and where necessary install the conversion code so you can track the specific action you want someone to take.

IMPORTANT: don’t install the conversion code on the landing page people visit to take your desired action, such as the landing page for an ebook giveaway. Make sure you install the conversion code on the thank you or confirmation page that someone sees after they opt-in for example.

Mistake 5 — Not enough patience

The final mistake comes down to a lack of patience. People make the mistake of not running a campaign long enough, especially when targeting cold traffic.

The rule of thumb that we use here at the agency is to run a campaign to at least 100 clicks or spend double the amount you’d be willing to pay for an opt-in.

In our case I know that across the board for our strategy sessions we pay an average of £30 so we will run a campaign to at least a £60 spend before changing direction.

Since we’ve now spent thousands of pounds on strategy session campaigns we have a good idea, based on all the data we have gathered and analysed, what message and targeting produces the best results.

The Fix

Have more patience. Particularly if you have campaigns on low daily budgets like £5 and £10 you’ll need to wait up to a week before you can gather any statically significant data to make proper informed decisions.

Conclusion

All of the mistakes mentioned above are easy to make but have very simple fixes.

To recap then the most common Facebook advertising mistakes are:

• Mistake 1 — Not using the full Ads Manager
• Mistake 2 — Not choosing the right advertising objective
• Mistake 1 — Not refining your audience targeting enough
• Mistake 4 — Not installing conversion tracking
• Mistake 5 — Not enough patience

By making these mistakes you waste not only your time but your hard earned money.

Bookmark this article and revisit it every time you create a new Facebook ad campaign to ensure you aren’t making any simple mistakes that would ruin your chances of success.

Originally published at charlielawrance.com on June 28, 2016.