With 2.6 billion monthly active users, Facebook is, by far, the biggest social media platform around. By comparison, Instagram, which is also owned by Facebook, only counts 1 billion monthly active users, while growing platforms like TikTok have around 500 million.
For businesses, it means Facebook is a very good platform to be present on, and try to form a connection with an audience. Thanks to the nature of social media, people can now interact with their favorite brands whenever they choose by liking, sharing, commenting, and even asking them direct questions through messenger.
But it takes time to form that community or to reach your business goals through Facebook. It’s why the network added paid advertising services for brands who really want to speed up the process. But when it comes to Facebook Marketing, there are a lot of nooks and crannies, and not having a good understanding of it can lead to mistakes.
Here are some of the biggest issues some of our clients have faced with Facebook ads.
1. Not Choosing the Right Goal
With Facebook ads, you have the option of choosing what is your ultimate business goals with the campaign, ad group, or singular ad, and it’s essential to choose the right one.
Let’s take a look at how Facebook advertising works. You create the ad by making the copy and the visual element to accompany it and choose a target audience that would be most interested in what you’re offering. Facebook then takes your ad right to people’s news feed, where they are expected to interact with your ad in a positive way.
But here’s the thing: even if you have a great target audience, meaning you really got the pulse of who your community is, there are still big differences in terms of how they use the social network. Some may be active shoppers, always clicking on product Facebook ads and adding them to their carts straight away. Others are there just to look for the content.
When you tell Facebook what your goal is with an ad, it knows to deliver your promo to those users who not only fit your target audience description but are also more likely to act in the way you want: like your page, buy, read more, sign up, download, etc. It’s a way to optimise how you spend your budget.
2. Using Post Boosting Instead of Campaigns
Post boosting is when you go to a singular post on your page, and choose to promote it to a wider audience. It is not the same as running ads through the Ads Manager, which lets you select your goal, refine audiences, and set up a bidding strategy.
With post boosts, you simply give Facebook some money to take your post to other people’s news feed, as a way to increase that post’s visibility in terms of reach or interactions. It’s easy enough for anyone to do it even without knowledge of how Facebook Marketing works, but the results likely won’t be anything major to brag about.
Post boosting has a time and a place, but if you’re considering a wider marketing effort, like a campaign to increase revenue, running these types of ads won’t help you reach that goal. Plus, it is not a long-term strategy, as the people who’ll like your boosted post, though they fit your target audience, aren’t likely to act the way you need them to.
3. Not Choosing the Right Ad Format
Facebook is the king of social media marketing, and offers a lot of different ad formats for businesses to choose from:
Links;
Photo;
Video;
Carousel (which can hold multiple links, and multiple photos or videos)
These formats allow you to use different kinds of content, and that’s incredibly important if you want to actually reach your goal. For one thing, your kind of product or service may be better presented through the use of a particular type of content, such as a video where you show the audience how to use it.
Or, it could be a matter of what you know the audience prefers. Millennials, for instance, prefer video content, so if your audience consists of mostly this generation, presenting them with photo ads may not be as effective.
Of course, it will not always be clear which type of format you should choose. But just like you have a content calendar for your regular posts, Facebook Advertising also calls a wider strategy with diverse types of content you can test out until you perfect it.
4. Technical or Ad Construction Issues
Then, there’s the finer issue of having a bad ad:
Unconvincing copy
Low-quality or unappealing visual elements
Wrong landing page, or even forgetting to link to a landing page
Wrong target audience
No goal or the wrong goal
Ad spending mistakes, etc.
These mistakes are more common on the social channel than you’d think. The problem is, all these different components tend to be closely interconnected, working together to help you reach your goal. If one element is off, the ad itself might lack effectiveness.
Facebook Advertising is a complex system, and if you rush it then you’ll likely make a bad ad that does not deliver. Everything from the quality of the picture to choosing the copy words needs to be done carefully, to ensure the ad is compelling and attracts the viewer’s attention as they are scrolling through their news feed.
Ready to Tackle Facebook Advertising? The experts at Sydney’s #1 Facebook Advertising Agency, Australian Internet Advertising, are here to help you meet your business goals, whether it’s getting more sales through Facebook, or increasing your notoriety.
Increasing ad performance on Facebook is easier said than done, but a good team can always see it through. Reach out to Australian Internet Advertising now and we’ll help you improve your marketing efforts on the world’s leading social network!
