Paid Facebook Ads: 5 Biggest Mistakes

Paid Facebook Ads – 5 Biggest Mistakes and how to avoid them!

Paid Facebook Ads can be a fantastic way to increase business revenue for your online business, however, they are far from being intuitive or beginner friendly.

I know many clients are intimidated by what appears to be a complex interface and the fear of overspending, underspending or generally not achieving any results or breaking something.

When working with my clients I come across entrepreneurs and online business owners who continue to struggle with understanding how they can maximise Facebook Ads, and I see the same mistakes being made so I thought it was time I shared the top mistakes made with Paid Facebook Ads, and how to avoid them.

1. SELECTING THE WRONG OBJECTIVE

Facebook folks are very clever - when you set your objective to 'Traffic', they optimize your ad to be shown to those that are most likely to click through to your site.  

But what if 'Traffic' isn't actually what you were hoping for, but rather video views, post engagement or sales/conversions? If you don't select the most relevant objective for your campaign, you are potentially going to spend money getting lack-lustre results.

Facebook Ads now categorise objectives under 3 main umbrellas:

AWARENESS  | CONSIDERATION  | CONVERSIONS

And under each of these, you will find further goals. Be sure to select the campaign objective according to your end goals.

2. TOO NARROW AN AUDIENCE

When starting out with Facebook ads, 'casting the net wide' is a great starting point.

What do I mean by this?  So say you are just getting started with Facebook ads and your pixel hasn't yet accumulated a lot of history or data.  Setting fairly broad targeting on your cold ads is a good way to start seeing who exactly is taking action on your ads.

I still recommend using targeting such as age, gender, country, and some general interests.

In my case for my fashion business @iland co.  this includes 'fashion', 'travel', 'beauty' and some specific big online retailers where my ideal customer might already be shopping).

Once running a broad ad like this for a while, you can take a look at your results and metrics and then narrow down your audience further, based on the results

3. EXPECTING ONE PAID FACEBOOK ADS TO DO IT ALL!

I work with many clients who when they first come to me, say 'but Jodie, I tried a Facebook ad at $10 a day for 7 days and got no sales!'.

This is a common mistake, that I myself made when I first started out.

You see,  using Facebook ads to generate traffic and sales is a great way to fast track your success.  However, each had should have a different goal (see point no. 1!) and a good Facebook ads strategy consists of a funnel of ads.

What is a funnel you ask?

A funnel in the case of Facebook ads, means you have different ad campaigns set to show to different people based on their actions so far.

For example, a cold ads purpose is to introduce your brand or services to a new audience who has never heard of you before.  Think of this like a first date.... you wouldn't propose marriage on the first date, much like you shouldn't ask for someone to buy from you on first sight!  Cold ads shouldn't be expected to make sales, but rather introduce, create brand awareness and encourage a click through to your site.

Warm or retargeting ads are a different story.  Those ads should be designed to encourage a purchase or 'conversion'.  These ads should only be shown to those that have already visited your site, or who are already subscribed to your list.

4. NOT USING ALL 10 AVAILABLE IMAGES

For the product based business folks, I highly recommend the carousel ad format.  This ad allows you to showcase 10 product images, with individual links and headings for each of the slides.  

I'm all for getting more bang for your buck, and if you are paying for the ad, you might as well use all slides!

In my own fashion business  @iland co. I particularly use carousel ads in warm ads, that is they are shown to people who have already shown interest in my site.  The carousel format allows me to show viewers as many of my designs as possible, because after all if they don't like the first 9, they might love the 10th!

I see all too often, people only using 3 of these slides or cards, and I'm left wanting to scroll through more of their products, but there aren't any!

5. VIEWING FACEBOOK PAID ADS AS SHORT TERM SOLUTION

After being in business for many many years now, I can confidently say Facebook ads are the most successful advertising method I've seen.

Sometimes, just for fun, I switch off my FB ads and see what happens on my online store www.ilandco.com   ... and guess what... traffic drops through the floor as do sales!

Recently I had a session with a client who hadn't been using ads for a long time due to mistake number 3.  

Her average daily unique visitors was 10.... given that a good e-commerce conversion rate is 2%, (ie. if you want 2 sales per day and your website and products are rock solid, tried and tested, you would need to get at least 100 website visitors per day to get those 2 sales...!)

Setting up just 2 Fb ads totally at $15 a day resulted in her traffic 10x ing to 100+ per day!  And of those 100+ visitors per day, they are now being retargeted with warm ads encouraging them to come back and make a purchase.  

Given this clients, average order size was $200, if those ads ran for 12 days and made a sale on the 13'th day, she would break even AND have acquired a new customer who is likely to come back and buy again.

Facebook ads done well, work!  

But they do take practice and guidance from someone who knows them inside and out.

Are you utilising the power of paid Facebook ads in your business?