Facebook offers businesses a wide variety of advertising options to choose from, and with a network of billions of users, it provides the potential to reach tons of prospects. So, it goes without saying that it can be a major asset to your marketing efforts. If done correctly!
There are a lot of parts that go into creating and maintaining successful Facebook advertising campaigns. If you’re not familiar with the platform, it’s possible to fall into some pretty common traps. Here are some of those mistakes and what you can do to avoid them.
Not setting specific goals
It’s not enough to just create Facebook posts promoting your business and hope that some generic good will come of it. You need to set specific goals for each and every advertising campaign you undertake.
By starting with a clear goal in mind, your messaging within the campaign will be stronger and more targeted. Plus, you’ll know which metrics you should be keeping an eye on and will know exactly how you’ll define success at the end of the campaign.
Incorrect Facebook ad type
Once you’ve set goals for your campaign, it’s time to select the type of ad you want to run. Facebook offers businesses a wide variety of choices that can help you achieve all sorts of goals, from greater exposure for your brand to more conversions to facilitating offer claims.
Fortunately, Facebook makes it easy for marketers to determine what each ad is designed to do. Don’t try to get creative or reinvent the wheel in this step. Go with the ad type that Facebook says best aligns with your goals.
Sticking to one type of creatives
If you’ve ever sat on Facebook and scrolled through your newsfeed, you know how easy it is for that content to simply become a blur. That’s why you need to do something unique to stand out from the personal posts, articles, and other ads filling up users’ feeds.
Facebook suggests that you keep text to a minimum on your images (ideally less than 20 percent). Include images that are bright, arresting, and are aligned with your brand’s tone. Go beyond still images and think about including video content. Mix up your media in order to keep viewers on their toes and eager to see what comes next from you.
Targeting the wrong audience
Facebook advertising targeting allows you to identify the desired audience for your ads. This keeps you from wasting your ad spend on people who would never really be interested in your business, but proper targeting is a tricky balancing act.
Make your audience too narrow, and Facebook will be unable to deliver your ad. However, make your audience too broad, and there will be lots of people who are not viable prospects for seeing your ads.
The other mistake that marketers make is targeting the wrong audience. Take the time to analyze the demographics and actions of your current audience. Facebook even provides the option for you to create lookalike audiences for your advertising. By uploading a list of your existing customers, Facebook can then analyze that group for common attributes and target similar audiences.
Duplicating Facebook efforts
Facebook is great at identifying their users who are most likely to want to see your advertising. Unfortunately, that sometimes means that people who are already familiar with your brand and who have converted on their own become the target of your Facebook advertising.
This is, of course, a waste of your time and budget. If they’ve already signed up for your newsletter, there’s no need to advertise said newsletter to them again! This is where the use of custom audiences comes in. Pull a list of all of your prospects or customers who have already taken the action you’re hoping to drive with the advertising and create a custom audience that excludes these people from seeing your ads. Not only does this save you money, but it also keeps you from annoying those who have already said yes to your brand.
Not updating your ads
Users scroll past the same images and type time and again, and they eventually begin to gloss over the content. That’s why it’s critical for marketers to keep refreshing their ads on the platform.
Changing up images, altering the text, and otherwise making the content appear fresh and new to the viewers is the way to get your brand noticed all over again.
There are a lot of elements for marketers to wrap their heads around when it comes to Facebook advertising. Understanding some of the most common mistakes businesses make can help you get more out of your advertising efforts and create content that stands out in a crowded newsfeed.