Facebook and Instagram are incredible platforms to get your product/business out there in front of new people – both organically and through paid ads. When you decide you are ready to invest in ads, it can be really daunting figuring out how to set-up your ads for success so that you aren’t completely wasting your money.
We’ve worked in and audited 100s of Facebook Ads accounts, and here are some of the most common mistakes that can really limit your results. While there are still other things that could go wrong, we want you to understand how to structure your account properly so that you give the algorithm its best chance at being successful.
I know, the a-word is like a curse word for every marketer and business owner, but in order to find FB Ads success, you do need to feed the algorithm with the right data to help it find the right people. If you make these mistakes, it will inhibit the algorithm from optimizing itself properly, and that’s the last thing you want when you’re investing in paid ads. You want those dollars to count, and we want to see you find success with ads!
1 – Grouping together too many different audiences within 1 campaign or 1 ad set
So, unfortunately, when you combine audiences, Facebook doesn’t provide you with any data as to which targeting is leading to conversions. When you start out, it’s important to group your ad set targeting by themes so you can actually see which audiences are performing the best AND which creative is specifically resonating with that audience. You can always combine things later when you have more data to work off of.
Having separate ad sets does also allow you to customize your ad copy and creative to be more specific to that targeting.
Of course you want to pay attention to the barometer on the right side when setting up your targeting to make sure you aren’t going too broad or too specific as either option could be detrimental.
2 – Setting all campaigns to optimize for purchase or the highest level conversion
You are looking for purchases, so it would make sense to optimize every campaign for purchases (or the highest level conversion), right? While this can be the right tactic in some accounts, here are a few things to think about to determine if it’s right for you.
Generally, how many conversions do you get per day? If you are getting less than 50 per week on the action you are optimizing towards, your campaign will struggle to get out of the learning phase. You need enough data to train the algorithm (sorry to bring up that a-word again…), otherwise it will have trouble finding the right people to target.
Optimizing for Traffic instead of Conversions will also usually get you broader reach. So we recommend having your campaign with the broadest targeting you have set to optimize for Traffic to improve reach and then the further you get down the funnel, you’ll want to optimize towards conversions. Those folks are closer to the action you want them to take so reach is not the important metric there.
ALWAYS optimize your Traffic campaign for Landing Page Views though and not the default of Link Clicks. Landing Page Views will generally get you better quality traffic as these people actually let the landing page load. Again, you’re training the algorithm to find the right people so think about the actions that will drive the best results.
3 – Only creating 1 ad per ad set
Ads are all about testing. If you only put 1 ad creative and 1 ad copy in there, it’ll be a lot harder to pin point potential issues down the road as you won’t know if it’s the targeting or messaging if you are seeing low engagement rates.
We recommend having at least 2 different visual assets and 2 different versions of ad copy which then would give you 4 ads. This will give you great data to help you figure out what your audience is responding to best. That data can then inform your next round of creative.
Honestly, sometimes the creative or ad copy you are least excited about performs the best. So let the data speak for itself!
4 – Using the same ad for every audience
Now that you understand how to structure your audience targeting, take some time and think about the message for each group. The messaging you put out for someone who has never heard of you before needs to be different than the messaging you use to retarget people who have been to your site. That new person needs a bit more of an introduction and education. The retargeting person doesn’t need an introduction, they need a compelling reason to come back to your site.
Using the same ad for multiple audiences means you are missing out on the opportunity to meet your audiences where they are in their purchase journey. That 1 ad is likely to be compelling to certain audiences, but not others. A cold audience may not be ready to make a purchase right away, and your ad messaging needs to coincide with that.
Flip it on yourself and think about the ads that you see and interact with. Imagine you’ve seen an interesting ad and decide to click it and visit the website. Then, you come back to IG or FB, and rather than being targeted with a new message about why you should buy the product or sign up for the service, you’re just being served that 1 ad you first saw. Is that ad going to be enough to get you back to the site a second time? Since you didn’t buy on the first visit is that same ad actually going to convince you to buy when you see it again? Probably not. And eventually, the more you see the same ad, you’re just going to tune it out or be annoyed by it. Neither of these outcomes will be helpful for your business.
5 – Using the same audiences in multiple ad sets/campaigns (only ok if there is different geo-targeting)
Unless you are splitting up campaigns based on certain demographics or geo-targeting, the same audience should never appear twice within your active campaigns.
If you’re testing ad creative, it should all be within the same ad set (or you can set up an official A/B Test through their built in functionality for that).
If you put the same audience with the same demographic and geo-targeting in different ad sets and campaigns, you will just compete against yourself. You will end up driving up your own cost by having two instances competing for the same impression. We definitely don’t want that!
Bonus tip: Boosting a post is NOT ads and is not something we recommend doing on a regular basis. You actually CAN bring in an existing post as an ad in a campaign you created in Ads Manager. This gives you way more control over the targeting!
With all this new-found knowledge, go open up your Facebook Ads Account and see if you’re making any of these common mistakes. You don’t need to do all the optimizations at once, but even if you just do 1 thing, it will likely help you improve your results.
Don’t forget, we’re here for you if you need some help! Head to our homepage and join AdSavvy Jumpstart if you have ads running but aren’t happy with your current results. We’ll perform an audit AND implement the updates needed for your account so you don’t have to do it yourself.
Let us know in the comments which mistake you’re going to fix first in your own account.
view + leave comments . . .